I watched a video of a 40-year-old woman describing being hit on by a guy in his 20s. The top commenter said it happened to her, too, and asked, “What’s up with Gen Z boys?” Apparently, we were now investigating a demographic incident.
My first thought was: has this not always happened? A younger adult man finds an older adult woman attractive and makes a move. She may be interested. She may not. Either way, I hadn’t realized the interaction needed a birth-year explanation.
I’d assumed men in their 20s were flirting with women in their 40s twenty years ago, and that some will still be doing it twenty years from now. That’s an assumption, though, not research. My evidence consisted of watching one video and immediately becoming suspicious of the comments, which is hardly a rigorous methodology.
Still, I’m curious about the distinction. Are people noticing a real change in who approaches whom? Are younger men more comfortable being direct about attraction to older women? Or are we simply seeing more people tell these stories because there’s somewhere to post them?
Those are different possibilities. A video can show that something happened. A comment saying “me too” can show that it happened to someone else. Together, they make an interesting conversation. They don’t quite establish that an entire generation has adopted a new dating policy.
There’s also something funny about treating the woman’s age as the part requiring explanation. The younger guy apparently saw someone he wanted to talk to. The audience saw a topic for a panel discussion.
I’m not claiming nothing has changed. Maybe there is a generational difference, and I’m missing it. I just want to know whether the behavior is new or whether the label is doing most of the work.
Were younger men making these moves long before anyone could put “Gen Z” in the comments? Or has something actually shifted beyond our ability to watch it happen on a phone?
