It’s no secret that Generation Z grew up surrounded by technology, but the way these youngsters use certain features and gadgets may surprise you.
Generation Z, commonly referred to as Gen Z or Zoomers, is made up of people born after 1997, according to the Pew Research Center. They have already witnessed the rise of smartphones, social media and, more recently, artificial intelligence in their lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean they’ve counted out the ghosts-of-devices-past.
For instance, they have embraced old-school digital cameras. The hashtag #digitalcamera has more than 1 billion views on TikTok after the devices were popularized by Gen Z’s desire to strike a more casual, nostalgic tone with their photos.
But make no mistake, the members of this generation will also school you with their unspoken rules for emoji use, auto capitalization and more.
Here are some secrets to how the youngest generation in the workforce uses technology:
Voice notes
Most Zoomers hate talking on the phone, but sometimes it’s easier to convey tone with your voice instead of through a text message. Enter the voice memo.
Voice memos, also called voice notes or voice messages, are a feature on messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp that allow you to record a message in audio form.
It’s become a popular way to send notes to friends without having to type long messages, especially among Gen Z. Last year, WhatsApp said its users sent an average of 7 billion voice messages every day.
Zoomers love the voice memo feature mostly because it’s easy to use without having to speak with someone on the other end simultaneously. Whether you have a story to share that would take a while to type out or you just don’t want your tone to get lost in translation, voice memos are a simple alternative to a text.
Proper emoji usage
A group of emojis
If you thought you had emojis figured out, think again.
Emojis are the expressive characters that smartphone users can add to their text messages and social media posts for a little extra umph and pizzazz. The total number of emojis available around the globe was expected to climb to nearly 3,500 this year, according to a report from Statista.
But as the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and with Gen Z, there’s often more to emojis than meets the eye.
For instance, Gen Z tends not to use the traditional laughing emoji to express joy or laughter. Instead, these users will often use the loudly crying face emoji, which features thick streams of tears, or the skull emoji when they find something funny. When someone shares a joke, a popular response among members of Gen Z is the phrase “I’m dead,” hence the skull.
Gen Z users will also use the clown face emoji to signify when they think someone is behaving foolishly, or like a clown. The eyes emoji is often used to signify sly or cheeky intrigue in something, and the upside-down face tends to signify that things are not going according to plan.
Emojis tend to come in and out of fashion among this generation, so it’s very possible that new trends will also emerge down the line.
No autocapitalization
Gen Z often chooses not to use capital letters.
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Much of Gen Z has decided it is out with the capital letters, and in with the lowercase.
For years, Zoomers have avoided using capital letters in texts, social media posts and other forms of digital communication. Many deactivate the autocapitalization feature that comes as the default setting in smartphones.
Discourse on X, formerly known as Twitter, over Gen Z’s lack of punctuation has occurred for years. It’s filled with playful banter calling out Zoomers for improper grammar and asking why Gen Z decided to “murder” the capital letter.
The answer to that is murky. There was never a secret virtual meeting to conspire against conventional English punctuation, and there are still plenty of Zoomers who stick to the auto-capitalization feature.
Some say they like the look of the lower-case letters and the care-free aesthetic that accompanies it. Other internet theories say the lack of capital usage is Gen Z’s dig at capitalism and the establishment. However serious the reasoning, Gen Z’s elimination of the capital letter is one of the more long-standing trends of the generation.
Group chat names
Gen Z names many of its group chats.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
If you find yourself in a text group chat with people from Gen Z, there’s a good chance they’ll assign it a name.
Gen Z labels many of its group chats. Sometimes it’s for practical reasons, like the name of a group project for a high school or college class. Other times it’s for fun, such as coming up with a quirky name for your chat with all your friends or family.
In many messaging services like Apple’s iMessage, any member of the group can change the chat’s name to whatever they please.The only things preventing a name change are whatever unspoken agreements the chat members made, and, of course, the fear that a separate group chat could be started without you.
There is also some practicality to the naming. It allows for easier searching when trying to find the conversation if it is not one of your more recent ones.
Anyone who would like to name a group chat in iMessage on an iPhone can do so by tapping on the icons in the top center of the conversation, then pressing “Change Name and Photo.” From there, you can type whatever name you would like. No pressure.
Digital cameras
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From wide-leg jeans to claw clips, Gen Z is known for bringing back popular early 2000s trends. When it comes to tech, nothing says Y2K more than a digital camera.
More than 60% of Gen Z used or owned a digital camera in 2019, according to Statista. The digital camera market is also expected to grow about 2% annually through 2028, and it’s likely Gen Z has a hand in it.
Zoomers love to take photos and value a good Instagram aesthetic, so digital cameras are a great way to accomplish both. Not only is using a digital camera nostalgic, they have sharper flash and crisper image quality than a smartphone. Because cameras have more physical space for sensors than smartphones, they have larger sensors and in turn better image quality.
Part of the allure of using a digital camera is also the experience. Since the photos are not instantly available on your phone, most Zoomers who use digital cameras appreciate the delayed gratification in having to upload the photos onto a desktop. This means you can take photos with your friends and then forget about them until you have time to sit in front of a computer later, which is a great way to be in the moment.
Using a digital camera is a creative alternative to iPhone pictures, and the process of taking them is a lot more fun. The photos they take are a great way to elevate your Instagram feed or just an exciting way to make your life feel like a big editorial shoot.
Photo filter apps
If you don’t want to take the time to upload your photos to your computer or spend money on a digital camera, photo filter apps are a great alternative.
There are tons of filter apps available to download on your smartphone, and they entail uploading a photo and adjusting the visual properties like brightness, white balance or contrast. Many apps that are popular with Gen Z, like VSCO, have presets that add the filter right to your photo.
A lot of Zoomers like to use filter apps to make their photos sharper, brighter or more colorful. However, in recent years, Gen Z has revitalized filter apps that create photos with film-camera vibes.
For example, apps like Dispo or Huji Cam force a waiting period before the photos are available to view, which is meant to emulate the experience of using a film camera. Other apps, like Dazz Cam, have the option for users to upload their own smartphone image and instantly add a film-esque filter to it.
The reason why these filter apps are so popular among Gen Z is similar to the resurgence of digital cameras: nostalgia and creativity. Film cameras produce grainy and blurry photos, creating a distinct aesthetic that can make your social media stand out. However, Gen Z values convenience, so these filter apps make it easy to achieve the film camera vibe without the work.
Flip phones
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Gen Z has also popularized the return of the flip phone – yes, the flip phone.
Make no mistake, these tech-savvy youngsters aren’t trading in their smartphones completely, but many members of Gen Z have invested in a second phone as a way to stay present at social gatherings. A recent report from Common Sense Media found that teens can receive anywhere from hundreds to thousands of notifications per day, and escaping from the constant barrage of pings can be a challenge.
As a result, some members of Gen Z are turning to flip phones. These devices can be found for under $40 at retailers like Walmart and Amazon, and their relative simplicity means they can provide some reprieve from frequent Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and text notifications.
On TikTok, the hashtag #flipphone has more than 830 million views, and users rave about the devices’ old-school cameras, how they are less distracting and how they can serve as good conversation starters.
In other words, flip phones are helping Gen Z unplug without going entirely off the grid.
Dark mode
Gen Z uses dark mode instead of light mode.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
Gen Z loves to tinker with the factory settings of their smartphones, and one way they do so is by switching their screen display from light mode to dark mode.
In iPhones and Androids, dark mode means that instead of defaulting to bright, white backgrounds, much of the screen backgrounds are black or other dark shades. It doesn’t make anything more than cosmetic changes, so you won’t have to worry about learning new phone commands.
This is another example of a Gen Z trend that has been around for years.
According to posts on X, some members of Gen Z say it’s easier on their eyes, and others like that the setting extends their battery life. Zoomers spend an average of 7 hours and 18 minutes on a screen per day, according to data from Zippia.
It’s not difficult to switch your iPhone to if you’d like to try. Just go to Settings, click on “Display & Brightness” and then you will see the light and dark mode options.
A mockup of Tesla Inc.’s planned humanoid robot Optimus on display during the Seoul Mobility Show in Goyang, South Korea, on Thursday, March 30, 2023. The motor show will continue through April 9. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that Optimus robots, which have yet to hit the market, will eventually make up more than three-quarters of his automaker’s value.
In a post on X on Monday, Musk wrote, “~80% of Tesla’s value will be Optimus.” In mid-2024, Musk predicted that Optimus robots would someday turn Tesla into a $25 trillion company, which was equal to more than half of the entire value of the S&P 500 at the time of his comment.
With Tesla in the midst of a multi-quarter sales slump due to competition from lower-cost Chinese competitors, an aging lineup of electric vehicles and Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric and involvement with the Trump administration, the world’s richest person has been trying to convince Wall Street to look to the future.
For Tesla, that dream revolves around a world filled with robotaxis and humanoid robots, powered by artificial intelligence.
“It is important to note that Tesla is by far the best in the world at real-world AI,” Musk said in the company’s second-quarter conference call with analysts in July.
The problem for Tesla is that it’s behind in those key markets.
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In robotaxis, Tesla has only recently started tests in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, while Alphabet’s Waymo is live in numerous markets and reached 10 million paid trips in May. Baidu’s Apollo Go is live in China.
Meanwhile, competition in humanoid robots is coming from the likes of Chinese companies like Unitree, which won multiple medals at the World Humanoid Robot Games. Others in the space include Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, 1X and Figure.
Musk said in March that Tesla plans to make 5,000 of its Optimus robots this year. In its first-quarter shareholder deck, Tesla said it was on target for “builds of Optimus on our Fremont pilot production line in 2025, with wider deployment of bots doing useful work across our factories.”
Tesla recently lost the person running the division.
Milan Kovac, Tesla’s vice president of Optimus robotics, announced his departure in June after nine years at the company.
Tesla is developing Optimus with the aim of someday selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot capable of everything from factory work to babysitting.
A person holds a smartphone displaying the logo of SAP, a German multinational software corporation known for its enterprise resource planning solutions.
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German software giant SAP on Tuesday announced it will invest over 20 billion euros ($23.3 billion) into its sovereign cloud capabilities in Europe over the next 10 years.
The company said it was expanding its sovereign cloud offerings to include an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform enabling companies to access various computing services via its data center network. IaaS is a market dominated by players like Microsoft and Amazon.
It will also roll out a new on-site option that allows customers to use SAP-operated infrastructure within their own data centers.
The aim of the initiative is to ensure that customer data is stored within the European Union to maintain compliance with regional data protection regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
“Innovation and sovereignty cannot be two separate things — it needs to come together,” Thomas Saueressig, SAP’s board member tasked with leading customer services and delivery, said during a virtual press conference Tuesday.
He added that it was important for European companies to be able to access the latest technological advancements such as artificial intelligence “in a full sovereign context.”
Technological sovereignty is a topic that has been gaining momentum in the last year or so as geopolitical frictions have forced companies to assess their reliance on foreign technologies.
Countries around the world are increasingly looking to on-shore computing infrastructure needed to train and run powerful AI systems. That has led to major global tech players like Amazon and Microsoft to announce new sovereign cloud initiatives to ensure the data of European users is stored within the EU.
The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, has made AI a top priority for the bloc as it looks to ramp up competition with the U.S. and China. Europe has long lagged behind both countries when it comes to technologically more broadly.
Earlier this year, the Commission unveiled plans to invest 20 billion euros in the creation of new so-called “AI gigafactories,” facilities equipped with vast supercomputers to develop next-generation AI models.
Saueressig said that SAP is “closely” involved in the creation of the new AI gigafactories but would not be the lead partner for the initiative.
He added that the company’s more than 20-billion-euro investment in Europe’s sovereign cloud capabilities will not alter the company’s capital expenditure for the next year and has already been baked into its financial plans.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an American Technology Council roundtable at the White House in Washington on June 19, 2017.
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Microsoft has agreed to give the U.S. General Services Administration $3.1 billion in potential savings over the course of a year on cloud services used at government agencies.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, the GSA has sought to aggregate spending through a strategy called OneGov that’s meant to lower prices. Adobe, Amazon, Google and Salesforce have already come forward with discounts.
Agencies have to buy through the GSA to take advantage of the Microsoft savings through September 2026. The lower prices will be available for three years, resulting in total savings of over $6 billion, Microsoft said.
The discounts apply to Microsoft’s Office productivity subscriptions, as well as Azure cloud infrastructure, Dynamics 365 business applications and Sentinel cybersecurity software. Microsoft is throwing in a year of free access to the Copilot artificial intelligence assistant for millions of workers with Microsoft 365 G5 subscriptions, the company said.
Agencies can easily switch to the lower price, said Josh Gruenbaum, who left his director position at private equity firm KKR to become commissioner of the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service after Trump’s second term began.
The GSA oversees about $110 billion in spending on common goods and services from many agencies, out of about $450 billion in total spending across the federal government, Gruenbaum said in an interview. The GSA is working to absorb procurement for NASA and the National Institutes of Health, to comply with an executive order Trump signed in March, Gruenbaum said.
Around $80 billion in spending is tied to IT, and Microsoft’s annual U.S. government revenue probably stands in the mid- to high-single-digit billions of dollars, Gruenbaum said.
“It’s no surprise that Microsoft is one of the most critical partners for the federal government in terms of its software and the tooling that we use around both the civilian side and the defense side,” Gruenbaum said.
Gruenbaum said he spoke numerous times about the deal with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“I think the biggest piece is he wants to partner with this administration and get this right for AI adoption,” Gruenbaum said of Nadella. “But I also think he wants to go and take market share from some of the other tools and services that are out there.”