Gen Z's biggest fear is laughable at first. But it's quietly wreaking havoc on their lives.

Here's a nonexhaustive list of things Gen Z finds cringe: drinking, getting a driver's license, having a boyfriend, going out, not going out, using the wrong emojis, using the wrong slang, parting your hair the wrong way, wearing the wrong jeans. It's cringe to try and it's cringe not to try hard enough. 

It's easy to dismiss Gen Z's particular aversion to cringe as kind of silly — finding things embarrassing is a rite of passage for young people and always has been — but cringe is so much more than a fleeting reaction or a punch line for generational mockery. It's become the trait that most defines and unites Gen Z-ers, who are now between the ages of 14 and 29.

Their fear of cringe is an internal censor that shapes what they say, post, pursue and even feel comfortable wanting. It's a prison of young people's own making as they try to take flight as adults. A new Yahoo/YouGov poll demonstrates how this anxiety has shaped their lives in very real ways: More than half of adult Gen Z respondents said that they have avoided expressing themselves freely online for fear of coming across as cringe. It has also seeped into their lives beyond the internet: 55% say fear of cringe has prevented them from opening up to someone emotionally; large shares say that it has held them back romantically and prevented them from pursuing hobbies and seizing professional opportunities. 

"I have avoided sharing stuff with friends and family out of fear of coming off as being cringe," Charlie, a 19-year-old Connecticut resident, tells Yahoo. "What often happened was my own personal passion for the thing died out and I felt like I was weird for ever even liking it."

This phenomenon is perhaps a natural consequence of how Gen Z came of age: They were the first to grow up entirely online, with technology in their hands from an early age. They've adapted to being constantly surveilled and picked apart by ever more punishing versions of the internet than other generations experienced. Who could blame them for their nerves? 

Erica Rozmid, a psychologist and clinical assistant professor at UCLA, tells Yahoo that the fear of cringe pervades the lives of many of her young clients, and that they need professional help working through it. Feeling momentarily ashamed because of perceived rejection — which is what cringe is at its core — is normal. What's not normal is the constant misery of trying to sidestep embarrassment altogether. 

Gen Z was once lauded for its desire for authenticity. Inundated by influencers and overly curated content, they wanted to see real emotions, real bodies and real lives. But something fundamental seems to have shifted. Being truly authentic inevitably opens you up to more rejection, Rozmid says. "I don't know if they are prioritizing authenticity as much as they are prioritizing acceptance," she adds. 

Over the last two months, I spoke with a dozen 18-to-29-year-olds about how the fear of cringe has infiltrated their lives. What I found was young people who are struggling not just to express themselves, but to function in a cultural landscape where the slightest misstep can expose them to widespread mockery. But many also yearn for their freedom from these relentless social codes — they're ready to embrace their own cringe. 

How cringe was forged 

Much of what Gen Z finds cringe today, from posting freely online to trying hard at work, is their reaction to what came before them — that is, it's a backlash to millennial culture. 

Millennials began experimenting with the internet and social media as tweens and teens. Much of their online behavior came down to loving things deeply and sharing them openly. Whether it was overly staged pictures of avocado toast on Instagram, a passion for musicals, a propensity to sort themselves into Harry Potter houses or slang terms like "adulting," the earliest digital natives were unabashedly enthusiastic about their interests and passions. Ultimately, they came to be seen as hopelessly naive. "Everybody makes fun of the trailblazers," Ana, a 25-year-old in Arizona, says. "There were no established societal norms on the interface yet." This shows up in the polling: Across every metric, millennials (now 30 to 44) fear cringe far less than Gen Z does.

Mark Beal, an assistant professor of communications at Rutgers University who has written four books about Gen Z, says young people are both consummate consumers and content creators (one poll found that two-thirds consider themselves to be in the latter category). What happens to them online matters just as much as what happens to them IRL. As such, they're constantly connected to others and can't escape the feeling of being ceaselessly perceived. 

"Every photo and video that is distributed and posted can leave Gen Z feeling cringe as thousands of people are scrutinizing every detail of every piece of content from fashion to facial features," Beal tells Yahoo. Moreover, you can't really outrun past versions of yourself anymore. "Unlike older generations who graduated to a new life chapter following high school, Gen Z is bringing with them their social media footprint." 

Powerful social media algorithms, which reward conflict and controversy with clicks, attention and money, have also shaped Gen Z's conception of cringe. Platforms that were once characterized by follower lists and linear timelines have been replaced by sophisticated feeds that can make even the most vigilant creator (or bystander) the subject of the whole internet's vitriol. 

Wes, a 25-year-old from Massachusetts, recalls that some of the first content he consumed as a teenager was "cringe compilations." Creators would splice together clips of largely neurodivergent, overweight or LGBTQ people behaving in a socially unacceptable way, inviting viewers to gawk and laugh at their differences. The overall vibe, Wes says, was: "How dare they exist wrongly?"

"Cringe became this weapon wielded against people in the most dangerous time for it to become a concept," he says. "It creates a lot of fear, especially when you're a young person." 

The kind of cringe compilations that Wes and his friends encountered as they were just beginning to explore the internet still exist, though many of the forums used to share them have been banned. The definition of cringe has expanded beyond a way to mock marginalized groups online into a way to mock anyone for stepping even slightly outside of social norms.

Platforms like TikTok and X naturally seek a "main character of the day" to assess and argue about — the stepdaughter of a Brazilian soccer player who felt snubbed by a Chappell Roan encounter, a content creator's search for a particular shirt or a dating influencer whose relationship announcement video series didn't go over well. Culture quickly moves on, but the public lashings don't feel good. "Because of social media, we are all public figures or have the chance to be one," Wes says.

In the content panopticon we live in, you can be a normal, mostly anonymous person one second and a widely hated pseudo-celebrity the next. The consequences extend beyond reputational damage: You can lose your job at any moment for an unexpectedly viral post — it's happened to restaurant employees, medical staff and teachers.

Many Gen Z-ers have had a brush with brief viral fame, and they don't look back on it fondly. "Nothing ever really goes away these days … and things can go from a private moment with somebody to having 12 million views on TikTok in three hours now," Tyler, a 27-year-old living in Georgia, tells Yahoo. "We have to be a lot more careful about what we say and what we do digitally now because it can just spiral so quickly."

But in this environment, failing to get attention is a failure too. "There are few feelings more humiliating than when you post something on social media and it's a flop," Wes says. "It's like telling a joke at a party and nobody laughs, they just stare at you."

This puts Gen Z in a state of incessant adolescent anxiety, never really outgrowing the fear of social censure that defines early teenage years. The whole internet feels like an enormous high school cafeteria full of snickering classmates. Tyler notes that he's typed out and deleted posts more times than he could count. Per our Yahoo/YouGov poll, 55% of 18-to-29-year-olds have done the same.

Living under the social tyranny of cringe

Part of what makes the fear of cringe so crippling is that the rules are confounding. You often don't know that you've stepped over the line until it's too late. You're not supposed to "flex" too much about your achievements, try too hard to seem "aesthetic" or ever express a genuine emotion. Seeking attention is generally seen as gauche, which is tough when everyone is chronically online and the currency of social media is the exchange of attention. 

Take, for example, Ana, who loves history and conspiracy theories. She once traveled to Dallas and posted a video about how she was excited to see the road where John F. Kennedy got shot — not an uncommon pilgrimage for presidential history buffs. 

She immediately received backlash, with commenters accusing her of "celebrating death." She was astounded — they misunderstood her, and didn't even seem to care that they had. "It's hard to control other people's opinions about you," Ana says. "Everyone's scared to be the one everyone's talking about, but no one's scared to be in the comments … I think especially [with] cancel culture, it can feel like you're constantly walking around on eggshells whenever you put yourself out there. It's like you have to anticipate how someone could twist your words or misinterpret your actions while also trying to be authentic." 

Ana says the culture of "collective discussion" — the fact that everyone's posting and everyone's discussing it — makes Gen Z-ers hyperaware of everyone else's thoughts and hypervigilant about how they're seen. The possibility of being misunderstood is scary and impossible not to internalize.

This ecosystem naturally amplifies young people's insecurities at a time when they're working through a lot of them. Lucy, a 27-year-old New Yorker, now cringes when she thinks about her earlier attempts to avoid cringe. She recalls that in high school, she had a rule: She'd only share one-half of her face on Snapchat, thinking that was her "good side." When she inadvertently posted a video that revealed her full appearance, it ruined her day. Looking back, she finds it "wild" that she was so nervous about whether the boys in high school thought she was unattractive. "I remember thinking, 'Now you saw the ugly side of my face — what am I going to do?'" she says. 

Social media's transformation into a harsh arena for public scrutiny is especially tragic given that the internet was once a refuge for proudly quirky people to love what they loved, free from cringe. Growing up as an immigrant kid in the U.S., Caitlin, a 24-year-old in New Jersey, felt like she couldn't openly love elements of Asian pop culture, like Pokémon, Hello Kitty, anime and K-pop. She hid her most passionate interests in fandom communities on sites like X and Tumblr, but she was racked with anxiety about being discovered or worse, being made fun of. To keep her identity from being linked to her interests, her accounts were locked, and her Spotify was private. She worried that at any moment a cabal of faceless internet strangers could mock the things she loved the most and make her feel like even more of an outsider. 

"TikTok especially feels like an echo chamber where people look for reasons to be upset. I sometimes wonder how much of it comes from people lacking real-life experience or interaction," says Caitlin. "There are all these extreme generalizations about how people behave. If a girl says she has no friends, that's cringe. If she has a lot of friends, that's also cringe." 

A deep fear of being known 

This fear of cringe may have been incubated online, but it has long since breached containment, following Gen Z into the most intimate and consequential parts of their offline lives. Our Yahoo/YouGov poll found that 38% of adult Gen Z-ers were afraid that asking someone on a date would make them feel cringe. Thirty-five percent felt that way about pursuing hobbies, and 19% said the same about accepting a professional opportunity. 

Caitlin knows her fear of cringe is holding her back at work. She's afraid to speak up in meetings, worried that one tossed-off remark could harm her reputation. It's not unfounded; older generations do often make sweeping generalizations about young people. 

Caitlin doesn't want to give her older coworkers ammunition to make a "Gen Z joke" about how she's lazy, entitled, misguided, addicted to screens, too sensitive or any other measure of stereotype. She also worries that her younger peers might see her as a "girlboss," trying too hard to get ahead. "It makes me feel small, and a bit hesitant to share anything good that happens to me," she says.

"At the end of the day, who cares if some random 40-year-old dad thinks I'm a loser? I'm probably the last thing he's thinking about," she says. "But if someone asks how my weekend was, I'll say I went on a hike instead of admitting I stayed in bed playing my Switch all weekend. I don't want to look cringe." 

At school, Charlie, the 19-year-old from Connecticut, says he's sometimes so afraid that his answer to a question in class will be viewed as cringe, he doesn't talk. His participation scores have suffered, and as a result, his grades are lower. 

But no cringe anxiety is more harrowing than in romance, which naturally demands a level of vulnerability and openness. It's hard to make the notion of "please like me" feel less humiliating. Even signing up for a dating app is like signing yourself up for a gauntlet of rejection, based on the most superficial factors.

Kylie, a 25-year-old in Georgia, finds herself drawn to men who want to keep things casual, obsessing over how she can get them to want her. When a guy expresses romantic interest in her, though, she's "icked out." "I think it's a deep fear of being known," she says. Recently, she was enjoying a conversation with a date, which she knows should have been exciting, but she was nervous instead. "If this doesn't work out, I'm going to feel like you've rejected [my] core being." 

Even in their close relationships with family and friends, Gen Z-ers say they're scared to be honest about what they love and what they've accomplished. Katy, a 27-year-old living in Massachusetts, is incredibly excited about her pregnancy, but she hasn't shared it with anyone beyond her inner circle, afraid she'll come across as self-absorbed. "It seems like an attention thing, even though in my heart of hearts I know it's not and people are just celebrating the next step in their lives," she says.

Elas, a 26-year-old in Maryland, couldn't identify a particular instance of being afraid to open up — because her reticence is constant. "I often feel too ashamed and afraid of doing or saying something wrong, that I'd rather stay silent and be judged for that," she says. "It's a lonely and pathetic feeling." She knows it's natural to want to fit in, but in her estimation, "being an outcast is worse than willingly isolating yourself." She'd rather be unknown than let other people confirm her worst fear — that she doesn't belong. 

Is there life beyond cringe? 

"Cringe" is a relatively new term, but the feeling behind it certainly isn't. What Gen Z calls "cringe" is the very human, timeless fear of rejection. What's changed is the scale at which that rejection can happen — and how permanent and public it can feel. Being earnest means to risk misunderstanding. Being seen trying means being seen failing too. Being open at all means being evaluated and judged. 

The irony is you can't actually outrun cringe — everyone ages, falls out of the loop and becomes less cool. "To be cringe is a reminder of our own mortality," Wes says. "Young people's newfangled way of talking and behaving is weird and scary and therefore cringe. It's new and replacing us, and that's frightening." 

What I learned most of all from my interviews with Gen Z-ers is that the fear of cringe is not just some irrational anxiety that lives solely in their minds. It's a real, valid concern that carries a social cost. "What looks like restraint is often risk calculation," says Lynn Zakeri, a therapist and mom of Gen Z-ers. "They are not less expressive but they are more aware of audience and consequence," Zakeri says. "[Cringe] carries reputational cost in a culture where peers act as moral juries. The fear of being earnest isn't immaturity — think of it as self-protection."

To combat fear of cringe, Rozmid encourages her clients to consider what they find important in life so they can determine what their values are. "Sometimes I'll fast-forward: Let's say six months from now, you're living a really wonderful life. You feel like it's a life that you want to show up for every day. What would you be doing differently?" she says. They focus on what the individual can do to achieve this, since they can't control the actions or thoughts of others. That's how they start accepting themselves. 

To Rozmid, it feels like "cringe culture" is part of a societal shift shaped by powerful outside forces, but parents can help their preadolescent kids prepare for it by helping normalize the awkward teen phase and explaining how it's "actually a good thing to test things out and explore your identity." 

As for Gen Z-ers, they know their fear of cringe is inevitably making them cringe. Many of them expressed that as they've gotten older, this state of perpetual adolescent social anxiety is no way to live. To escape, they establish strict boundaries on social media or train themselves to embrace cringe. 

Tyler found that once he began talking more openly about how he started his own business, no one judged him the way he feared they would. He withholds day-to-day information about his personal life on social media, though, opting for a semiannual life update post. Harry, a 26-year-old New Yorker, avoids posting entirely on social media sites that "make him feel like a public figure all the time," like Instagram. Wes tells himself, when a post flops, that "they can't all be winners" and moves along. Ana reminds herself that if people find her cringe, they just weren't the target market. Caitlin tries to remain empathetic toward others, knowing that picking people apart, even involuntarily, only contributes to the cycle. She's still online, but she's culled her following considerably to tighten her circle.

"A lot of things in life already kind of suck. Why not just let people enjoy what they enjoy?" Caitlin says. "To be cringe is to be free. I'm trying not to care so much. This sounds morbid, but we're all going to die. Who cares if someone thinks something you said, or did, is cringe? Just find people who don't think it's cringe." 

This story is part of Generation Cringe, Yahoo's examination of how the internet has reshaped embarrassment, vulnerability and self-expression for Gen Z. Read more: