‘You can be made a laughing stock to millions’: can gen Z escape the fear of being cringe?
Gen Z faces a pervasive fear of being perceived as 'cringe,' which affects their self-expression and emotional openness. This phenomenon, often exacerbated by social media, has been linked to a culture of surveillance that discourages young people from pursuing their passions. Experts suggest that this fear of embarrassment may be hindering the ability of many to fully engage in life.
- ▪A Yahoo/YouGov poll revealed that over half of Gen Z feels hindered by the fear of being cringe.
- ▪Academics have noted that this fear is a new form of shame that affects self-expression.
- ▪Experts argue that the surveillance culture of social media contributes to young people's reluctance to pursue their dreams.
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — Tech |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/03/can-gen-z-escape-fear-cringe-laughing-stock |
| Publication time | Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:00:41 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-03T04:16:54.537Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-03T04:16:54.537Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | eHUmJyP0L24w |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Illustration: Igor BastidasView image in fullscreen Illustration: Igor BastidasYoung people‘You can be made a laughing stock to millions’: can gen Z escape the fear of being cringe?With the constant risk of being recorded, many young people are afraid of showing enthusiasm – let alone doing something so potentially embarrassing as dancing in public. Is there a way to set themselves free?Ellie Violet BramleyWed 3 Jun 2026 00.00 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleIn a video posted to TikTok, where Katie Whitney has 2.5 million followers, she says to camera, bluntly: “This video is for Cynthia Erivo. If you’re not Cynthia Erivo … you can keep on scrolling.” Her demeanour then shifts, her voice becomes softer; more the way a person might talk to their puppy: “Hi Cynthia. Hi baby. Hey baby.
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