BIG Questions Institute Update

December 5, 2025, No. 194 (Read Online)​

The Craving for Real: How Gen Z Is Redefining Connection in a Digital World

by Kathleen Naglee, Senior Consultant, Big Questions Institute

Like a few parents I know, I found myself ordering a record player for my 19-year-old son this Christmas season. He, like many teens, is craving real objects of memory and truth, from vinyl records to printed Polaroid pictures. This emerging desire is also appearing in other corners of youth culture and in schools.

Rosalía recently released Lux, the number one pop album. It is an avant-garde collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra, inspired by female hagiographies, sung in 13 languages and featuring a guest appearance from Björk. For its first private listening session, she invited an audience into a museum-like space. Before starting, all phones and recording devices were ushered away, and a question appeared: “When was the last time you were in complete darkness?” The audience sat silently on benches, fully present, as echoes filled the space from start to finish, creating an embodied experience that left many in tears by its finale. For Gen X readers, this might evoke memories of similar moments in basements or bedrooms with friends when a new album dropped. We too remember listening can be a shared experience.

This trend, seeking physical experiences in an increasingly synthetic world, is a revelation for this generation and it signals that our schools must readjust for these times.

Many adults wring their hands over students’ lives, but I’d argue we’re misinterpreting the deeper context of the bizarre viral memes they share. These are emblematic messages of students submerged in absurdity. Scroll through TikTok, and you’ll see a global competition to produce the most-watched reels, from Chinese-made, muscle-bound animated cats heroically rescuing kittens to millennial moms boiling Pringles to create mashed potato side dishes for their husbands.

As a trained historian, I view their shared social media through a cultural lens, likening them to the Dada art movement of the 1920s, which first overturned Victorian conventions in response to the killing fields of World War I. Listening to older Gen Zers just graduating from college, who are committed to protesting and demanding human rights, they are like the later Surrealists, who opposed the rising fascism of the 1930s with their melting images of clocks and bodies. These abstract infused art movements were derided at the time for perceived inanity. So when current students are asked about the meaning behind annoying phrases like “six-seven,” they argue there isn’t one. Absurdity is a means to an end, semiotic signals in opposition to the world we adults have fashioned for them: artificial landscapes of misinformation, violence, and a disconnect from reality.

Students Want Tangible Connections

At the recent FOBISIA conference for British Schools in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I presented, a student panel confirmed what I’ve come to understand about their evolving needs. Their united message to educators was clear: they miss the ever diminishing connection with their teachers and peers in the classroom. Too often, they’re tethered to laptops in silence or darkened rooms, staring at AI-generated slide decks. They asked teachers to say hello, to get to know them, and to create plans for doing something together. They were lonely for adult company.

We, in fact, as adults can partner as the meaning-makers during this time. In my work Symbiotic Intelligence: A Roadmap for AI Adoption in K-12 Schools, I argue that we must be the wayfinders for our communities. While AI and technology hold great potential for tailoring individualized learning, they can never come at the expense of our school’s mission and values. Your mission should dictate priorities. Like a parabola, our schools will have two critical axes in the next decade: giving students agility with emerging intelligence, and fostering a deep commitment to the world - encompassing all life, whether near or far.

Ultimately, schools right now must allow more time for nurturing one another and touching the ground beneath our feet. Learning must be haptically infused - literally with our hands where there is more real world exploration, gardening, cooking, lab work, sculpture making, rock climbing and hand-holding. Without this commitment, absurdity risks hardening towards despair, rather than the transformative hope, purpose and meaning we could be curating.

Here at BQI, we are listening to the murmurs of change. What have you heard lately?

Kathleen Naglee is a senior consultant at BQI helping school leaders and Boards navigate mission-driven innovation, the future of learning, and AI in uncertain times.

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What we are reading

​America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? (New York Times, November 2025 - link to gift article)

This article will be the source of many conversations on school and kids. If you serve on a Board of any sort of pK-12 school it should be required reading. It might not reveal anything new, but it does eloquently express what so many educators see every day, all in one spot, and includes a lot of data on kids' diagnoses, teacher well-being, and other trends. We are treating students as if they are what needs to be fixed, or blaming it on screens, but in so many cases, this is what school is doing to them, particularly when the focus is "accountability," data-driven results, and other ways to quantify childhood.

Even among our deeply polarized political leaders, "there is broad agreement that America's children are not well," writes Jia Lynn Yang. "Yet no one in political leadership — or our broader national conversation about mental health — seems to be asking about the environment where children spend most of their waking hours: school."​​

Learn (and Partner!) With BQI

If you're considering:

• Board retreat or governance training
• Senior Leadership Team up-skilling and cohesion
• Strategic planning and community-based design
• AI strategy that's people-first
• Leadership coaching
• Keynote speakers
• Professional development days... and more

Reach out! We love accompanying schools and leaders through their unique challenges. Contact Homa Tavangar: homa@bigquestions.institute to schedule an exploratory call.

Will we see you?

(Here are a few upcoming events, reach out to learn more and get on our calendars)

December 9: Co-Creating Robust and Relevant Head of School Evaluations and Goals (with the National Association of Independent Schools)

Some 2026 Conferences:

February 2: Academy for International School Heads OASIS Day (facilitated by Big Questions Institute and Transcend Labs)

February 3-5: BSME Annual Conference, Abu Dhabi. Kathleen's keynote: Human Flourishing in an Age of AI

February 2-4: AAIE Annual Conference. Homa's Session: Community-Driven Strategic Design and Planning with the Future in Mind - Practicing Urgent Optimism and Mission Clarity

February 19-21: School Governance Forum in Colombia, hosted at the Marymount School, Barranquilla (enroll by December 10 for discounted registration)

March 13-14: Swiss Group of International Schools, Annual Conference

April 13-17: TED 2026 "All of Us" - Vancouver, Canada

May 13-15: Learning Environments Australasia, Perth Australia

June 3-4: EducationPlus Innovate26 conference, St. Louis, Missouri