As an early 90’s millennial, I’ve never noticed a “gen z stare” as described in news articles like a “blank face that shows lack of social skill or ability to think”. The only times I’ve witnessed it happen and seen the older person accuse them of “gen z stare” is when the older person says something off hand or dumb but isn’t self aware enough to realize they’re being weird. Hell, I’ve given people a blank face countless times because I was taught it was better to say nothing at all sometimes. Especially when it came to talking to older people at work.
I remember when I was 16, some middle aged guy at work accused me of having no personality. In reality, I kept all conversations short as possible with him (like almost everyone in the store) because they were casually racist and misogynistic.
The education system doesn’t teach shit on how to interact with human beings though, and even heavily discourages it by making it about individual skill and competing for the highest scores. Then throws them into the real world that functions completely different than what it teaches and floods people with various things that demand attention but giving attention to all at once isn’t possible and a lot of it is bullshit anyways. Everything becoming a suburban hellscape where you need a car and parental consent to do anything and people call the police on children or teens doing things by themselves and stuff being increasingly age restricted doesn’t help either. Meanwhile everyone still needs a paycheck whether they have those skills or not.