Are we in a crisis of rudeness?

It’s a question, a lingering suspicion that has bedeviled nearly every generation: Are the kids these days getting more rude, more brash, more grossly unapologetic?

“We have stories of Emily dealing with this question, we have stories of our grandmother dealing with this question,” says Lizzie Post, the great-great-granddaughter of etiquette maven Emily Post and co-president of the Emily Post Institute. “Five generations gives us the length of time to prove this one out that we really do constantly look back at times nostalgically and say that they were more polite.”

Society certainly seems to think we’ve collectively gotten more rude. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, nearly half of the country believes people’s behavior is more impolite than before the pandemic. Enter any public space and you’re bound to encounter someone having a phone call on speaker, fellow passengers mixing up egg salad on a plane, or students leaving class unannounced. These incidents inevitably become flashpoints of heated debate online.

Unchecked incivility has wide-reaching consequences. Bearing witness to behavior that you find rude, whether face-to-face or electronically, leads to worse mood and decreased cognitive performance. When someone is rude to you, you may become defensive and less likely to cooperate — no one wants to spend time and energy interacting with a jerk. Impoliteness is actually contagious, spreading from one person to another: When you experience something impolite, you’re more likely to spot other supposedly rude behavior and act impolitely yourself.

Post can’t say for sure whether our current culture is more impolite than generations’ past, but she does believe we’re living through a crisis of attention that can lead to disrespectful behaviors. Perpetually distracted and always looking at screens, we’ve become accustomed to switching topics mid-conversation or checking email over dinner. And that’s just how we treat the people we know. We hardly consider the comfort of strangers when playing a YouTube video sans headphones on a crowded bus.

“Are we ruder?” Post says. “I don’t know, but I know we’re less aware of each other, we do not pay as much attention to our impact on one another, and we have more ways to be annoying to each other or rude or dismissive than we’ve ever had before.”

There may also be bigger factors underlying our supposed epidemic of rudeness. Christine Porath, a professor at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace, conducted a global survey in 2022 of 2,000 people who either had customer-facing jobs or observed those who did. Porath found that 73 percent of respondents said it wasn’t unusual for customers to behave badly, compared to 61 percent who said the same in her 2012 survey. “The number one reason that I found for people being rude is feeling stressed or overwhelmed,” Porath says. “If you think about the last few years, Covid in particular, contributed to this, but plenty of other stressors, the uncertainty…a lot of negativity that we’re taking in in society, a lot of people angrier or on edge or frustrated.”

“Rude,” of course, can mean many things to as many people. Some may not bat an eye when students leave class unannounced, others see it as a breach of the social code. But, as Post notes, your definition of what’s “rude” is shaped by personal experience and preference.

According to Post, you might label an action as rude if it has offended, disrespected, or made you uncomfortable. Jennifer Loh, a management and human resources professor at the University of Canberra in Australia, classifies “rude” as an action, behavior, or comment meant to convey disrespect that also violates a social norm. When you expect to be treated one way and others fail to meet that standard, you might consider it impolite.

These breaches can be direct or indirect, says Amy Irwin, a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen. Overly critiquing a friend’s performance at an open mic may be construed as directly rude. Staring at your phone while someone attempts to converse with you is a passive form of incivility. There’s also an element of ambiguity at play, Irwin says, since you never really know if a colleague purposely ignored you when you greeted them (rude) or if they simply didn’t see you (can be forgiven).

But everyone’s idea of what is normal, acceptable behavior differs. People learn what is kosher from those around them: parents, extended family, friends, culture writ large, Post says. You may have grown up in a family where eating in front of the TV was customary, but your romantic partner might find the idea horrifying.

While age often gets blamed for rudeness — the classic “kids these days” knock — generational differences in incivility can be attributed to the culture in which you grew up. Younger people who grew up alongside technology may find it appropriate to scroll TikTok in social settings. Those who were exposed to tech later in life could be offended by even the presence of a phone in a one-on-one hangout.

In a study of Australian millennials, Gen Xers and boomers, Loh found younger participants consider it good manners to respond to a text immediately. “Whereas for the older generation,” she says, “not responding straight away doesn’t seem to worry them too much because they don’t think it’s actually rude.”

Your present social context also plays a role in whether you consider an act rude, Irwin notes. Burping loudly in a bar is more widely accepted than burping in the middle of a meeting. “You can take exactly the same behavior,” she says, “put it in a different context, and it’s viewed completely differently by the same person.” And the closer you are to the offender, the more likely you are to excuse their behavior, anyway.

More broadly, each culture has its own social niceties, so while it might be acceptable for you to scarf down a snack while walking on the street in the US, you might get a few confused glances in Japan.

When instances of impropriety abound, Post says it’s crucial to be aware of the behavior you’re modeling, both to peers and the kids in your life, and explain why courtesy is so important — that it isn’t just to police others’ behavior, but to provide a framework of respect. “Taking the time when you’re at the dinner table to talk about why we don’t chew with our mouth wide open,” she says.

Leaders at work, coaches, and teachers can set expectations for what behavior is appropriate for the office, the field, the classroom, and hold people accountable, Porath says.

Reflect on how you interact with others: Are you constantly on your phone at the dinner table? Do you cut off colleagues in meetings? Do you leave your shopping cart in the middle of the grocery store parking lot? How do you speak to waiters and other service workers? If there were recent moments where you fell short — maybe you were a little terse with a barista — consider where you went wrong, Post says. Moving forward, try to be more mindful of the impact you have on others.

It can help to start noticing polite behaviors all around you: The guy at the doctor’s office who held the door open for another patient; someone appropriately covering their mouth when they sneeze in public. They’re not as few and far between as you might think. “It’s important to recognize that the positive can have such a big impact,” Post says. “Looking for the good moments of behavior that you see out in the world, starts to remind you that they’re there, that you can participate in too.”