Gen Z has email anxiety at work, struggling to cope with 1,000s of unread messages: Hardest part of my job

It’s just not clicking for them. For millennials and older, the “You Got Mail” notification rarely incited stress. In fact, most folks over thirty can still remember feeling a flush of excitement upon receiving an email — be it from work, family, friends or even advertisers — during its early stages in the early aughts. But to the digital natives of Generation Z, getting electronic correspondence, namely from the office, is apparently as anxiety-inducing as getting sentenced to the electric chair.   “Gen Z appears to struggle the most with email stress,” Esteban Touma, a linguistics and culture expert at language learning platform, Babbel, told CNBC.“[They stack] up a huge quantity of unread emails due to a combination of factors.”Babbel researchers recently conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S.

office workers to determine that employees between the ages of 18 to 24 are the most likely to let emails pile up. The findings indicated that more than a third, 36%, of Gen Z professionals say they have over 1,000 unread emails in their inbox, compared with 18% of office workers overall.For youngsters on the job, the accumulation of unanswered missives creates a hefty layer of pressure to open, read and properly respond to the messages.And once they finally reply, a whopping 1 in 5 Gen Zs report “very often” regretting the emails they send.The formality of emailing, compared to the laissez-faire nature of texting or social media direct messaging, too, makes twenty-somethings feel uncomfortable. “Gen Z’s communication preferences are heavily influenced by the prevalence of instant messaging platforms and social media,” said Touma.

“Platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, for example, prioritize instantaneous communication, informality and visual cues.”“The structured and formal nature of email communication may feel unfamiliar and more complicated to many [Gen Zers],” the insider added. And he’s right — the kids are not alright....