5 Surprising Things I’ve Learned about Gen Z College Students

User expectations are always changing. Here's what to know about Gen Z.

Posted on September 15, 2025 in Blog Posts

Back in our college days, we millennials suffered article after article that tried desperately to understand who we were as a generation. They were full of generalizations, inaccuracies, and manic attempts to explain an apparent obsession with avocado toast. That kind of pandering web content was misguided at best and highly irritating at worst.

Anyway, now it’s my turn to do that to the next generation.

On my campus, NC State University, I often run user research studies for the Libraries. I encounter a wide swath of the community at NC State, including students who are members of Gen Z. (First generalization: they’re a delight.) Here are my observations about their behaviors regarding library experiences.

They use dark mode

According to our web analytics, 38 percent of our users have dark mode turned on at the operating system level. In other words, they prefer a darker color scheme, such as white text against a dark background. That was far more than we’d expected. Moreover, in interviews, around two-thirds of Gen Z–aged college students told me they preferred dark mode. Some employed it all the time, on every device; some turned it on only at night; and some used light mode for coursework and dark mode “for fun,” like when scrolling social media. When asked why, they told us again and again that dark mode is simply “easier on the eyes.”

Based on these numbers, we decided that we’d better create a dark mode option for our library website! We were particularly inspired by the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Library, which launched theirs way back in 2022. (See their excellent article in Weave.)

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They often do a “bounce scroll” to see how long a web page is

As a UX librarian, I’m often part of conversations about what’s “above the fold” (a quaint, newspaper-inspired way to describe what’s visible on the screen before the user needs to scroll). While considering what to prioritize on the page is still important, users do scroll past the fold to give themselves context about the page as a whole.

In our user research studies, Gen Z–aged participants scrolled quickly to get an idea of how long the page was before they began scanning it for the info we asked them to find.

They expect library catalogs to be indexed by Google

Sometimes, when I ask a study participant to find a book by a certain title, they’ll turn first to the browser’s search bar and type something like: ncsu library alice in wonderland. Because our catalog, like most academic libraries’ catalogs, isn’t indexed by Google (by our choice), nothing shows up. Not to worry, though—at this point, participants try a different tactic, like editing the search to just ncsu library, finding the library homepage, and searching there.

Why aren’t library catalogs usually indexed by Google? Sometimes, IT folks turn off that option because opening up a whole catalog application to be indexed means welcoming in a zillion bots, which may crash the catalog website. And in fact, that’s just what’s been happening to many library websites this year—tons of bots have ignored the stated preference not to be indexed and have overwhelmed many library websites, slowing performance or even causing outages. These “impolite” bots aren’t from Google, but rather (we surmise) from shady AI companies looking to scrape web content for their LLMs.

They cherish the library’s quiet spots

The Gen Z–aged college students I’ve spoken with are acutely aware of how many distractions they encounter in daily life and how those distractions can detract from their schoolwork. When describing their ideal study spot, over half emphasize that it should be “quiet” or “silent” so that they can “lock in” and “focus.” Privacy and aloneness are part of this equation, too—which must be why the old-fashioned carrels in our bookstacks are consistently in use.

For many of these students, the library might be the only truly quiet spot in their entire life. Living with their family, with roommates, or in a dorm isn’t often silent, nor conducive to prolonged studying. Whatever changes we make to library spaces, we absolutely need to preserve quiet study areas.

They sometimes say “search up” instead of “search”

There’s nothing particularly actionable about this. It’s just an observation. At the reference desk and in user research for the past decade, I’ve noticed this phrasing becoming more common. “I searched up the book in the catalog.” “I tried searching up calculators on your website.” As a descriptivist, I don’t consider it incorrect—just fascinating!

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One last little note… Let me emphasize that these are just my observations of Gen Z–aged college students on my specific campus here in Raleigh, NC, USA. Other academic librarians may have noticed different things. Check out 5 Findings to Know about Your Gen Z Patrons’ Tech Habits for other insights.

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