Some conversations just can’t happen over text. Breaking up with someone, quitting a job, telling your father you think the family business is headed in the wrong direction. More and more young people are trying to have those conversations through a screen anyway. Wingspan Founder Christina Wing takes this on in her new piece for The Boston Globe Magazine, “Dear Gen Z: Forget Zoom and FaceTime. Here’s why we still need to talk face-to-face.“
She opens with a client, a twenty-something part owner of his family’s business, who kept sending long emails to his father and the board about why the company was declining and what to do about it. Nobody was listening. They were in Europe and he wasn’t. Christina’s advice was the same thing she’s been telling a lot of people lately: just book a flight.
“The future will belong to people who know when to put down the phone, sit down together, and start talking.”
Why texting feels safer
This generation grew up on messaging apps, Slack, Zoom, and FaceTime, and during COVID many of them had no other way to talk. They’re used to editing a message over and over before hitting send. In a 2025 YouGov survey, 65 percent of Gen Z said they prefer text, email, or instant messaging with close friends and family, compared to 26 percent of boomers.
Christina cites research showing that people expect live conversations to be more awkward than they are, and that talking in person builds stronger bonds. One 2026 study found spoken disagreements led to more understanding and less conflict than written ones, even though most participants expected the reverse.
How to get better at it
Christina says it takes practice. She tells her MBA and executive education students to prepare, ask questions, and go in curious instead of with a rehearsed argument. Listen more than you talk, and don’t expect to settle everything in one meeting. In role-plays, she compares many of them to young tennis players who are used to serving aces and don’t know what to do when the ball comes back.
Why AI raises the stakes
AI now handles a lot of the spreadsheets, slide decks, and memos that used to help quietly competent people get ahead. Christina argues that young professionals who never learn to read a room, make eye contact, and respond in the moment are more likely to be replaced by it.
Link to the full article below.
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Christina has written a book on these topics, Unspeakable: The Taboo Topics We Avoid and How to Talk About Them. You can learn more about it at christinawing.com/book.
