A teenager scrolling at a family dinner looks disinterested. It usually isn't disinterest. It's timing. The people who could answer their questions may not be around by the time those questions surface.
Your Gen Z family members will eventually wonder about their family history. It'll be harder to find out by then, but not impossible. Be ready.
Family History Competes With an Infinite Scroll
Kids on their phones aren't interested in family history right now. That isn't a character flaw. They're individuating, and family history competes directly with an infinite scroll of everyone else's identity content, curated and immediate in a way genealogy can't be.
The curiosity is in there. It's buried under a volume of noise that didn't exist when I was that age.
Millennials and Gen Z Are Driving a New Wave
Industry coverage in late 2025 pointed to millennials and Gen Z as a new wave of family history seekers, using DNA tests and digital archives in ways earlier generations couldn't. Ancestry has grown to 29 million DNA customers overall.
I've watched this pattern play out across enough families to trust it. The interest arrives a little later than the teenage years, but it reliably arrives.
Let Their Question Lead
Don't assign family history like homework. Let a young person's own question lead. Why do we look like this? Why did we move here? Why does grandma talk about that one town so much?
A specific question they already have in their own mind does more work than any instruction to go learn about your ancestors. Here's how to ask the older generation.
Record on a Phone, Because It's Their Native Format
A quick phone video with a grandparent, framed as casual, not a formal interview with a set list of questions, fits how young people already communicate. The format becomes far less of a barrier than a structured sit-down, even when the subject matter is exactly the same.
Sources cited
- The Writers For Hire, How Millennials and Gen Z Are Redefining Genealogy, October 2025
- Ancestry, 2025 Impact Report
