Finishing schools for the age of TikTok

A century ago, Emily Post made manners popular. Her bestselling book, “Etiquette” (1922), framed the “fundamentals of good behaviour” as fashionable rather than fusty; she offered practical advice (“when in doubt, wear the plainer dress”) as well as dramatic warnings (a young lady “unprotected by a chaperone” is like “an unarmed traveller walking alone among wolves”).

Readers were gripped. Post received thousands of letters a week. In 1950 Pageant, a magazine, named her the second-most powerful woman in America. (Eleanor Roosevelt—at that point the chair of the UN commission on human rights—topped the list.)

A century after Post’s magnum opus, people are again saying “yes please” to politeness. A host of influencers offer etiquette lessons online, preaching on posture and teaching table manners. #Etiquette posts on TikTok have been viewed more than 5bn times. William Hanson, a British etiquette coach with some 5m fans on Instagram and TikTok, leads The English Manner, an “etiquette and protocol institute”. Sara Jane Ho, a Chinese instructor, has taken niceties to Netflix. “Mind Your Manners”, a reality show, was nominated for an Emmy award in 2023.

People are looking for help at the office as well as at home. Influencers cover topics such as how to start meetings (promptly) and advise on digital faux pas, including how to leave a group chat (quietly). More than half of American companies are enlisting experts to help employees hone their professional personas, according to a survey of bosses. The Institut Villa Pierrefeu—which claims to be the only traditional finishing school in Europe that is still operating—used to teach debutantes proper deportment. It now teaches managers how to run a department.

Old institutions are adapting to 21st-century norms. Courses at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu mix “modern conventions” with “time-honoured traditions”. Debrett’s, a guide to Britain’s aristocracy, has updated its “A-Z of Modern Manners” to include behaviours such as “manspreading” and “ghosting”. Other books offer lessons in modern cordiality. Ms Ho recently published her etiquette teachings. Mr Hanson’s guide to decorum will be published in September.

This flurry of politesse comes at a time when most people think manners are in decline. Some 85% of Americans believe society is less civil than it was a decade ago, according to a recent survey; 90% of parents think youngsters aged between six and 18 are disrespectful. Most blame social media and peer pressure.

As well as concerns about impertinence, interest in gentility has surged for two reasons. The first is covid, which stopped folk interacting face-to-face. People started worrying that their social skills were getting as much use as their formal wear. Mr Hanson says attendance at his in-person sessions increased by 60% after the pandemic. His clients tend to be between 25 and 45 years old, but those who came of age during covid are particularly self-conscious. Big consulting firms such as KPMG have introduced soft-skills training for pandemic-era graduates.

The second reason is a confusion about what constitutes best practice in a global, digital age. There are guides online to everything from #emailetiquette to #selfieetiquette, #flyingetiquette to #airbnbetiquette. Following experts such as Ms Ho, who says her viewers “know what to do anywhere, with anyone, in any situation”, can seem like a sure-fire way to avoid embarrassment. Finishing schools, which offer courses such as “international etiquette” and the “European art of dining”, appeal to people who want to socialise or do business in foreign cultures.

Like all customs, what is deemed genteel is subject to change. Post knew this, and criticised people who said the young were rude because they followed less formal etiquette. Louise Mullaney, a sociolinguist, looks at cordial language in “Polite”, a new book. People have long seen linguistic shifts as a sign of crumbling civility, she notes, but they are a “natural and inevitable process of language evolution”. An oft-cited example is the phrase “if it please you”, which was popular in Shakespeare’s day. By the time Post published “Etiquette” it had been shortened to “please”. Young people now find it perfectly acceptable to type “pls” on mobile phones.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will change politeness once more. McKinsey, a consultancy, reckons soft skills will become only more important for business leaders in an age when generative AI can do much of the analytical heavy lifting. Good manners may become more appreciated.

At the same time, AI could also make people ruder. Parents worry that children who bark instructions at virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa are becoming terse. Google has tried to remedy this with its “pretty please” feature, which prompts children to say “the magic word”.

A growing field of research suggests polite prompts make AI models perform better. A new study by researchers in China, Japan and Britain found that rude requests cause chatbots to make things up and omit important bits of information. AI mirrors human receptiveness to social etiquette, the researchers think, because it is trained on massive amounts of data created by people. (Excessive flattery, too, prompts mistakes in chatbots.) In the digital world, as much as the physical one, it helps to mind your Ps and Qs.

For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter

© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com