April 7, 2024
Dear Friends and Family,
Being of an older generation, I found it more enlightening to compare and contrast Generation Z and Millennials as opposed to just focusing on the Gen Zers for this cover letter.
Comparisons:
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Being of an older generation, I found it more enlightening to compare and contrast Generation Z and Millennials as opposed to just focusing on the Gen Zers for this cover letter.
Comparisons:
- Both generations value attaining a Work/Life balance and a Slow Lifestyle, e.g., growing up at a slower pace than previous generations by marrying and having children later in life.
- Both exhibit digital fluency and social media savvy.
- Both are desirous of a career which helps others and/or society.
- Both suffer from greater mental illness than past generations as the result of spending hours/day on their smartphones thus limiting human to human interactions and being highly influenced by social media with its manipulations, comparisons, and biased information.
- Both feel the U.S. system is not working well for them.
- Millennials have a high incidence of narcissism, e.g., inflated sense of self, which transfers to optimism and entitlement expectations. They tend to be cocky, dominated by their peers with a low regard for the counsel of their elders. They have very high expectations which leads to despair and “burnout,” when not met.
- They need constant approval and are viewed as high maintenance.
- They have relatively low empathy and hence difficulty comprehending other’s points of view.
- They work hard, are financially responsible, and are desirous of new experiences.
- They are viewed as the Me-Me-Me Generation.
- Gen Zers are very independent but highly cynical and pessimistic. They are more lonely and more uncertain of the future than any modern-day generation and hence many feel we need to start all over as a country.
- They have a high acceptance of diverse perspectives and unification of ideas to solve challenging problems and are most supportive of transgender rights.
- They put a high value on nutritious and healthy foods, less emphasis on physical activity, and more interest in the gig economy than previous generations.
- They are viewed as the We Generation.
Happy Learning,
Harley
THE STUDY OF AMERICAN GENERATIOINS – SEGMENT 10
THE MILLENNIAL CYCLE – GENERATION Z – EXCERPTS
Born: 1996 – 2012 Type: Adaptive; White 52.9% [Note: It was 57.6% for Millennials, 62.7% for Gen X, 76.1% for Boomers, and 78.1% for Silents]
GENERATION Z by Jean Twenge (2023): Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation of American adults to date. Not only do more identify as Black, Hispanics, or Asian, but there are more multiracial Gen Zers than in any previous generation. Gen Z will likely be the last generation where any one racial group is in the majority in the United States. Gen Z is also bringing an unprecedented amount of attention to diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation. Like many young generations before them, they have confounded older generations by using technologies (TikTok, Snapchat) and language (enby, pansexual) their parents barely understand – not to mention tinting their hair every color in the rainbow. The Gen Z generation is concerned with authenticity, confronting free speech issues, pushing the norms of gender and struggling with mental health – this is Gen Z in a nutshell.
Gender Fluidity: In a recent poll, two-thirds of young adults said they became increasingly supportive of transgender rights over the last five years. Gen Z speaks a whole language of gender barely understood by their Gen X and even Millennial parents. While only 1 out of 1,000 Boomers identify as transgender, (one-tenth of 1%) 23 out of 1,000 Gen Z young adults (2.30%) identify as trans – 20 times more.
In 2021, 16.1% of young adults (1 out of 6) identified as something other than straight, more than twice as many than just seven years before. The changes are driven almost exclusively by the increase in bisexual people, particularly bisexual women. There’s been only a slight rise in the percent of young adults identifying as gay or lesbian, but more than twice as many young women identified as bisexual in 2021 as did in 2015, a huge change in just six years. Almost 1 in 5 young adult women identified as bisexual by 2021. In addition, the number of men identifying as bisexual doubled. These numbers are even higher when 2022 data is included.
Less Sexually Active: Gen Z young adults should be having the time of their lives sexually. But they aren’t. In fact, Gen Z is having markedly less sex than Xers and Millennials did as young adults. In the General Social Survey, a remarkable 3 in 10 Gen Z men ages 18 to 25 have not had sex in the last year – twice as many as when Millennials were the youngest adults. For Gen Z women, it’s 1 in 4, up from 1 in 7 among Millennials.
Growing Up Slowly: The rollout of the slow-life strategy has come in fits and starts over the last several generations. Boomers lived the fast life as independent children and teens but extended young adulthood by waiting longer to have children. Gen Xers sped to adolescence even faster than Boomers, shortening their childhoods with earlier sex and more teen pregnancies, but slowed their entry into full adulthood by marrying later and starting their careers later. For Millennials and especially Gen Z, however, the entire trajectory of life from toddlehood to full adulthood has slowed. Childhood has extended into the years once reserved for adolescence. Adolescence now extends into what was once young adulthood, and young adulthood stretches further and further as education lasts longer and having children is delayed later and later. Illinois law states that leaving any child the age of 14 alone constitutes child neglect. Not long ago, 13-year-olds worked as paid babysitters for younger children; now they are believed to need babysitters themselves.
Mental Health: Every indicator of mental health and psychological well-being has become more negative among teens and young adults since 2012. The trends are stunning in their consistency, breadth, and size. They involve feeling unhappy, dissatisfied with life, and down on yourself. Because depressive feelings are not just emotional but also cognitive, they can also lead to general negativity and pessimism.
One precursor to these feelings is loneliness – the sense that one is isolated from others. Feeling close social connections to others is crucial for mental health, especially for young people. Gen Z teens are markedly more lonely than previous generations at the same age. Loneliness among teens had been slowly declining or at least stable since the early 1990s but after 2012 it suddenly shot upward. Teens also became less satisfied with their lives and with themselves (an indicator of lower self-confidence).
When these trends in youth mental health first began appearing in the early 2010s, I had no idea what might be causing them. It was difficult to think of a specific event that occurred around 2012 that reverberated throughout the decade. Then I came across a poll from the Pew Research Center, and things began to fall into place. The poll graphed smartphone ownership in the U.S. which started in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone and crossed 50% at the end of 2012. This was also around the time that social media use among teens went from optional to virtually mandatory –in 2009, only about half of teens used social media every day, but by 2012, 3 out of 4 did. The case for technology, especially social media, causing mental health issues among young people relied on four primary pieces of evidence: 1) timing, 2) impact on day-to-day life, 3) group level effects, and 4) the impact on girls.
Unhealthy Habits: The cost of the digital age isn’t just mental – it’s physical. Around 2012, just as smartphones became common, the number of teens who said they rarely exercised increased, reaching all-time highs among both 8th graders and 12th graders by 2019. The number who rarely ate breakfast also started to trend up after two decades of decline. Perhaps due to lack of exercise and other unhealthy habits, the number of teens and young adults who were overweight increased sharply between 2012 and 2019. By 2016, more than half of American young adults were overweight. A full 1 out of 3 young adults in 2019 were not just overweight but clinically obese, up from 1 out of 4 as recently as 2014. By late 2020, 43.4% of 12-to-15-year-olds were overweight or obese.
Pessimism: Gen Z is also less optimistic about their personal prospects. After rising sharply between Boomers and Gen Xers and staying high among Millennials, teens’ expectations for their future educations, jobs, and material prospects suddenly declined as Gen Z began answering the questions. Fewer Gen Zers expect to work in professional jobs, fewer expect to get a graduate or professional degree, and fewer expect to own more than their parents – even though median incomes rose during this period. Gen Z is more uncertain about their future than Millennials were. Negativity among the young is also not good news for politics and society. For a democracy to survive, its citizens need to believe that the system is fair and that the country functions reasonably well – these are positive and optimistic beliefs. It also helps to have an inspiring origin story about how the country was founded.
Among young people all three of those beliefs are in peril. First, young adults are less likely to believe that “America is a fair society where everyone can get ahead.” Six out of 10 Gen Zers disagree with this statement, thus arguing that the society is unfair. Perhaps as a result, 3 out of 4 Gen Zers think we should, in effect, tear it all down and start over, saying “significant changes” to the government’s “fundamental design and structure” are necessary. The old way of doing things, they feel, doesn’t work anymore. Most stunning is this: 4 out of 10 Gen Zers believe that the founders of the United States are “better described as villains” than “heroes.” Somewhere along the line, a significant portion of young adults developed the idea that America’s founders are more evil than good. Fewer than 1 in 10 Silents of Boomers – four to eight times fewer – agree, creating a substantial generation gap. This disapproval of their country is so well entrenched that 4 out of 10 think the founders of the U.S. were the bad guys in the story instead of the good guys. In a July 2021 poll, only 36% of 18-to-24-year-olds (all Gen Z) said they were “very” or “extremely” proud to be an American. In contrast, 86% of those 65 or older (Boomers and Silents) said they were proud to be an American.
Going forward, this will be the biggest challenge in the U.S. and potentially around the world. How can leaders convince young people that their country is a good place to live? If they can’t, young people might want to junk everything and start over. There’s a name for that: revolution.
The Cards are Stacked against me: American culture has moved toward a “victimhood culture” in which people “seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance.” In this new culture, they argue, there is a status in being a victim of slights – especially when these slights are announced on social media. Convinced that the world is against them, some young people have decided there’s no point in trying, a viewpoint linked to failure. Countering this view will be one of the biggest challenges of the next decade.
Source: Generations by Jean M. Twenge, PhD (2023)
WHO IS GENERATION Z? by Corey Seemiller and Meghan Grace: Just as Millennials have been characterized as optimistic and self-interested, Generation Z is characterized as independent and cynical. Growing up in an increasingly diverse world has set the stage for many in Gen Z to be accepting of people from backgrounds different from their own, develop open-mindedness, and cultivate a strong desire for inclusion and equality, all of which in their minds are fundamental to making the world a better place. We may have a generation that doesn’t see diversity as something to be managed, programmed on, or hired for – instead a reflection of who they are.
Gen Z teens spend an average of nearly 9 hours per day using technology for entertainment purposes, such as listening to music or watching television shows or videos. More than 70% reported watching three or more hours of videos a day for entertainment on their smartphones alone. This is nearly three times the average amount of time adults spends using digital devices to watch videos. And when those in Gen Z are not surfing YouTube or other online sites for videos, they are on social media doing so. Two in three members of Gen Z utilize YouTube as a way to learn and further, half of those in Gen Z couldn’t live without YouTube. It’s no surprise that younger Internet users are more likely to have more social media accounts compared to older users with those under the age of 24 having an average of 8.7 accounts on different social media platforms. But they don’t use each of these accounts uniformly; each has a specific purpose that reflects the diverse ways in which they use social media.
Communication: Today, 73% of 18-to-24-year-olds communicate with people more in digital settings than in in-person settings. Digital messaging has changed the very nature of the meaning of conversation. Digital communication can occur in short, asynchronous spurts with a transfer back and forth between two or more people and over a span of multiple hours or days. Conversations can also occur in multiple settings and across a variety of platforms, such as talking to the same friend throughout the day via text message email thread, social media site, and Snapchat. These communication exchanges are not usually lengthy or even related to each other. Having to frequently manage several different accounts could lead to missing a message or getting it too late. In addition, trying to respond to various conversations on one platform could result in miscommunication -- as it might be easy to text a response in the wrong conversation feed.
However, there is a generational divide with what is considered acceptable in terms of appropriate times and settings for communication. For example, a higher number of those in Gen Z compared to those in other generations feel it’s okay to use their phone while attending a religious service, eating dinner with family members, or meeting the family of the person they are dating. We did find in our Gen Z Goes to College Study that 83% reported that face-to-face communications was a preference for them, higher than any other method of communication.
Only about one-quarter of those in Gen Z believe they will get some form of government assistance when they retire, lower than the one-third of Millennials. With a lack of a nest egg taking them through their golden years, many may need to continue working well after retirement, even if simply freelancing in the gig economy. Gen Z’s version of the American Dream, however, is a blend of the dreams of each of their predecessor generations, as those generations laid the groundwork for the world that Gen Z was born into and lives in today. Their version of the American Dream is similar to that of the G.I. Generation who strived for a comfortable lift after the war, where they could buy a home and move their family to the suburbs. They recognize that dream is not attainable without the hard work, financial security, and self-reliance similar to what was modeled by the Silent Generation. A study by Autotrader found that 92% plan to own their own cars. Having a car gives them a sense of freedom and convenience.
Family: As of 2016, 20% of the U.S. population lived in a multigenerational household. And while there has been growth in multigenerational households across all racial and ethnic groups since 2008, these living arrangements have become more common among non-White families.
Friends and Peers: For Generation Z their peers serve as a great source of influence on their lives, both in terms of support as well as for offering recommendations and advice. Second only to their parents, Gen Z’s values are heavily influenced by their friends. 90% ranked having a good relationship with their friends as an important factor in their overall happiness. But only about half of Gen Z college seniors report having higher than average social self-confidence. This number is considerably lower than the 64% who report having higher than average intellectual self-confidence. While missing an event, experience, or even conversation can result in feeling left out, it is the deeper sense of loneliness and isolation plaguing this generation that is of grave concern. In a study of 20,000 adults in the U.S., Cigna found that 48% of Gen Z young adults (ages 18 to 22) report experiencing loneliness which was higher than any other generation included in the study, Further, more than 60% of Gen Z young adults reported feeling shy, isolated from others, alone, that no one really knew them, and that there were people around them, but not really with them.
Physical Well-Being: Those in Generation Z have a great focus on consuming nutritious and healthy food. Forty-five percent watch what they eat, 67% look at nutritional content, and 60% look at ingredients on food labels. Technomic also found that 25% of college students limit gluten; 25% follow a special diet like being a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian, and 39% avoid or limit animal products. Not only do they want to consume healthy food, they are aware of the dangers of mass food production. In our Generation Z goes to College Study, 30% of those surveyed indicated eating healthy and safely as good, and nearly 46% were concerned about factory farming/unhealthy food production. Overall, many Gen Zers want healthy, specialty foods, and despite their moderate views on spending money are willing to pay for them.
Over the past 30 to 40 years the volume and intensity of physical activity with youth, in particular has been in decline. The American College Health Association reported that nearly 21% of college students surveyed had not logged even 30 minutes of moderate physical activity in the week just before the survey.
Career Aspirations: In our Generation Z Stories Study, we found that 26% said that making a difference was the most important factor in a future careers, not surprising in that nearly 84% think it is essential or very important to help others who are in difficulty. Those in Gen Z want their work to truly matter to someone, somewhere. In our study, many of them shared details of working in education, medicine, and other service professions, while others talked of making the world a better place through their work in socially responsible companies.
In the Workplace: We are now living in a gig economy, otherwise known as a 1099 or on-demand economy. The gig economy is comprised of freelance workers who do not hold long-term contracts with any one employer, allowing them to work a series of singular gigs, or work events for different employers through a portable and flexible version of self-employment. The flexibility of the gig economy offers Gen Zers greater control over both their income and their lives. It’s no surprise then that 57 million people freelanced in 2017 alone. And, in a study by Deloitte, 18% of Gen Zers have already joined the gig economy in place of full-time employment, higher than the 14% of Millennials who have. Further, 49% of Gen Zers would consider working in the gig economy over a full-time job, higher than the 43% of Millennials who would. Because Gen Zers are just now entering the workforce, it may be many years until we can fully grapple with their impact in the workplace. Until then, it will be important to find a way to leverage what we do know about them – their entrepreneurial spirit, inventive attitude, loyal nature, and dedication to making the world a better place. Whether in our organizations or freelancing in the gig economy, Generation Z has the capacity to make a difference in their organizations.
Politics: It also appears there is a group of members of Generation Z who might not be able to find a candidate that stands for what they believe in. Perhaps this will lead to the emergence of a competitive third party in the coming future. This would align with the perspectives of a majority of African American (66%), Asian American (71%), Latino (68%) and White (73%) 18-to-29-year-olds who believe we need a third political party Given Gen Zers views, this third party they are referring to may not be one that exits today.
Civic Engagement: If Millennials were dubbed the “Me” Generation, then Generation Z is the “We” generation. When asked to describe the social issues they cared about most, only one-quarter discussed me-centric issues like having enough money for tuition or having difficulty finding a job. But those concerns were far fewer as the majority focused on we-centric issues like racism or the economy. Gen Zers stay most informed about civil rights issues with nearly two-thirds keeping up regularly with issues related to gay rights, women’s rights, and racial equality. There is a great desire among Gen Zers to dismantle this type of partisanship and focus on both acceptance of diverse perspectives and unification of ideas to solve challenging issues. Perhaps this will lead them to actually strive for collaboration across differences.
While the vast majority of Gen Z students discussed prejudice and discrimination against underrepresented populations, a small handful brought up the growing prejudice against those with conservative views. The main concern along these lines involved political correctness having gone too far. In discussing this issue, they used words like “too soft,” “being offended by everything,” and “not every place has to be a safe place.” Others were quick to point out specific marginalized groups that they believe will continue to be oppressed in the future. The most discussed issue of inequality was related to racism, followed by sexism, and poverty and income inequality. Although gay rights, transgender rights, religious oppression and differences and ableism were included, there were far fewer references to these specific issues than those around race, gender and class.
Source: Generation Z by Corey Seemiller and Meghan Grace (2019)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
THE MILLENNIAL CYCLE – GENERATION Z – EXCERPTS
Born: 1996 – 2012 Type: Adaptive; White 52.9% [Note: It was 57.6% for Millennials, 62.7% for Gen X, 76.1% for Boomers, and 78.1% for Silents]
GENERATION Z by Jean Twenge (2023): Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation of American adults to date. Not only do more identify as Black, Hispanics, or Asian, but there are more multiracial Gen Zers than in any previous generation. Gen Z will likely be the last generation where any one racial group is in the majority in the United States. Gen Z is also bringing an unprecedented amount of attention to diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation. Like many young generations before them, they have confounded older generations by using technologies (TikTok, Snapchat) and language (enby, pansexual) their parents barely understand – not to mention tinting their hair every color in the rainbow. The Gen Z generation is concerned with authenticity, confronting free speech issues, pushing the norms of gender and struggling with mental health – this is Gen Z in a nutshell.
Gender Fluidity: In a recent poll, two-thirds of young adults said they became increasingly supportive of transgender rights over the last five years. Gen Z speaks a whole language of gender barely understood by their Gen X and even Millennial parents. While only 1 out of 1,000 Boomers identify as transgender, (one-tenth of 1%) 23 out of 1,000 Gen Z young adults (2.30%) identify as trans – 20 times more.
In 2021, 16.1% of young adults (1 out of 6) identified as something other than straight, more than twice as many than just seven years before. The changes are driven almost exclusively by the increase in bisexual people, particularly bisexual women. There’s been only a slight rise in the percent of young adults identifying as gay or lesbian, but more than twice as many young women identified as bisexual in 2021 as did in 2015, a huge change in just six years. Almost 1 in 5 young adult women identified as bisexual by 2021. In addition, the number of men identifying as bisexual doubled. These numbers are even higher when 2022 data is included.
Less Sexually Active: Gen Z young adults should be having the time of their lives sexually. But they aren’t. In fact, Gen Z is having markedly less sex than Xers and Millennials did as young adults. In the General Social Survey, a remarkable 3 in 10 Gen Z men ages 18 to 25 have not had sex in the last year – twice as many as when Millennials were the youngest adults. For Gen Z women, it’s 1 in 4, up from 1 in 7 among Millennials.
Growing Up Slowly: The rollout of the slow-life strategy has come in fits and starts over the last several generations. Boomers lived the fast life as independent children and teens but extended young adulthood by waiting longer to have children. Gen Xers sped to adolescence even faster than Boomers, shortening their childhoods with earlier sex and more teen pregnancies, but slowed their entry into full adulthood by marrying later and starting their careers later. For Millennials and especially Gen Z, however, the entire trajectory of life from toddlehood to full adulthood has slowed. Childhood has extended into the years once reserved for adolescence. Adolescence now extends into what was once young adulthood, and young adulthood stretches further and further as education lasts longer and having children is delayed later and later. Illinois law states that leaving any child the age of 14 alone constitutes child neglect. Not long ago, 13-year-olds worked as paid babysitters for younger children; now they are believed to need babysitters themselves.
Mental Health: Every indicator of mental health and psychological well-being has become more negative among teens and young adults since 2012. The trends are stunning in their consistency, breadth, and size. They involve feeling unhappy, dissatisfied with life, and down on yourself. Because depressive feelings are not just emotional but also cognitive, they can also lead to general negativity and pessimism.
One precursor to these feelings is loneliness – the sense that one is isolated from others. Feeling close social connections to others is crucial for mental health, especially for young people. Gen Z teens are markedly more lonely than previous generations at the same age. Loneliness among teens had been slowly declining or at least stable since the early 1990s but after 2012 it suddenly shot upward. Teens also became less satisfied with their lives and with themselves (an indicator of lower self-confidence).
When these trends in youth mental health first began appearing in the early 2010s, I had no idea what might be causing them. It was difficult to think of a specific event that occurred around 2012 that reverberated throughout the decade. Then I came across a poll from the Pew Research Center, and things began to fall into place. The poll graphed smartphone ownership in the U.S. which started in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone and crossed 50% at the end of 2012. This was also around the time that social media use among teens went from optional to virtually mandatory –in 2009, only about half of teens used social media every day, but by 2012, 3 out of 4 did. The case for technology, especially social media, causing mental health issues among young people relied on four primary pieces of evidence: 1) timing, 2) impact on day-to-day life, 3) group level effects, and 4) the impact on girls.
- Timing: If the rise of digital media explains the increase in teen depression, similar patterns of change should appear in countries other than the U.S. that adopted the technology of smartphones and social media around the same time. The data soon began to roll in. Self-harm, anxiety, and depression increased sharply among teens in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. School loneliness among teens rose in 36 out of 37 countries around the world, with increases in all regions. Those increases appeared after 2012, exactly the same pattern as loneliness and depression among teens in the U.S.
- Impact on day-to-day life: There’s another reason why digital media is the most likely culprit for the rise in depression. It changed day-to-day life in a fundamental way. While getting together in person or talking on the phone were the only communication choices for Boomers and most Gen Xers when they were young, digital communication became the norm for Gen Z. Instead of going to the movies or meeting up at parties, Gen Z was using Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. By early 2020, nearly half of the 8th graders spent 3 hours a day or more using social media. The average teen spent more than 8 and a half hours a day with screen media in total in 2021. As digital communication took over, in-person gatherings waned. Beginning in the 2000s and accelerating during the 2010s, teens started spending less and less time with each other in person – whether that was just hanging out, going to the mall, driving around or going to parties. Sleep deprivation among teens increased during the 1990s, stabilized, and then rose after 2012, right as smartphones and social media became popular. By 2021, half of teens were significantly sleep deprived. Most young people will tell you that their phone is the last thing they see before they go to sleep and the first thing they see when they wake up in the morning; most sleep with their phone within reach. Thus, the way teens spent their time outside of school fundamentally changed after 2012. They spent more time on digital media, less time with each other in person, and less time sleeping.
- Group-level effects: When most people own smartphones and use social media, everyone is impacted, whether they use those technologies or not. It’s harder to strike up a conversation when everyone is staring down at a phone. It’s harder for friends to get together in person when the norm is to communicate online instead. That’s especially true for Gen Z, where these technologies are used by the vast majority of their age-mates.
- The impact on girls: Many of the increases in mental health issues are larger among girls than among boys. While both boys and girls compare themselves to others on social media, girls are especially likely to compare their bodies to the perfect specimens they see online, and especially likely to receive comments about their bodies. But “You can’t ever win on social media,” observed a teen girl interviewed by Facebook researchers.
Unhealthy Habits: The cost of the digital age isn’t just mental – it’s physical. Around 2012, just as smartphones became common, the number of teens who said they rarely exercised increased, reaching all-time highs among both 8th graders and 12th graders by 2019. The number who rarely ate breakfast also started to trend up after two decades of decline. Perhaps due to lack of exercise and other unhealthy habits, the number of teens and young adults who were overweight increased sharply between 2012 and 2019. By 2016, more than half of American young adults were overweight. A full 1 out of 3 young adults in 2019 were not just overweight but clinically obese, up from 1 out of 4 as recently as 2014. By late 2020, 43.4% of 12-to-15-year-olds were overweight or obese.
Pessimism: Gen Z is also less optimistic about their personal prospects. After rising sharply between Boomers and Gen Xers and staying high among Millennials, teens’ expectations for their future educations, jobs, and material prospects suddenly declined as Gen Z began answering the questions. Fewer Gen Zers expect to work in professional jobs, fewer expect to get a graduate or professional degree, and fewer expect to own more than their parents – even though median incomes rose during this period. Gen Z is more uncertain about their future than Millennials were. Negativity among the young is also not good news for politics and society. For a democracy to survive, its citizens need to believe that the system is fair and that the country functions reasonably well – these are positive and optimistic beliefs. It also helps to have an inspiring origin story about how the country was founded.
Among young people all three of those beliefs are in peril. First, young adults are less likely to believe that “America is a fair society where everyone can get ahead.” Six out of 10 Gen Zers disagree with this statement, thus arguing that the society is unfair. Perhaps as a result, 3 out of 4 Gen Zers think we should, in effect, tear it all down and start over, saying “significant changes” to the government’s “fundamental design and structure” are necessary. The old way of doing things, they feel, doesn’t work anymore. Most stunning is this: 4 out of 10 Gen Zers believe that the founders of the United States are “better described as villains” than “heroes.” Somewhere along the line, a significant portion of young adults developed the idea that America’s founders are more evil than good. Fewer than 1 in 10 Silents of Boomers – four to eight times fewer – agree, creating a substantial generation gap. This disapproval of their country is so well entrenched that 4 out of 10 think the founders of the U.S. were the bad guys in the story instead of the good guys. In a July 2021 poll, only 36% of 18-to-24-year-olds (all Gen Z) said they were “very” or “extremely” proud to be an American. In contrast, 86% of those 65 or older (Boomers and Silents) said they were proud to be an American.
Going forward, this will be the biggest challenge in the U.S. and potentially around the world. How can leaders convince young people that their country is a good place to live? If they can’t, young people might want to junk everything and start over. There’s a name for that: revolution.
The Cards are Stacked against me: American culture has moved toward a “victimhood culture” in which people “seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance.” In this new culture, they argue, there is a status in being a victim of slights – especially when these slights are announced on social media. Convinced that the world is against them, some young people have decided there’s no point in trying, a viewpoint linked to failure. Countering this view will be one of the biggest challenges of the next decade.
Source: Generations by Jean M. Twenge, PhD (2023)
WHO IS GENERATION Z? by Corey Seemiller and Meghan Grace: Just as Millennials have been characterized as optimistic and self-interested, Generation Z is characterized as independent and cynical. Growing up in an increasingly diverse world has set the stage for many in Gen Z to be accepting of people from backgrounds different from their own, develop open-mindedness, and cultivate a strong desire for inclusion and equality, all of which in their minds are fundamental to making the world a better place. We may have a generation that doesn’t see diversity as something to be managed, programmed on, or hired for – instead a reflection of who they are.
Gen Z teens spend an average of nearly 9 hours per day using technology for entertainment purposes, such as listening to music or watching television shows or videos. More than 70% reported watching three or more hours of videos a day for entertainment on their smartphones alone. This is nearly three times the average amount of time adults spends using digital devices to watch videos. And when those in Gen Z are not surfing YouTube or other online sites for videos, they are on social media doing so. Two in three members of Gen Z utilize YouTube as a way to learn and further, half of those in Gen Z couldn’t live without YouTube. It’s no surprise that younger Internet users are more likely to have more social media accounts compared to older users with those under the age of 24 having an average of 8.7 accounts on different social media platforms. But they don’t use each of these accounts uniformly; each has a specific purpose that reflects the diverse ways in which they use social media.
Communication: Today, 73% of 18-to-24-year-olds communicate with people more in digital settings than in in-person settings. Digital messaging has changed the very nature of the meaning of conversation. Digital communication can occur in short, asynchronous spurts with a transfer back and forth between two or more people and over a span of multiple hours or days. Conversations can also occur in multiple settings and across a variety of platforms, such as talking to the same friend throughout the day via text message email thread, social media site, and Snapchat. These communication exchanges are not usually lengthy or even related to each other. Having to frequently manage several different accounts could lead to missing a message or getting it too late. In addition, trying to respond to various conversations on one platform could result in miscommunication -- as it might be easy to text a response in the wrong conversation feed.
However, there is a generational divide with what is considered acceptable in terms of appropriate times and settings for communication. For example, a higher number of those in Gen Z compared to those in other generations feel it’s okay to use their phone while attending a religious service, eating dinner with family members, or meeting the family of the person they are dating. We did find in our Gen Z Goes to College Study that 83% reported that face-to-face communications was a preference for them, higher than any other method of communication.
Only about one-quarter of those in Gen Z believe they will get some form of government assistance when they retire, lower than the one-third of Millennials. With a lack of a nest egg taking them through their golden years, many may need to continue working well after retirement, even if simply freelancing in the gig economy. Gen Z’s version of the American Dream, however, is a blend of the dreams of each of their predecessor generations, as those generations laid the groundwork for the world that Gen Z was born into and lives in today. Their version of the American Dream is similar to that of the G.I. Generation who strived for a comfortable lift after the war, where they could buy a home and move their family to the suburbs. They recognize that dream is not attainable without the hard work, financial security, and self-reliance similar to what was modeled by the Silent Generation. A study by Autotrader found that 92% plan to own their own cars. Having a car gives them a sense of freedom and convenience.
Family: As of 2016, 20% of the U.S. population lived in a multigenerational household. And while there has been growth in multigenerational households across all racial and ethnic groups since 2008, these living arrangements have become more common among non-White families.
Friends and Peers: For Generation Z their peers serve as a great source of influence on their lives, both in terms of support as well as for offering recommendations and advice. Second only to their parents, Gen Z’s values are heavily influenced by their friends. 90% ranked having a good relationship with their friends as an important factor in their overall happiness. But only about half of Gen Z college seniors report having higher than average social self-confidence. This number is considerably lower than the 64% who report having higher than average intellectual self-confidence. While missing an event, experience, or even conversation can result in feeling left out, it is the deeper sense of loneliness and isolation plaguing this generation that is of grave concern. In a study of 20,000 adults in the U.S., Cigna found that 48% of Gen Z young adults (ages 18 to 22) report experiencing loneliness which was higher than any other generation included in the study, Further, more than 60% of Gen Z young adults reported feeling shy, isolated from others, alone, that no one really knew them, and that there were people around them, but not really with them.
Physical Well-Being: Those in Generation Z have a great focus on consuming nutritious and healthy food. Forty-five percent watch what they eat, 67% look at nutritional content, and 60% look at ingredients on food labels. Technomic also found that 25% of college students limit gluten; 25% follow a special diet like being a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian, and 39% avoid or limit animal products. Not only do they want to consume healthy food, they are aware of the dangers of mass food production. In our Generation Z goes to College Study, 30% of those surveyed indicated eating healthy and safely as good, and nearly 46% were concerned about factory farming/unhealthy food production. Overall, many Gen Zers want healthy, specialty foods, and despite their moderate views on spending money are willing to pay for them.
Over the past 30 to 40 years the volume and intensity of physical activity with youth, in particular has been in decline. The American College Health Association reported that nearly 21% of college students surveyed had not logged even 30 minutes of moderate physical activity in the week just before the survey.
Career Aspirations: In our Generation Z Stories Study, we found that 26% said that making a difference was the most important factor in a future careers, not surprising in that nearly 84% think it is essential or very important to help others who are in difficulty. Those in Gen Z want their work to truly matter to someone, somewhere. In our study, many of them shared details of working in education, medicine, and other service professions, while others talked of making the world a better place through their work in socially responsible companies.
In the Workplace: We are now living in a gig economy, otherwise known as a 1099 or on-demand economy. The gig economy is comprised of freelance workers who do not hold long-term contracts with any one employer, allowing them to work a series of singular gigs, or work events for different employers through a portable and flexible version of self-employment. The flexibility of the gig economy offers Gen Zers greater control over both their income and their lives. It’s no surprise then that 57 million people freelanced in 2017 alone. And, in a study by Deloitte, 18% of Gen Zers have already joined the gig economy in place of full-time employment, higher than the 14% of Millennials who have. Further, 49% of Gen Zers would consider working in the gig economy over a full-time job, higher than the 43% of Millennials who would. Because Gen Zers are just now entering the workforce, it may be many years until we can fully grapple with their impact in the workplace. Until then, it will be important to find a way to leverage what we do know about them – their entrepreneurial spirit, inventive attitude, loyal nature, and dedication to making the world a better place. Whether in our organizations or freelancing in the gig economy, Generation Z has the capacity to make a difference in their organizations.
Politics: It also appears there is a group of members of Generation Z who might not be able to find a candidate that stands for what they believe in. Perhaps this will lead to the emergence of a competitive third party in the coming future. This would align with the perspectives of a majority of African American (66%), Asian American (71%), Latino (68%) and White (73%) 18-to-29-year-olds who believe we need a third political party Given Gen Zers views, this third party they are referring to may not be one that exits today.
Civic Engagement: If Millennials were dubbed the “Me” Generation, then Generation Z is the “We” generation. When asked to describe the social issues they cared about most, only one-quarter discussed me-centric issues like having enough money for tuition or having difficulty finding a job. But those concerns were far fewer as the majority focused on we-centric issues like racism or the economy. Gen Zers stay most informed about civil rights issues with nearly two-thirds keeping up regularly with issues related to gay rights, women’s rights, and racial equality. There is a great desire among Gen Zers to dismantle this type of partisanship and focus on both acceptance of diverse perspectives and unification of ideas to solve challenging issues. Perhaps this will lead them to actually strive for collaboration across differences.
While the vast majority of Gen Z students discussed prejudice and discrimination against underrepresented populations, a small handful brought up the growing prejudice against those with conservative views. The main concern along these lines involved political correctness having gone too far. In discussing this issue, they used words like “too soft,” “being offended by everything,” and “not every place has to be a safe place.” Others were quick to point out specific marginalized groups that they believe will continue to be oppressed in the future. The most discussed issue of inequality was related to racism, followed by sexism, and poverty and income inequality. Although gay rights, transgender rights, religious oppression and differences and ableism were included, there were far fewer references to these specific issues than those around race, gender and class.
Source: Generation Z by Corey Seemiller and Meghan Grace (2019)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| generations_10l_generation_z_--_segment_10.pdf |