gen z essay

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Generation Z – also known as Gen Z, iGen or postmillennial – are a highly collaborative cohort that cares deeply about others and have a pragmatic attitude about how to address a set of inherited issues like climate change, according to research by Roberta Katz, a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) .

Roberta Katz (Image credit: Charles Katz)

Since 2017, Katz, along with her co-authors, Sarah Ogilvie, a linguist at the University of Oxford and formerly at Stanford; Jane Shaw, a historian who is the principal of Harris Manchester College at Oxford and was previously dean for Religious Life at Stanford; and Linda Woodhead, a sociologist at King’s College London, collaborated as part of a multi-year CASBS research project to better understand a generation who, born between the mid-1990s to around 2010, grew up with digital tools always at their fingertips.

Their findings are based on some 120 interviews gathered on three college campuses – Stanford University; Foothill College, a community college in Los Altos Hills, California; and Lancaster University, a research university in Lancaster, England. A set of focus groups and two surveys in the U.S. and the U.K. were administered to a representative sample of over 2,000 adults aged between 18 and 25 years old.

Contributing further to the scholar’s understanding of Gen Z was the creation of the “ iGen corpus ,” a 70 million item digital repository of spoken and written language of people aged 16 to 25 years that included transcripts from the researchers’ interviews and focus groups, as well as public data from the social media platforms Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, 4chan and YouTube, as well as memes and copypastas from Facebook and Instagram. Ogilvie, the principal investigator on the corpus research team, along with a team of Stanford student research assistants, applied machine learning algorithms to discover the many ways in which young people today express themselves.

Taken together, the scholars’ research offers a snapshot of who Gen Zers really are, what matters to them and why. Findings from Katz’s and her co-authors’ research are detailed in a new book, Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Here, Katz discusses some of what she and her colleagues learned from their extensive research into how Gen Zers, the most diverse generation yet , experience and understand the world.

Based on your research, can you briefly describe the typical Gen Zer?

In summary, a typical Gen Zer is a self-driver who deeply cares about others, strives for a diverse community, is highly collaborative and social, values flexibility, relevance, authenticity and non-hierarchical leadership, and, while dismayed about inherited issues like climate change, has a pragmatic attitude about the work that has to be done to address those issues.

How has growing up in an internet-connected society shaped how Gen Zers see and experience the world and everyday life?

Internet-related technologies have dramatically changed the speed, scale and scope of human communications, resulting in significant changes in how people work, play, shop, find friends and learn about other people. For Gen Zers living in the United States and Britain (the two places we studied), the “norm” they experienced as children was a world that operated at speed, scale and scope. They developed an early facility with powerful digital tools that allowed them to be self-reliant as well as collaborative. Similarly, because they could learn about people and cultures around the globe from an early age, they developed a greater appreciation for diversity and the importance of finding their own unique identities.

What do people most misunderstand or get wrong about Gen Zers?

For quite a while, people were critical of what they saw as a generation that was too coddled and “soft.” Gen Zers were called “snowflakes” and “unwilling to grow up.” But much of that negative judgment came from a misunderstanding of what it is like to grow up in today’s world when compared with how their elders grew up. As an example, Gen Zers have been criticized as lazy because they don’t have after-school or summer jobs. But many Gen Zers have been earning significant dollars online through a variety of activities, even including product placements on fashion-advice sites. Another example concerns drivers’ licenses: older people, for whom getting a driver’s license was a rite of passage toward adulthood, have criticized Gen Zers who do not rush to take their driver’s tests when they turn 16, but this criticism fails to consider that Gen Zers have no need to drive when they have ready access to ride services like Uber and Lyft.

Do you think Gen Zers get an undeserved bad rap?

Yes, but that is changing. Of late, many people are beginning to appreciate the strength and pragmatism of Gen Zers.

What were you most surprised to learn about Gen Zers?

Our biggest surprise came in response to this interview question: “What type of communication do you like best?” We expected the interviewees to respond with their favorite type of digital communication – e.g., text, email, chat group, DM, FaceTime, Skype, etc. – but instead nearly every single person said their favorite form of communication was “in person.”

As Gen Zers enter the workforce, what would be helpful for other generations to know about their post-millennial colleagues?

For those who are now experiencing Gen Zers in the workplace, my advice is to recognize that these new colleagues are used to working collaboratively and flexibly, with an eye to being efficient in getting the job done. They are pragmatic and value direct communication, authenticity and relevance. They also value self-care. They may be more likely than older people were when they were the age of the Gen Zers to question rules and authority because they are so used to finding what they need on their own. They are not always right; often they don’t know what they need, especially in a new setting, and this is where inter-generational dialogue can be so helpful. Both the older and the younger colleagues can learn from the other, in each case by listening with more respect, appreciation and trust. The older colleague can learn some helpful new ways of getting a job done, while the younger colleague may learn good reasons for why things have long been done in a certain way. Without that dialogue, we’ll have a wasteful tug of war between the past and the future. The goal is for older and younger generations to work together, with openness and trust, to ensure that the wisdom – but not what has become the excess baggage – of the past is not lost to the future.

How has studying Gen Zers changed your own interactions with this generation?

I came to understand that Gen Zers are, on the whole, much better adapted to life in a digital age than those of us who are older and that they can be very frustrated by what appear to them to be outdated and often irrelevant ways of doing things. As one simple example that we cite in the book, an older person would likely assume that any organization needs a set of officers, for that has been the norm in their experience, but a Gen Zer would say, from their lived experience, that there is no need to elect officers (or other leaders) if the group can accomplish its mission through online collaborations that take advantage of the participants’ diverse skills.

In my own interactions with Gen Zers, I am much more likely than I used to be to listen closely to what they say, and to refrain from making a judgment about their ideas, values and behaviors based on an assumption that they are wrong and I am right. They often do things differently, have some different values and have some different ideas about the future than I do, and I have come to appreciate and trust that they often have a new and better approach. Many of us who are older have a different understanding of how the world works, which is rooted in our own early experiences, so it’s easy for us to assume that the world will continue to operate in much the same way going forward and that the young people need to adapt to that older way of living. But the younger people are necessarily future-oriented, and as we all are increasingly coming to appreciate, the digital-age future is quite different from the industrial-age past.

For 13 years, Katz served under Stanford University Presidents John Hennessy and Marc Tessier-Lavigne as the associate vice president for strategic planning. She also served as President Tessier-Lavigne’s interim chief of staff until early 2017. Katz has been deeply involved in the facilitation of a variety of interdisciplinary research initiatives at Stanford, and she is a current member of the CASBS board of directors.

This research was funded by the Knight Foundation.

Essay on Gen Z

Students are often asked to write an essay on Gen Z in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Gen Z

Who is gen z.

Generation Z is the group of people born from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. They are the kids who grew up with smartphones and the internet. Unlike their parents, they’ve always had the world’s information just a tap away.

Technology and Gen Z

These young people are known for being very good with technology. They use it for learning, playing, and talking with friends. Social media is a big part of their lives, and they often use it to express themselves.

Education and Work

Gen Z cares a lot about education and is known for being smart and hardworking. Many are still in school, while others are just starting their jobs. They want to do work that makes a difference.

Values and Beliefs

This generation is very open-minded. They believe in fairness and are not afraid to speak up for what is right. They care about the planet and are active in fighting for a better future.

Challenges They Face

250 words essay on gen z.

Gen Z is a group of young people born between 1997 and 2012. They are the kids who came after Millennials and are known for growing up with the internet, smartphones, and social media. This has made them very comfortable with technology.

Since they were small, Gen Z has had gadgets like tablets and smartphones in their hands. This makes them very good at using apps, playing online games, and finding information quickly. They often like to shop, watch shows, and talk to friends online.

Gen Z values learning and is known for being smart and creative. They like to think of new ways to solve problems. When it comes to work, they want jobs that are not just about making money but also about making a difference in the world.

This generation cares a lot about issues like protecting the environment and treating everyone fairly. They want to make the world a better place and often support causes that are important to them.

Challenges for Gen Z

Even though they are young, Gen Z faces challenges. They can feel stressed by things like school, the future, and what they see on the internet. But they are also strong and ready to work hard to make their dreams come true.

500 Words Essay on Gen Z

Imagine a group of young people who have always known what a smartphone is. They probably cannot remember a time before the internet. These are the people we call Generation Z, or Gen Z for short. They were born between the late 1990s and early 2010s. Unlike their parents or older siblings, Gen Z has grown up in a world full of advanced technology and social media.

For Gen Z, technology is like air; it’s everywhere, and they can’t imagine living without it. They use smartphones, tablets, and computers effortlessly. They learn new apps quickly and are always connected to their friends and the world through the internet. This tech-savvy nature makes them very good at finding information and learning new things online.

Education and Career

Social media and communication.

Gen Z loves social media. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are where they hang out, share stories, and express themselves. They use emojis, memes, and short videos to talk to each other. For them, sending a quick message online is just as good as talking face to face.

This generation cares a lot about important issues like climate change, equality, and being kind to others. They want to make the world a better place and are not shy about standing up for what they believe in. They support brands and companies that are honest and do good things for people and the planet.

Challenges Faced by Gen Z

In conclusion, Gen Z is a unique and interesting group of young people. They are the first true digital natives, growing up in a world that is always connected. They learn differently, communicate through screens, care deeply about the planet, and face their own set of challenges. As they grow up, they will surely change the world with their fresh ideas and brave actions. It’s exciting to think about what they will do and how they will shape the future.

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Professors share 5 myths students believe about college, anxiety among students: what do teachers think about it, how to write a character analysis essay, dorm overbooking and transitional housing: problems colleges are trying to solve, who are generation z essay sample, example.

But what are these differences? This is the first generation that cannot imagine a life without having a mobile gadget with an access to the Internet. Z people never lived in times without Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social media services. Whatever they need, they can easily find on the Internet right at their fingertips (thanks to smartphones), and mostly for free.

This has its good and bad sides. From one point of view, Generation Z is native to the Internet: they are more savvy with it, and they navigate it with an ease that their Y predecessors, the millennials, could only dream of; in the age of digital technologies, it is a valuable trait. On the other hand, Generation Z no more have a need to use their long-term memory and to be perceptive: all knowledge they need is saved on the cloud or on distant servers. This has lead to a drastic result: the average attention span of a Generation Z teen is only 8.25 seconds! This means they are unable to focus on something for more than eight seconds. Even a goldfish has a larger attention span of nine seconds ( The Telegraph ).

Considering the enormous daily flow of information, Generation Z cannot afford paying attention to everything around them; they have to be picky, to fish out valuable information from the flow. Their attention span is shorter, but they can sort the information out easier and faster , so one cannot say Generation Z is less effective when working, or less capable than millennials. Besides, when they find something truly worth their attention, they demonstrate commitment and the ability to instantly focus on what they find interesting ( Co.Exist ).

The ability to quickly navigate through a large amounts of information allows the representatives of Generation Z to develop more diverse personalities. Generation Z representatives often have unusual hobbies and interests (sometimes not typical for teenagers and young people—astrophysics, for example), and obtain knowledge from a wider range of disciplines compared to their predecessors, although this knowledge may be superficial (IFR).

At the same time, there is a number of difficulties and drawbacks typical for this generation. One of them is having unrealistic expectations for themselves and for other people. This is often fueled by a rampant celebrity culture. Chloe Combi, a consultant on youth issues for the Mayor of London, and the author of research dedicated to Generation Z, explains it by the fact that, “Gen Z has grown up with reality TV stars, social media celebrities and world-famous twenty-something billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg.” What is more important and dangerous is that the accessibility of any Internet content—including porn—has negatively affected the way Generation Z representatives treat personal and sexual relationships. Generation Z is obsessed with sex, and sexual insults. Harassment is also becoming more common among its representatives (The Telegraph). Women are more objectified within this generation, and abnormal sexual behavior—like in porn movies—is often imitated and considered normal.

Generation Z is a new generation that sociologists are actively studying at the moment. Consisting of digital natives, Generation Z heavily relies on the Internet and other technologies in their daily lives. This makes its representatives more diverse personalities with knowledge in a wide range of disciplines, with unusual hobbies and interests, and with a superior ability to instantly sort out information and find something worth attention. At the same time, Generation Z representatives have alarmingly-short attention spans on average (less than a goldfish), and demonstrate unrealistic expectations towards themselves and surrounding people. They are also more sexually active, and because of an easy accessibility of pornography, they tend to misinterpret sexual relationships, and imitate abusing sexual behavior demonstrated in porn movies. Therefore, American society needs to find ways to make use of Generation Z’s positive traits, and at the same time somehow neutralize the negative ones.

“What is Generation Z, And What Does It Want?” Co.Exist. N.p., 04 May 2015. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.

“Look Out, Generation Z is about to Enter Your Workplace.” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.

Doe, John. “Something You Didn’t Know about Gen Z.” IFR. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.

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Generation Z: Making a Difference Their Way

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Generation Z: Who They Are, in Their Own Words

They’re the most diverse generation in American history, and they’re celebrating their untraditional views on gender and identity.

By Dan Levin

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Melissa Auh Krukar is the daughter of a South Korean immigrant father and a Hispanic mother, but she refuses to check “Hispanic” or “Asian” on government forms.

“I try to mark ‘unspecified’ or ‘other’ as a form of resistance,” said Melissa, 23, a preschool teacher in Albuquerque. “I don’t want to be in a box.”

Erik Franze , 20, is a white man, but rather than leave it at that, he includes his preferred pronouns, “he/him/his,” on his email signature to respectfully acknowledge the different gender identities of his peers.

And Shanaya Stephenson , 23, is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and Guyana, but she intentionally describes herself as a “pansexual black womxn.”

“I don’t see womanhood as a foil to maleness,” she said.

All three are members of what demographers are calling Generation Z: the postmillennial group of Americans for whom words like “intersectionality” feel as natural as applying filters to photos on Instagram.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Gen Z — What Generation Comes after Millennials? Meet Generation Z

What Generation Comes after Millennials? Meet Generation Z

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Published: Dec 5, 2018

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Generation Z by Nicole Villarreal

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A new look at how turmoil is defining the lives and politics of Generation Z

Juana Summers

Young people have been on the front lines of activist movements, including on the issue of climate change. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Young people have been on the front lines of activist movements, including on the issue of climate change.

Teens and young adults get a bad rap.

They're often called lazy and entitled, with a new generation seen as inextricably glued to their phones and TikTok. And when they speak up about issues, it can be met with an eye roll or a knowing sigh.

It's the one that suggests, "Maybe they will get how the world works when they're older."

But the veteran pollster John Della Volpe says that everything he was told — and that most people think — about Generation Z is wrong. Della Volpe is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics and a former adviser to the Biden campaign, and he explores the evolution of Gen Z in his new book.

Fight: How Gen Z is channeling their fear and passion to save America, covers the coming of age of the 70 million young people in America born in a 20-year period beginning in the mid-1990s. Della Volpe examines the political awakening of this generation that has come largely during the Trump era, as well as what he describes as a "significant mental health crisis," intensified by the state of the country's politics.

Young Americans are raising alarms about the state of U.S. democracy in a new poll

The forward to Fight was written by one of Gen Z's most visible activists, David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Hogg told NPR that older people often thank him for his generation "standing up," eager to pass the baton. But Hogg argued that lasting change requires more than the resolve of young people — it requires a coalition across generations.

Their conversation is below, edited for length and clarity.

Juana Summers: I want to just start here with the basics. You've been leading polling focusing on young people in the United States for more than two decades. What inspired you to write this book?

John Della Volpe: Frankly, I think that everything that I was told and everything that many people think about Gen Z was frankly, wrong. And I wanted to write this book to kind of correct those myths. I think every generation has had its share of angst and turmoil. I'm Gen X, but I don't think there is any generation in 75 years that has been confronted with more chaos, more quickly in their young lives than Gen Z or Zoomers. When we think about this, many of them were born right around 9/11, and it's always been kind of a shadow in their lives. Millions of their parents lost their homes due to the Great Recession. Entering school, they faced lockdown drills, things that my generation had never seen. And the idea of going to a place and being safe never really existed for young people. Just so much chaos, even before COVID-19 and the social isolation of the lockdown, all of this accelerated by social media. All of this happening before they were 25. So that's where they came of age. But rather than melting, it made them harder and made them tougher and made them more focused to do great things for themselves and for the country.

JS: David, in the forward to the book you offer up a rallying cry to other members of your generation What's your message to them?

David Hogg: While voting is important and it's obviously a very important thing for us to do, it can't be the only thing that we do because our generation is not going to wait for progress. As we've seen from all these movements, especially over the past four years, that young people have played a critical movement and from the March for our Lives, to calls for racial justice, to everything else. We have to vote, but we also have to remember that change has to be created inside and outside of politics, because real power in politics isn't just generated with a vote. It's generating an issue and a cultural shift around young people and how we perceive the world that we live in and the world that we want to leave behind.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Student David Hogg addresses the March for Our Lives rally on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including students, teachers and parents gathered in Washington for the anti-gun violence rally organized by survivors of the shooting at Hogg's school on Feb. 14, 2018, that left 17 dead. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Student David Hogg addresses the March for Our Lives rally on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including students, teachers and parents gathered in Washington for the anti-gun violence rally organized by survivors of the shooting at Hogg's school on Feb. 14, 2018, that left 17 dead.

JS: John, this book draws from your years of work as a pollster, but also from focus groups you conducted. I want to ask you about a moment from a focus group that you say really stuck with you. You asked what older generations do not understand about Generation Z, and you quote a participant named Grace:

"An older generation would not understand waking up in a classroom and thinking about how easy it would be for someone to shoot it up. The same daily weight on an adult's shoulders over bills or taxes is what children feel about living or dying."

John, what stuck out about that to you?

JDV: I've been asking that question for 20 years. And what I used to hear when I would ask that question is optimism, and opportunity, even in some of the poorest communities across the country, some of the most challenging circumstances. I used to hear young people talk about kind of connection and opportunity is there in America, if you were to work for it. And now what I heard was that [they] don't have the luxury of even thinking about that. Young people were challenged with just the daily weight of living and dying. Grace wasn't the only one — every single hand in that group went up and was nodding their heads. We talked about this on the outset. There was just no place that was safe.

JS: David, I want to ask you the same question that John asked Grace. What don't older generations understand about your generation?

DH: John brings up a good point around the fear and anxiety aspect that Gen Z faces. And I think that the anxiety that comes from gun violence, from climate change to all these other things is something that a lot of generations right now just can't understand, the scale of the existential threat that young people today feel. What I will say, though, is that as we've seen in times before, when generations faced challenges, they come to meet them. Oftentimes, you know, movements find their leaders. I think we saw that in 2020.

JS: Gen Z is a generation that came of age with the hold that former President Trump had on politics and culture. John, how has that shaped them?

JDV: Every generation determines their political values in their teenage years, in their early 20s, and so much of that is shaped by the president that is serving during that period of their lives. While [Gen Z] were looking for an opportunity to unite us, they saw a president and administration more bent on dividing young people.

After The Riot: Young Voters On The State Of Our Democracy

From the earliest days of the Harvard research, we found that the biggest predictor of whether or not a young person participates in politics or votes is whether they can see a tangible difference in their vote. And that first hundred days, those first six months, those first eight or nine months leading up to Charlottesville were everything that young people need to see about the tangible difference that Donald Trump was making. And obviously in a way that did not comport at all kind of with their values. And it's something that I think was a real sense of ignition to what we saw as a tremendous level of political participation in 2017, 2018, 2019 and obviously 2020.

JS: David, you are a part of that generation and movement that came of age during the Trump presidency.

DH: Even with a president that was a Republican — which most members of Gen Z tend to lean more progressive — even despite that, we hoped that we would be united somewhat in the early days. By the time Charlottesville rolled around and all these other things started happening, it was so abundantly clear to many of us that that wasn't going to happen. Our generation stepped up and decided to unite ourselves.

What I fear at this point, though, is the mental health crisis that Gen Z is facing right now and the burnout and exhaustion that I know so many of us feel, myself included. That despite us turning out at record numbers in 2018 and 2020, that our vote doesn't seem to have made that tangible of a difference. If we can't see that our vote makes a difference... what I fear is that some younger people are going to look at the events of January 6th and see that as the alternative, that it's OK if you don't get what you want in politics to go out and attempt to overthrow the government.

JS: John, what do you have to say to that?

JDV: One of the dangers, as David said it's kind of connected to this, is the sense of alienation that so many young people face. In recent [Institute of Politics] polling released at the end of last year, we have a majority of young people, which is tens of millions of people, saying that over the last couple of weeks they at more than several times felt anxious, hopeless, depressed, isolated, et cetera. And you have 25% indicating thoughts of self-harm.

It's just a just a significant, significant crisis. When folks are so depressed and so isolated and they withdraw, one of the concerns I have for them is to withdraw, spend more time online where they could potentially be more easily recruited into places where they don't necessarily even agree with the ideology, but are looking for some sort of community and then perhaps find themselves in a situation that's difficult to get out of. Whether it's alt right groups or some of the folks like David talked about who participated in the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection, you know, hate groups, etc. That's my concern. We have so many young people, especially young men, who are vulnerable right now.

Snapchat is adding a feature to help young users run for political office

JS: In the book, John cites demographers who estimate that by 2028 Generation Z and their immediate elders — millennials — will make up half of the electorate. What does that tell you about the future?

JDV: We think so much about this country being divided, and clearly it is. But it's really divided by age. We look at Gen Z and millennials — two-thirds of them support candidates who are Democrats, not Republicans. And once you get to Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, it's a different scenario. As younger people age, as younger people begin to make voting a more regular habit, there is no question that they will be voting for the values that they've been developing over the last couple of years: concern about the way in which capitalism is practiced, concern about our climate, concern about racial justice. These are the issues that will be driving young people to the polls. They've made a greater impact on these issues than many people may already appreciate, and that those Democrats, as well as Republicans who don't take them seriously today, will underestimate them at their peril.

JS: David, what do we need to understand about Gen Z as we look to the future?

DH: I often hear older people come up to me and say, "I'm so thankful that your generation is standing up, and we can finally kind of pass the baton off to you." It can't be that way. It can't. It's going to take every generation working together in order to fix these things. If our older generations or our country is simply putting it on younger people to fix these things, they're never going to get fixed. Because as powerful as we are, it has to be an inter-generational coalition of people that work hand in hand, and don't patronize or talk down to young people, but lead with young people and our vision and ideas for the future.

‘True Gen’: Generation Z and its implications for companies

See our latest research on gen z in america  and gen z in asia ..

Long before the term “influencer” was coined, young people played that social role by creating and interpreting trends. Now a new generation of influencers has come on the scene. Members of Gen Z—loosely, people born from 1995 to 2010 —are true digital natives: from earliest youth, they have been exposed to the internet, to social networks, and to mobile systems. That context has produced a hypercognitive generation very comfortable with collecting and cross-referencing many sources of information and with integrating virtual and offline experiences.

As global connectivity soars, generational shifts could come to play a more important role in setting behavior than socioeconomic differences do. Young people have become a potent influence on people of all ages and incomes, as well as on the way those people consume and relate to brands. In Brazil, Gen Z already makes up 20 percent of the country’s population. McKinsey recently collaborated with Box1824, a research agency specializing in consumer trends, to conduct a survey investigating the behaviors of this new generation and its influence on consumption patterns in Brazil. 1 From June to October 2017, researchers, psychologists, and social scientists undertook ethnographic field research to observe how Gen Zers communicate, what they believe in, and the choices they make (and why). Using advanced ethnographic techniques (scenario invasion), researchers conducted 120 qualitative interviews in Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo with influential people from this generation. Besides the field research, 90 Gen Zers participated in focus groups in these three cities, as well as in Florianópolis and Goiânia. From October 3 to 11, we also conducted an online survey with 2,321 men and women from 14 to 64 years of age and various socioeconomic brackets in Brazil. The survey coupled qualitative insights about Gen Z in three of the country’s major cities (Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo) with multigenerational quantitative data that cut across socioeconomic classes. Our goal was to understand how this new generation’s views might affect the broader population, as well as consumption in general.

Our study based on the survey reveals four core Gen Z behaviors, all anchored in one element: this generation’s search for truth. Gen Zers value individual expression and avoid labels. They mobilize themselves for a variety of causes. They believe profoundly in the efficacy of dialogue to solve conflicts and improve the world. Finally, they make decisions and relate to institutions in a highly analytical and pragmatic way. That is why, for us, Gen Z is “True Gen.” In contrast, the previous generation— the millennials , sometimes called the “me generation”—got its start in an era of economic prosperity and focuses on the self. Its members are more idealistic, more confrontational, and less willing to accept diverse points of view.

More about Gen Z

Listen to the authors of this article describe Gen Z characteristics in greater detail.

Such behaviors influence the way Gen Zers view consumption and their relationships with brands. Companies should be attuned to three implications for this generation: consumption as access rather than possession, consumption as an expression of individual identity, and consumption as a matter of ethical concern. Coupled with technological advances, this generational shift is transforming the consumer landscape in a way that cuts across all socioeconomic brackets and extends beyond Gen Z, permeating the whole demographic pyramid. The possibilities now emerging for companies are as transformational as they are challenging. Businesses must rethink how they deliver value to the consumer, rebalance scale and mass production against personalization, and—more than ever—practice what they preach when they address marketing issues and work ethics.

Meet True Gen

Generations are shaped by the context in which they emerged (Exhibit 1). Baby boomers, born from 1940 to 1959, were immersed in the post–World War II context and are best represented by consumption as an expression of ideology. Gen Xers (born 1960–79) consumed status, while millennials (born 1980–94) consumed experiences. For Generation Z, as we have seen, the main spur to consumption is the search for truth, in both a personal and a communal form (Exhibit 2). This generation feels comfortable not having only one way to be itself. Its search for authenticity generates greater freedom of expression and greater openness to understanding different kinds of people.

‘Undefined ID’: Expressing individual truth

I need to be free; I need to be myself, increasingly be myself, every day. With the internet, I feel much more free. —Female respondent, 22, city of São Paulo

I really like things that are unisex! I think it’s absurd that stores and brands split everything into “male” and “female.” After all, fabric is genderless. —Female respondent, 22, Goiânia

For Gen Zers, the key point is not to define themselves through only one stereotype but rather for individuals to experiment with different ways of being themselves and to shape their individual identities over time (Exhibit 3). In this respect, you might call them “identity nomads.”

Seventy-six percent of Gen Zers say they are religious. At the same time, they are also the generation most open to a variety of themes not necessarily aligned with the broader beliefs of their declared religions. For example, 20 percent of them do not consider themselves exclusively heterosexual, as opposed to 10 percent for other generations. Sixty percent of Gen Zers think that same-sex couples should be able to adopt children—ten percentage points more than people in other generations do.

Gender fluidity may be the most telling reflection of “undefined ID,” but it isn’t the only one. Gen Zers are always connected. They constantly evaluate unprecedented amounts of information and influences. For them, the self is a place to experiment, test, and change. Seven out of ten Gen Zers say it is important to defend causes related to identity, so they are more interested than previous generations have been in human rights; in matters related to race and ethnicity; in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues; and in feminism (Exhibit 4).

‘Communaholic’: Connecting to different truths

We each have our own style and way of being, but what binds us is that we accept and understand everyone’s styles. —Male respondent, 16, Recife

Gen Zers are radically inclusive. They don’t distinguish between friends they meet online and friends in the physical world. They continually flow between communities that promote their causes by exploiting the high level of mobilization technology makes possible. Gen Zers value online communities because they allow people of different economic circumstances to connect and mobilize around causes and interests. (Sixty-six percent of the Gen Zers in our survey believe that communities are created by causes and interests, not by economic backgrounds or educational levels. That percentage is well above the corresponding one for millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers.) Fifty-two percent of Gen Zers think it is natural for every individual to belong to different groups (compared with 45 percent of the people in other generations), and Gen Zers have no problem with moving between groups.

‘Dialoguer’: Understanding different truths

We must practice tolerance, and we must learn to listen and accept differences. —Male respondent, 20, Gioânia

Gen Zers believe in the importance of dialogue and accept differences of opinion with the institutions in which they participate and with their own families (Exhibit 5). They can interact with institutions that reject their personal values without abandoning those values. The fact that Gen Zers feel comfortable interacting with traditional religious institutions without abandoning personal beliefs that might not be broadly accepted by these institutions also demonstrates their pragmatism. Rather than spurn an institution altogether, Gen Zers would rather engage with it to extract whatever makes sense for them.

Members of this generation therefore tend to believe that change must come from dialogue: 57 percent of millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers think they would have to break with the system to change the world, compared with 49 percent of Gen Zers. Gen Z is also more willing to accommodate the failings of companies. Thirty-nine percent of the people in this generation, for example, expect companies to answer customer complaints in the same day; for the three earlier generations, the percentage is much higher—52 percent.

Gen Z’s belief in dialogue combines a high value for individual identity, the rejection of stereotypes , and a considerable degree of pragmatism. That brings us to the fourth core behavior of Gen Z.

‘Realistic’: Unveiling the truth behind all things

I don’t believe this talk of investing in the dream and all that. Work is work. —Female respondent, 22, Salvador, state of Bahia

Gen Zers, with vast amounts of information at their disposal, are more pragmatic and analytical about their decisions than members of previous generations were. Sixty-five percent of the Gen Zers in our survey said that they particularly value knowing what is going on around them and being in control. This generation of self-learners is also more comfortable absorbing knowledge online than in traditional institutions of learning.

What’s more, Gen Z was raised at a time of global economic stress —in fact, the greatest economic downturn in Brazil’s history. These challenges made Gen Zers less idealistic than the millennials we surveyed (Exhibit 6). Many Gen Zers are keenly aware of the need to save for the future and see job stability as more important than a high salary. They already show a high preference for regular employment rather than freelance or part-time work, which may come as a surprise compared to the attitude of millennials, for example. According to the survey, 42 percent of Gen Zers from 17 to 23 years old are already gainfully employed in either full- or part-time jobs or as freelance workers—a high percentage for people so young.

Gen Z: Consumption and implications for companies

The youthful forms of behavior we discuss here are influencing all generations and, ultimately, attitudes toward consumption as well. Three forces are emerging in a powerful confluence of technology and behavior.

Consumption re-signified: From possession to access

This more pragmatic and realistic generation of consumers expects to access and evaluate a broad range of information before purchases. Gen Zers analyze not only what they buy but also the very act of consuming. Consumption has also gained a new meaning. For Gen Z—and increasingly for older generations as well—consumption means having access to products or services, not necessarily owning them. As access becomes the new form of consumption, unlimited access to goods and services (such as car-riding services, video streaming, and subscriptions) creates value. Products become services, and services connect consumers.

As collaborative consumption gains traction, people are also starting to view it as a way to generate additional income in the “ gig economy .” Another aspect of the gig economy involves consumers who take advantage of their existing relationships with companies to generate additional income by working temporarily for them. Some companies are already embracing the implications.

Would you like to learn more about our Consumer Packaged Goods Practice ?

Car manufacturers, for example, are renting out vehicles directly to consumers, so that instead of selling 1,000 cars, these companies may sell one car 1,000 times. The role of sporting-goods businesses, likewise, has shifted to helping people become better athletes by providing access to equipment, technology, coaching, and communities of like-minded consumers. Similarly, traditional consumer-goods companies should consider creating platforms of products, services, and experiences that aggregate or connect customers around brands. Companies historically defined by the products they sell or consume can now rethink their value-creation models, leveraging more direct relationships with consumers and new distribution channels.

Singularity: Consumption as an expression of individual identity

The core of Gen Z is the idea of manifesting individual identity. Consumption therefore becomes a means of self-expression—as opposed, for example, to buying or wearing brands to fit in with the norms of groups. Led by Gen Z and millennials, consumers across generations are not only eager for more personalized products but also willing to pay a premium for products that highlight their individuality. Fifty-eight percent of A-class and 43 percent of C-class consumers 2 2. A-class consumers have household incomes above $6,631; B-class consumers, incomes from $1,540 to $6,631; and C-class consumers, incomes from $516 to $1,540. say they are willing to pay more for personalized offerings. Seventy percent of A-class and 58 percent of C-class consumers are willing to pay a premium for products from brands that embrace causes those consumers identify with. And here’s another finding that stood out in our survey: 48 percent of Gen Zers—but only 38 percent of consumers in other generations—said they value brands that don’t classify items as male or female. For most brands, that is truly new territory.

Although expectations of personalization are high, consumers across generations are not yet totally comfortable about sharing their personal data with companies. Only 10 to 15 percent of them declare not to have any issues in sharing personal data with companies. If there is a clear counterpart from companies to consumers, then the number of consumers willing to share personal information with companies goes up to 35 percent—still a relatively small number.

As the on- and offline worlds converge, consumers expect more than ever to consume products and services any time and any place, so omnichannel marketing and sales must reach a new level. For consumers who are always and everywhere online, the online–offline boundary doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, we are entering the “segmentation of one” age now that companies can use advanced analytics to improve their insights from consumer data. Customer information that companies have long buried in data repositories now has strategic value, and in some cases information itself creates the value. Leading companies should therefore have a data strategy that will prepare them to develop business insights by collecting and interpreting information about individual consumers while protecting data privacy.

For decades, consumer companies and retailers have realized gains through economies of scale. Now they may have to accept a two-track model: the first for scale and mass consumption, the other for customization catering to specific groups of consumers or to the most loyal consumers. In this scenario, not only marketing but also the supply chain and manufacturing processes would require more agility and flexibility. For businesses, that kind of future raises many questions. How long will clothing collections grouped by gender continue to make sense, for example? How should companies market cars or jewelry in an inclusive, unbiased way? To what extent should the need for a two-speed business transform the internal processes and structure of companies?

Consumption anchored on ethics

Finally, consumers increasingly expect brands to “take a stand.” The point is not to have a politically correct position on a broad range of topics. It is to choose the specific topics (or causes) that make sense for a brand and its consumers and to have something clear to say about those particular issues. In a transparent world, younger consumers don’t distinguish between the ethics of a brand, the company that owns it, and its network of partners and suppliers. A company’s actions must match its ideals, and those ideals must permeate the entire stakeholder system.

Gen Z consumers are mostly well educated about brands and the realities behind them. When they are not, they know how to access information and develop a point of view quickly. If a brand advertises diversity but lacks diversity within its own ranks, for example, that contradiction will be noticed. In fact, members of the other generations we surveyed share this mind-set. Seventy percent of our respondents say they try to purchase products from companies they consider ethical. Eighty percent say they remember at least one scandal or controversy involving a company. About 65 percent try to learn the origins of anything they buy—where it is made, what it is made from, and how it is made. About 80 percent refuse to buy goods from companies involved in scandals.

All this is relevant for businesses, since 63 percent of the consumers we surveyed said that recommendations from friends are their most trusted source for learning about products and brands. The good news is that consumers—in particular Gen Zers—are tolerant of brands when they make mistakes, if the mistakes are corrected. That path is more challenging for large corporations, since a majority of our respondents believe that major brands are less ethical than small ones.

For consumers, marketing and work ethics are converging. Companies must therefore not only identify clearly the topics on which they will take positions but also ensure that everyone throughout the value chain gets on board. For the same reason, companies ought to think carefully about the marketing agents who represent their brands and products. Remember too that consumers increasingly understand that some companies subsidize their influencers. Perhaps partly for that reason, consumers tend to pay more attention to closer connections—for example, Instagram personas with 5,000 to 20,000 followers. Marketing in the digital age is posing increasingly complex challenges as channels become more fragmented and ever changing.

Young people have always embodied the zeitgeist of their societies, profoundly influencing trends and behavior alike. The influence of Gen Z—the first generation of true digital natives—is now radiating outward, with the search for truth at the center of its characteristic behavior and consumption patterns. Technology has given young people an unprecedented degree of connectivity among themselves and with the rest of the population. That makes generational shifts more important and speeds up technological trends as well. For companies, this shift will bring both challenges and equally attractive opportunities. And remember: the first step in capturing any opportunity is being open to it.

Tracy Francis is a senior partner and Fernanda Hoefel is a partner in McKinsey’s São Paulo office.

The authors wish to thank the broader team of people that contributed to this article in many different forms.

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What Are the Core Characteristics of Generation Z?

Gen­er­a­tion Z has emerged as a pop­u­la­tion increas­ing­ly wor­thy of atten­tion, espe­cial­ly now as its old­er mem­bers are in their 20 s and have become a polit­i­cal­ly engaged force in recent elec­tions. Born after 1996 , Gen­er­a­tion Zers made up one-tenth of the 2020 elec­torate and have added 8 . 3 mil­lion new­ly eli­gi­ble vot­ers since Novem­ber 2022 — reach­ing an esti­mat­ed 41 mil­lion total eli­gi­ble vot­ers in 2024 . While they share a num­ber of char­ac­ter­is­tics with mil­len­ni­als, their for­ma­tive years have been shaped by a dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent world, result­ing in key dif­fer­ences in atti­tudes, ten­den­cies and out­look. Sta­tis­tics com­piled by the Pew Research Cen­ter and the KIDS COUNT ® Data Cen­ter paint a clear pic­ture. Here’s what we know.

Diver­si­ty Is Their Norm

One of the core char­ac­ter­is­tics of Gen­er­a­tion Z is racial diver­si­ty. As America’s demo­graph­ics con­tin­ue to shift , Gen Z will be the last gen­er­a­tion that is a  major­i­ty white — just bare­ly, with 51 % .

The younger Gen­er­a­tion Alpha, born 2013 to 2025 , is 48 % white and on track to be the most diverse gen­er­a­tion yet. On the oth­er hand, much larg­er shares of the old­er mil­len­ni­als, Gen Xers and baby boomers are white: 55 %, 60 % and 72 %, respectively. 

Gen Z is more racial­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly diverse than old­er gen­er­a­tions, with: 

• 25 % Lati­no or His­pan­ic ;
• 15 % Black;
• 6 % Asian Amer­i­can or Pacif­ic Islander;
• 5 % two or more races; and
• 2 % Amer­i­can Indi­an or Alas­ka Native young people.

As Gen Zers grew up over the past two decades, chil­dren in immi­grant fam­i­lies grew more com­mon , too, ris­ing from 19 % of the country’s child pop­u­la­tion in the ear­ly 2000 s to 25 % in  2021 .

For many Gen Zers, the back­drop of their ear­ly years includ­ed the country’s first Black pres­i­dent and the legal­iza­tion of gay mar­riage. They are more like­ly to have grown up amid diverse fam­i­ly struc­tures — whether in a sin­gle-par­ent house­hold, a mul­tira­cial house­hold, or a house­hold in which gen­der roles were blurred. As a result, they are less fazed than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions by dif­fer­ences in race, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or religion.

They Are Our First ​ “ Dig­i­tal Natives”

Anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic of Gen­er­a­tion Z is their native use of tech­nol­o­gy. Where­as mil­len­ni­als were con­sid­ered ​ “ dig­i­tal pio­neers,” who bore wit­ness to the explo­sion of tech­nol­o­gy and social media, Gen Z was born into a world of peak tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion — where infor­ma­tion was imme­di­ate­ly acces­si­ble and social media increas­ing­ly ubiquitous.

These tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments have had both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive effects on Gen Z. On the plus side: an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion is at their fin­ger­tips, allow­ing Gen Zers to broad­en their knowl­edge, access resources and be proac­tive in their learn­ing. Social media can also offer social sup­port from peers or oth­ers, which may be espe­cial­ly ben­e­fi­cial for mar­gin­al­ized young peo­ple, such as sex­u­al and gen­der minori­ties. On the oth­er hand, too much screen time is linked to depres­sion and anx­i­ety, low self-esteem and poor body image, eat­ing dis­or­der behav­iors, inad­e­quate sleep and oth­er health prob­lems. Addi­tion­al­ly, tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing the econ­o­my and the nature of work, increas­ing­ly requir­ing post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion to pre­pare young peo­ple for new jobs, leav­ing many low-income Gen Zers vul­ner­a­ble as they enter the workforce.

They Are Prag­mat­ic and Finan­cial­ly Minded

Finan­cial mind­ed­ness is anoth­er core char­ac­ter­is­tic of Gen­er­a­tion Z. Many Gen Zers grew up watch­ing their par­ents take huge finan­cial hits dur­ing the Great Reces­sion. Hav­ing wit­nessed their par­ents’ strug­gles, this gen­er­a­tion is dri­ven by prag­ma­tism and security.

While mil­len­ni­als came of age dur­ing an eco­nom­ic boom, Gen Zers were shaped by the eco­nom­ic pres­sures their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties faced, like the finan­cial stress of the rental mar­ket . Thus, they val­ue the sta­bil­i­ty that comes with con­ser­v­a­tive spend­ing, sta­ble jobs and smart investments.

Many Fac­tors Con­tribute to Their Men­tal Health Challenges

Men­tal health chal­lenges are a sad char­ac­ter­is­tic of Gen­er­a­tion Z, which has been referred to by some as the ​ “ loneli­est gen­er­a­tion,” as their near-con­stant hours spent online can fos­ter feel­ings of iso­la­tion and depres­sion, among oth­er men­tal health issues, as not­ed. Sur­pris­ing­ly, a recent Stan­ford study found that most Gen Zers pre­fer in-per­son communication.

More screen time obvi­ous­ly means less time spent cul­ti­vat­ing mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships . Addi­tion­al­ly, many young peo­ple fall prey to the ​ “ com­pare and despair” trap that social media presents.

Read more about Social Medi­a’s Con­cern­ing Effects on Teen Men­tal Health

Gen Z youth val­ue self-care and are con­cerned about their men­tal health . They also find their men­tal health affect­ed by the tur­bu­lent state of the world. As polit­i­cal activism among Gen Z has increased, many Gen Zers have inter­nal­ized the unrest sur­round­ing issues like gun con­trol, police bru­tal­i­ty and cli­mate change — lead­ing to increased lev­els of stress. Addi­tion­al soci­etal crises and stres­sors have had an impact, too, includ­ing the COVID- 19 pan­dem­ic and the increas­ing cost of living.

They Are Shrewd Consumers

As con­sumers, Gen Z’s behav­ior reflects their val­ues — and the influ­ence of an increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal world. Gen Z kids can rely on their tech savvy and exten­sive social media plat­forms to make informed pur­chas­ing deci­sions. Their prag­ma­tism leads them to explore and eval­u­ate a range of options before set­tling on a prod­uct. In addi­tion, they are more like­ly to be swayed by the rec­om­men­da­tions of real-life users than by celebri­ty endorsements.

In much the same way that Gen Zers use social media as a means to curate their own per­son­al brand, they also look at their pur­chas­ing deci­sions as an expres­sion of their val­ues and iden­ti­ty. As an exam­ple, they are drawn to sus­tain­able prod­ucts and brands — and are often will­ing to pay more for them. They val­ue per­son­al­ized prod­ucts, and they are drawn to brands that share their point of view on polit­i­cal issues.

They Are Polit­i­cal­ly Pro­gres­sive — Even Those on the Right

Most gen­er­a­tions tend to be more left-lean­ing than the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, and Gen Z is no excep­tion. While Gen Zers look a lot like mil­len­ni­als on many key issues, they are the most polit­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive gen­er­a­tion yet. They are the gen­er­a­tion most like­ly to see the advance­ment of LGBTQ rights as a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment. Even among Repub­li­cans, Gen Zers take a more pro­gres­sive stance on social issues : they agree that Black Amer­i­cans are treat­ed more unfair­ly in this coun­try, they believe the gov­ern­ment should play a greater role in solv­ing prob­lems and they are more like­ly to attribute cli­mate change to human activ­i­ty, as opposed to nat­ur­al patterns.

Con­tin­ue Learn­ing About Gen­er­a­tion Z

Gen Z is still grow­ing up, but as they con­tin­ue to come of age, ear­ly signs indi­cate that they will grow into engaged, con­sci­en­tious stew­ards of our world — by being social­ly-mind­ed, inde­pen­dent thinkers, who rec­og­nize their respon­si­bil­i­ty in shap­ing a more equi­table future for all.

More Resources on Gen­er­a­tion Z

Go to the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter for the lat­est sta­tis­tics on chil­dren of all ages, includ­ing a  new dataset on youth and young adults ages 14 to 24 , cap­tur­ing the major­i­ty of Gen Zers.

• 2023 KIDS COUNT Data Book
• What the Sta­tis­tics Say About Gen­er­a­tion Z
• Social Issues That Mat­ter to Gen­er­a­tion Z
• Gen­er­a­tion Z and Men­tal Health
• Sta­tis­tics Snap­shot: Gen­er­a­tion Z and Education
• What is Gen­er­a­tion Alpha?
• Social Medi­a’s Con­cern­ing Effect on Teen Men­tal Health

New KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter indi­ca­tors on Gen Z and oth­er generations:

• Pop­u­la­tion size by Gen Alpha, Gen Z, mil­len­ni­als, Gen X and baby boomers, by race and ethnicity
• Peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty by generation
• Peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty by gen­er­a­tion and race and ethnicity
• Peo­ple liv­ing in low-income house­holds by generation
• Peo­ple liv­ing in low-income house­holds by gen­er­a­tion and race and ethnicity

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Stay up to date with the lat­est data, reports, and pub­li­ca­tions the Foun­da­tion has to offer by sign­ing up for one of our newslet­ter mail­ing lists today!

This post is related to:

• Generation Z
• Health and Child Development
• Positive Youth Development

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It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”

The discovery that you can make money marketing merchandise to teen-agers dates from the early nineteen-forties, which is also when the term “youth culture” first appeared in print. There was a reason that those things happened when they did: high school. Back in 1910, most young people worked; only fourteen per cent of fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds were still in school. In 1940, though, that proportion was seventy-three per cent. A social space had opened up between dependency and adulthood, and a new demographic was born: “youth.”

The rate of high-school attendance kept growing. By 1955, eighty-four per cent of high-school-age Americans were in school. (The figure for Western Europe was sixteen per cent.) Then, between 1956 and 1969, college enrollment in the United States more than doubled, and “youth” grew from a four-year demographic to an eight-year one. By 1969, it made sense that everyone was talking about the styles and values and tastes of young people: almost half the population was under twenty-five.

Today, a little less than a third of the population is under twenty-five, but youth remains a big consumer base for social-media platforms, streaming services, computer games, music, fashion, smartphones, apps, and all kinds of other goods, from motorized skateboards to eco-friendly water bottles. To keep this market churning, and to give the consulting industry something to sell to firms trying to understand (i.e., increase the productivity of) their younger workers, we have invented a concept that allows “youth culture” to be redefined periodically. This is the concept of the generation.

The term is borrowed from human reproductive biology. In a kinship structure, parents and their siblings constitute “the older generation”; offspring and their cousins are “the younger generation.” The time it takes, in our species, for the younger generation to become the older generation is traditionally said to be around thirty years. (For the fruit fly, it’s ten days.) That is how the term is used in the Hebrew Bible, and Herodotus said that a century could be thought of as the equivalent of three generations.

Around 1800, the term got transplanted from the family to society. The new idea was that people born within a given period, usually thirty years, belong to a single generation. There is no sound basis in biology or anything else for this claim, but it gave European scientists and intellectuals a way to make sense of something they were obsessed with, social and cultural change. What causes change? Can we predict it? Can we prevent it? Maybe the reason societies change is that people change, every thirty years.

Before 1945, most people who theorized about generations were talking about literary and artistic styles and intellectual trends—a shift from Romanticism to realism, for example, or from liberalism to conservatism. The sociologist Karl Mannheim, in an influential essay published in 1928, used the term “generation units” to refer to writers, artists, and political figures who self-consciously adopt new ways of doing things. Mannheim was not interested in trends within the broader population. He assumed that the culture of what he called “peasant communities” does not change.

Nineteenth-century generational theory took two forms. For some thinkers, generational change was the cause of social and historical change. New generations bring to the world new ways of thinking and doing, and weed out beliefs and practices that have grown obsolete. This keeps society rejuvenated. Generations are the pulse of history. Other writers thought that generations were different from one another because their members carried the imprint of the historical events they lived through. The reason we have generations is that we have change, not the other way around.

There are traces of both the pulse hypothesis and the imprint hypothesis in the way we talk about generations today. We tend to assume that there is a rhythm to social and cultural history that maps onto generational cohorts, such that each cohort is shaped by, or bears the imprint of, major historical events—Vietnam, 9/11, COVID . But we also think that young people develop their own culture, their own tastes and values, and that this new culture displaces the culture of the generation that preceded theirs.

Today, the time span of a generational cohort is usually taken to be around fifteen years (even though the median age of first-time mothers in the U.S. is now twenty-six and of first-time fathers thirty-one). People born within that period are supposed to carry a basket of characteristics that differentiate them from people born earlier or later.

This supposition requires leaps of faith. For one thing, there is no empirical basis for claiming that differences within a generation are smaller than differences between generations. (Do you have less in common with your parents than with people you have never met who happen to have been born a few years before or after you?) The theory also seems to require that a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X, must have different values, tastes, and life experiences from a person born in 1964, the last year of the baby-boom generation (1946-64). And that someone born in the last birth year of Gen X, 1980, has more in common with someone born in 1965 or 1970 than with someone born in 1981 or 1990.

Everyone realizes that precision dating of this kind is silly, but although we know that chronological boundaries can blur a bit, we still imagine generational differences to be bright-line distinctions. People talk as though there were a unique DNA for Gen X—what in the nineteenth century was called a generational “entelechy”—even though the difference between a baby boomer and a Gen X-er is about as meaningful as the difference between a Leo and a Virgo.

You could say the same things about decades, of course. A year is, like a biological generation, a measurable thing, the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. But there is nothing in nature that corresponds to a decade—or a century, or a millennium. Those are terms of convenience, determined by the fact that we have ten fingers.

Yet we happily generalize about “the fifties” and “the sixties” as having dramatically distinct, well, entelechies. Decade-thinking is deeply embedded. For most of us, “She’s a seventies person” carries a lot more specific information than “She’s Gen X.” By this light, generations are just a novel way of slicing up the space-time continuum, no more arbitrary, and possibly a little less, than decades and centuries. The question, therefore, is not “Are generations real?” The question is “Are they a helpful way to understand anything?”

Bobby Duffy, the author of “The Generation Myth” (Basic), says yes, but they’re not as helpful as people think. Duffy is a social scientist at King’s College London. His argument is that generations are just one of three factors that explain changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The others are historical events and “life-cycle effects,” that is, how people change as they age. His book illustrates, with a somewhat overwhelming array of graphs and statistics, how events and aging interact with birth cohort to explain differences in racial attitudes, happiness, suicide rates, political affiliations—you name it, for he thinks that his three factors explain everything.

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Duffy’s over-all finding is that people in different age groups are much more alike than all the talk about generations suggests, and one reason for all that talk, he thinks, is the consulting industry. He says that, in 2015, American firms spent some seventy million dollars on generational consulting (which doesn’t seem that much, actually). “What generational differences exist in the workplace?” he asks. His answer: “Virtually none.”

Duffy is good at using data to take apart many familiar generational characterizations. There is no evidence, he says, of a “loneliness epidemic” among young people, or of a rise in the rate of suicide. The falling off in sexual activity in the United States and the U.K. is population-wide, not just among the young.

He says that attitudes about gender in the United States correlate more closely with political party than with age, and that, in Europe, anyway, there are no big age divides in the recognition of climate change. There is “just about no evidence,” he says, that Generation Z (1997-2012, encompassing today’s college students) is more ethically motivated than other generations. When it comes to consumer boycotts and the like, “ ‘cancel culture’ seems to be more of a middle-age thing.” He worries that generational stereotypes—such as the characterization of Gen Z-ers as woke snowflakes—are promoted in order to fuel the culture wars.

The woke-snowflake stereotype is the target of “Gen Z, Explained” (Chicago), a heartfelt defense of the values and beliefs of contemporary college students. The book has four authors, Roberta Katz, Sarah Ogilvie, Jane Shaw, and Linda Woodhead—an anthropologist, a linguist, a historian, and a sociologist—and presents itself as a social-scientific study, including a “methodological appendix.” But it resembles what might be called journalistic ethnography: the portrayal of social types by means of interviews and anecdotes.

The authors adopt a key tenet of the pulse hypothesis. They see Gen Z-ers as agents of change, a generation that has created a youth culture that can transform society. (The fact that when they finished researching their book, in 2019, roughly half of Gen Z was under sixteen does not trouble them, just as the fact that at the time of Woodstock, in 1969, more than half the baby-boom generation was under thirteen doesn’t prevent people from making generalizations about the baby boomers.)

Their book is based on hour-long interviews with a hundred and twenty students at three colleges, two in California (Stanford and Foothill College, a well-regarded community college) and one in the U.K. (Lancaster, a selective research university). The authors inform us that the interviewees were chosen “by word of mouth and personal networking,” which sounds a lot like self-selection. It is, in any event (as they unapologetically acknowledge), hardly a randomized sample.

The authors tell us that the interviews were conducted entirely by student research assistants, which means that, unless the research assistants simply read questions off a list, there was no control over the depth or the direction of the interviews. There were also some focus groups, in which students talked about their lives with, mostly, their friends, an exercise performed in an echo chamber. Journalists, or popular ethnographers, would at least have met and observed their subjects. It’s mystifying why the authors felt a need to distance themselves in this way, given how selective their sample was to begin with. We are left with quotations detached from context. Self-reporting is taken at face value.

The authors supplemented the student interviews with a lexical glossary designed to pick out words and memes heavily used by young people, and with two surveys, designed by one of the authors (Woodhead) and conducted by YouGov, an Internet polling company, of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds in the United States and the U.K.

Where there is an awkward discrepancy between the survey results and what the college students say in the interviews, the authors attempt to explain it away. The YouGov surveys found that ninety-one per cent of all persons aged eighteen to twenty-five, American and British, identify as male or female, and only four per cent as gender fluid or nonbinary. (Five per cent declined to answer.) This does not match the impression created by the interviews, which suggest that there should be many more fluid and nonbinary young people out there, so the authors say that we don’t really know what the survey respondents meant by “male” and “female.” Well, then, maybe they should have been asked.

The authors attribute none of the characteristics they identify as Gen Z to the imprint of historical events—with a single exception: the rise of the World Wide Web. Gen Z is the first “born digital” generation. This fact has often been used to stereotype young people as screen-time addicts, captives of their smartphones, obsessed with how they appear on social media, and so on. The Internet is their “culture.” They are trapped in the Web. The authors of “Gen Z, Explained” emphatically reject this line of critique. They assure us that Gen Z-ers “understand both the potential and the downside of technology” and possess “critical awareness about the technology that shapes their lives.”

For the college students who were interviewed (although not, evidently, for the people who were surveyed), a big part of Gen Z culture revolves around identity. As the authors put it, “self-labeling has become an imperative that is impossible to escape.” This might seem to suggest a certain degree of self-absorption, but the authors assure us that these young people “are self-identified and self-reliant but markedly not self-centered, egotistical, or selfish.”

“Lily” is offered to illustrate the ethical richness of this new concern. It seems that Lily has a friend who is always late to meet with her: “She explained that while she of course wanted to honor and respect his unique identity, choices, and lifestyle—including his habitual tardiness—she was also frustrated by how that conflicted with her sense that he was then not respecting her identity and preference for timeliness.” The authors do not find this amusing.

The book’s big claim is that Gen Z-ers “may well be the heralds of new attitudes and expectations about how individuals and institutions can change for the better.” They have come up with new ways of working (collaborative), new forms of identity (fluid and intersectional), new concepts of community (diverse, inclusive, non-hierarchical).

Methodology aside, there is much that is refreshing here. There is no reason to assume that younger people are more likely to be passive victims of technology than older people (that assumption is classic old person’s bias), and it makes sense that, having grown up doing everything on a computer, Gen Z-ers have a fuller understanding of the digital universe than analog dinosaurs do. The dinosaurs can say, “You don’t know what you’re missing,” but Gen Z-ers can say, “You don’t understand what you’re getting.”

The claim that addiction to their devices is the cause of a rise in mental disorders among teen-agers is a lot like the old complaint that listening to rock and roll turns kids into animals. The authors cite a recent study (not their own) that concludes that the association between poor mental health and eating potatoes is greater than the association with technology use. We’re all in our own fishbowls. We should hesitate before we pass judgment on what life is like in the fishbowls of others.

The major problem with “Gen Z, Explained” is not so much the authors’ fawning tone, or their admiration for the students’ concerns—“environmental degradation, equality, violence, and injustice”—even though they are the same concerns that almost everyone in their social class has, regardless of age. The problem is the “heralds of a new dawn” stuff.

“A crisis looms for all unless we can find ways to change,” they warn. “Gen Zers have ideas of the type of world they would like to bring into being. By listening carefully to what they are saying, we can appreciate the lessons they have to teach us: be real, know who you are, be responsible for your own well-being, support your friends, open up institutions to the talents of the many, not the few, embrace diversity, make the world kinder, live by your values.”

I believe we have been here before, Captain. Fifty-one years ago, The New Yorker ran a thirty-nine-thousand-word piece that began:

There is a revolution under way . . . It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions, and social structure are changing in consequence. Its ultimate creation could be a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. This is the revolution of the new generation.

The author was a forty-two-year-old Yale Law School professor named Charles Reich, and the piece was an excerpt from his book “The Greening of America,” which, when it came out, later that year, went to No. 1 on the Times best-seller list.

Reich had been in San Francisco in 1967, during the so-called Summer of Love, and was amazed and excited by the flower-power wing of the counterculture—the bell-bottom pants (about which he waxes ecstatic in the book), the marijuana and the psychedelic drugs, the music, the peace-and-love life style, everything.

He became convinced that the only way to cure the ills of American life was to follow the young people. “The new generation has shown the way to the one method of change that will work in today’s post-industrial society: revolution by consciousness,” he wrote. “This means a new way of living, almost a new man. This is what the new generation has been searching for, and what it has started to achieve.”

So how did that work out? The trouble, of course, was that Reich was basing his observations and predictions on, to use Mannheim’s term, a generation unit—a tiny number of people who were hyperconscious of their choices and values and saw themselves as being in revolt against the bad thinking and failed practices of previous generations. The folks who showed up for the Summer of Love were not a representative sample of sixties youth.

Most young people in the sixties did not practice free love, take drugs, or protest the war in Vietnam. In a poll taken in 1967, when people were asked whether couples should wait to have sex until they were married, sixty-three per cent of those in their twenties said yes, virtually the same as in the general population. In 1969, when people aged twenty-one to twenty-nine were asked whether they had ever used marijuana, eighty-eight per cent said no. When the same group was asked whether the United States should withdraw immediately from Vietnam, three-quarters said no, about the same as in the general population.

Most young people in the sixties were not even notably liberal. When people who attended college from 1966 to 1968 were asked which candidate they preferred in the 1968 Presidential election, fifty-three per cent said Richard Nixon or George Wallace. Among those who attended college from 1962 to 1965, fifty-seven per cent preferred Nixon or Wallace, which matched the results in the general election.

The authors of “Gen Z, Explained” are making the same erroneous extrapolation. They are generalizing on the basis of a very small group of privileged people, born within five or six years of one another, who inhabit insular communities of the like-minded. It’s fine to try to find out what these people think. Just don’t call them a generation.

Most of the millions of Gen Z-ers may be quite different from the scrupulously ethical, community-minded young people in the book. Duffy cites a survey, conducted in 2019 by a market-research firm, in which people were asked to name the characteristics of baby boomers, Gen X-ers, millennials (1981-96), and Gen Z-ers. The top five characteristics assigned to Gen Z were: tech-savvy, materialistic, selfish, lazy, and arrogant. The lowest-ranked characteristic was ethical. When Gen Z-ers were asked to describe their own generation, they came up with an almost identical list. Most people born after 1996 apparently don’t think quite as well of themselves as the college students in “Gen Z, Explained” do.

In any case, “explaining” people by asking them what they think and then repeating their answers is not sociology. Contemporary college students did not invent new ways of thinking about identity and community. Those were already rooted in the institutional culture of higher education. From Day One, college students are instructed about the importance of diversity, inclusion, honesty, collaboration—all the virtuous things that the authors of “Gen Z, Explained” attribute to the new generation. Students can say (and some do say) to their teachers and their institutions, “You’re not living up to those values.” But the values are shared values.

And they were in place long before Gen Z entered college. Take “intersectionality,” which the students in “Gen Z, Explained” use as a way of refining traditional categories of identity. That term has been around for more than thirty years. It was coined (as the authors note) in 1989, by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. And Crenshaw was born in 1959. She’s a boomer.

“Diversity,” as an institutional priority, dates back even farther. It played a prominent role in the affirmative-action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, in 1978, which opened the constitutional door to race-conscious admissions. That was three “generations” ago. Since then, almost every selective college has worked to achieve a diverse student body and boasts about it when it succeeds. College students think of themselves and their peers in terms of identity because of how the institution thinks of them.

People who went to college in an earlier era may find this emphasis a distraction from students’ education. Why should they be constantly forced to think about their own demographic profiles and their differences from other students? But look at American politics—look at world politics—over the past five years. Aren’t identity and difference kind of important things to understand?

And who creates “youth culture,” anyway? Older people. Youth has agency in the sense that it can choose to listen to the music or wear the clothing or march in the demonstrations or not. And there are certainly ground-up products (bell-bottoms, actually). Generally, though, youth has the same degree of agency that I have when buying a car. I can choose the model I want, but I do not make the cars.

Failure to recognize the way the fabric is woven leads to skewed social history. The so-called Silent Generation is a particularly outrageous example. That term has come to describe Americans who went to high school and college in the nineteen-fifties, partly because it sets up a convenient contrast to the baby-boom generation that followed. Those boomers, we think—they were not silent! In fact, they mostly were.

The term “Silent Generation” was coined in 1951, in an article in Time —and so was not intended to characterize the decade. “Today’s generation is ready to conform,” the article concluded. Time defined the Silent Generation as people aged eighteen to twenty-eight—that is, those who entered the workforce mostly in the nineteen-forties. Though the birth dates of Time’s Silent Generation were 1923 to 1933, the term somehow migrated to later dates, and it is now used for the generation born between 1928 and 1945.

So who were these silent conformists? Gloria Steinem, Muhammad Ali, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr., Billie Jean King, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Berry Gordy, Amiri Baraka, Ken Kesey, Huey Newton, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol . . . Sorry, am I boring you?

It was people like these, along with even older folks, like Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Pauli Murray, who were active in the culture and the politics of the nineteen-sixties. Apart from a few musicians, it is hard to name a single major figure in that decade who was a baby boomer. But the boomers, most of whom were too young then even to know what was going on, get the credit (or, just as unfairly, the blame).

Mannheim thought that the great danger in generational analysis was the elision of class as a factor in determining beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. Today, we would add race, gender, immigration status, and any number of other “preconditions.” A woman born to an immigrant family in San Antonio in 1947 had very different life chances from a white man born in San Francisco that year. Yet the baby-boom prototype is a white male college student wearing striped bell-bottoms and a peace button, just as the Gen Z prototype is a female high-school student with spending money and an Instagram account.

For some reason, Duffy, too, adopts the conventional names and dates of the postwar generations (all of which originated in popular culture). He offers no rationale for this, and it slightly obscures one of his best points, which is that the most formative period for many people happens not in their school years but once they leave school and enter the workforce. That is when they confront life-determining economic and social circumstances, and where factors like their race, their gender, and their parents’ wealth make an especially pronounced difference to their chances.

Studies have consistently indicated that people do not become more conservative as they age. As Duffy shows, however, some people find entry into adulthood delayed by economic circumstances. This tends to differentiate their responses to survey questions about things like expectations. Eventually, he says, everyone catches up. In other words, if you are basing your characterization of a generation on what people say when they are young, you are doing astrology. You are ascribing to birth dates what is really the result of changing conditions.

Take the boomers: when those who were born between 1946 and 1952 entered the workforce, the economy was surging. When those who were born between 1953 and 1964 entered it, the economy was a dumpster fire. It took longer for younger boomers to start a career or buy a house. People in that kind of situation are therefore likely to register in surveys as “materialistic.” But it’s not the Zeitgeist that’s making them that way. It’s just the business cycle. ♦

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Generation Z

How pew research center will report on generations moving forward.

When we have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels, like Gen Z, Millennials or Baby Boomers.

5 things to keep in mind when you hear about Gen Z, Millennials, Boomers and other generations

It can be useful to talk about generations, but generational categories are not scientifically defined and labels can lead to stereotypes and oversimplification.

In CDC survey, 37% of U.S. high school students report regular mental health struggles during COVID-19 pandemic

Students who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, as well as girls, were especially likely to say their mental health has suffered in the past year.

On social media, Gen Z and Millennial adults interact more with climate change content than older generations

Among U.S. social media users, 45% of Gen Z adults have interacted with content that focuses on the need for action on climate change.

Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue

Majorities of Americans support an array of measures to address climate change but stop short of a full break with fossil fuels.

Boomers, Silents still have most seats in Congress, though number of Millennials, Gen Xers is up slightly

Even as younger generations gain representation in Congress, older generations still make up the majority of senators and representatives.

Gen Z eligible voters reflect the growing racial and ethnic diversity of U.S. electorate

The share of Gen Z voters who are Hispanic is significantly higher than the share among other groups of voters.

On the Cusp of Adulthood and Facing an Uncertain Future: What We Know About Gen Z So Far

Born after 1996, the oldest Gen Zers will turn 23 this year. They are racially and ethnically diverse, progressive and pro-government, and more than 20 million will be eligible to vote in November.

A growing number of American teenagers – particularly girls – are facing depression

Depression is rising among American teenagers, and teen girls are particularly likely to have had recent depressive episodes.

Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms

Midterm voter turnout reached a modern high in 2018, and Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of those voters

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Helping Gen Z Employees Find Their Place at Work

• Jenny Fernandez,
• Kathryn Landis,

Seven strategies to engage, support, and connect.

Gen Z is struggling with engagement at work. Many began their careers only to become furloughed or fired, and the Covid-19 pandemic worsened already growing income inequality. They’ve been influential in social justice movements against racism, climate change, and more, and are already shaping and influencing society in numerous ways. Their disillusionment with capitalism and the establishment is growing. Thus, Gen Z garnered a reputation for mistrust of the status quo, disconnection and impatience, demanding immediate action. To earn the engagement of this group, the authors suggest seven strategies managers can leverage to create a team dynamic of collaboration, commitment, and sustained motivation: 1) Increase information-sharing to alleviate fears of uncertainty, 2) show them paths to career progression to incentivize them, 3) explain how their individual contributions matter, 4) give them room for autonomy to keep them motivated, 5) provide specific, constructive feedback to demonstrate that you are invested in their success, 6) harness community and connection to engage and empower them, and 7) prioritize wellness and mental health to show you care.

Gen Z, born from approximately 1995 to 2010 , is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history. This generation has also been influenced by , and is influential in, the macro social movements and systemic issues that have shaped who they are and what they stand for in the workplace and society. They’ve played crucial roles in movements fighting racism and discrimination , sexual harassment , gun violence , and worsening climate change , as growing income disparity makes the possibility of social mobility more unrealistic than ever.

• Jenny Fernandez , MBA, is an executive and team coach, Columbia and NYU faculty, and future of work and brand strategist. She works with senior leaders and their teams to become more collaborative, innovative, and resilient. Her work spans Fortune 500 companies, startups, and higher education. Jenny has been recognized by LinkedIn as a “Top Voice in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, and Personal Branding” and was invited to join the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches community. She is a Gen Z advocate. Connect with her on LinkedIn .
• Kathryn Landis , MBA, is the founder and CEO of the global coaching and advisory firm Kathryn Landis Consulting, which helps senior leaders empower and inspire their teams, create a lasting positive impact, and become the best versions of themselves in work and life. She is an adjunct professor at New York University and a former leader at American Express and Automatic Data Processing. Connect with her on LinkedIn .
• Julie Lee , PhD, is a clinical psychologist, NYU faculty, and a leading Gen Z employment and mental health strategist. Dr. Lee’s work spans Fortune 500 companies,  startups, and higher education institutions, including Harvard and Brown University. In her consulting work, Dr. Lee helps organizations to motivate and retain Gen Z professionals and coaches executives to lead with purpose and empathy. Connect with her on LinkedIn .

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• What Is Gen Z?

Understanding Gen Z

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Financial Planning

The bottom line, generation z (gen z): definition, birth years, and demographics.

Karon Warren has 20+ years of experience researching and writing about banking, mortgages, credit cards, savings, and other personal finance topics.

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What Is Generation Z (Gen Z)?

Generation Z was born between 1997 and 2012 after the Millennial generation and before Generation Alpha . The oldest of this generation are reaching their late 20s in 2024. Many of them are out of college, getting married, and starting families. The youngest may be as young as 12. They're commonly referred to as "Gen Z" or "Gen Zers."

Key Takeaways

• Generation Z (Gen Z) refers to the generation of Americans born from 1997 to 2012.
• Gen Z is bracketed between Millennials (born from 1981 to 1996) and Generation Alpha.
• The oldest members of Gen Z are starting their post-education years with careers and possibly families.
• The youngest Gen Zers are just 12 years old in 2024.
• Older Gen Zers have firm plans for retirement but they haven’t gone very far yet in starting their savings for it.

Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation of Americans. Non-Hispanic White Gen Zers hold a very slim majority at 52%, according to the Pew Research Center. Hispanics make up 25% of Gen Z and Black Gen Zers make up 14%. Asians represent 6%. The remaining 5% are another race or two or more races. The majority of Gen Z members aren't immigrants. Only 6% were born outside the United States.

Past generations have taken up social issues but Gen Zers are more socially minded than previous generations. They're focused on seven key social issues, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation: healthcare, mental health, higher education, economic security, civic engagement, race equity, and the environment.

Many Gen Zers will be ineligible to remain on their parents' health insurance and they're concerned about how to pay for their own coverage. This issue is further exacerbated by the increase in the number of Gen Zers seeking mental health treatment: 37%, according to the American Psychological Association.

Gen Zers also make education a priority. More than half (57%) of those ages 18 to 21 years old were enrolled at a two- or four-year college. Gen Z members are also more likely to finish high school.  

Members of Gen Z are fighting for social change, racial equity, and protecting the environment in record numbers. Some have elevated their profile to the national level, such as X (formerly Emma) González, a survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting who helped organize the March for Our Lives movement with other survivors.

Approximately 70% of Gen Zers think the government should take a more active stance in addressing problems, according to the Pew Research Center.

Gen Z vs. Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers

The 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers looked at how Gen Z views its finances and retirement prospects compared with Millennials , Gen Xers , and Baby Boomers :

• Almost six in 10 Gen Z workers (59%) said their employment situation was negatively impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily due to a reduction in work hours. This is more than Millennials (51%), Gen Xers (39%), and Baby Boomers (30%). 
• Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials are significantly more likely than Gen Zers to cite saving for retirement as a financial priority (75%, 65%, 53%, and 33% respectively) but they're a lot closer to retirement or are already there in the case of many Boomers.
• Building emergency savings is a priority for 50% of Gen Xers, 46% of millennials, 42% of Gen Zers, and 36% of Baby Boomers.  

The percentage of Gen Zers who consider saving for retirement to be a financial priority.

Gen Z’s Financial Situation 

Gen Z has little to no financial security, according to the Transamerica survey results. Gen Z workers are more likely to say they're just getting by to cover basic living expenses (50%) and paying off student loans (35%) than older generations.

They've also set aside just $2,000 in emergency savings and 30% have dipped into their retirement accounts. Approximately one-third of Gen Zers reduced their day-to-day expenses due to pandemic-related financial strain.  

Retirement Savings 

Gen Zers might be on shaky financial ground but they have firm retirement plans. Per the Transamerica survey, 70% are saving for retirement through employer-sponsored plans such as a 401(k) and/or outside the workplace. Gen Zers also started saving for retirement at age 19, much earlier than Millennials (age 25), Gen Xers (30), and Baby Boomers (35).  

Gen Zers estimate that they'll need $500,000 by the time they retire to feel financially secure but only 32% have a backup plan if retirement should come unexpectedly early.  

The 2022 Investopedia Financial Literacy Survey also found that younger generations are factoring cryptocurrency into their retirement plans so understanding cryptocurrency may be extremely important for children.

Many Gen Zers are just moving into the workforce so many don’t have a lot of experience with financial planning . They may know about employer-sponsored plans but many don’t know much about investment products outside of work such as bank accounts like savings and money market , individual retirement accounts (IRAs) , and certificates of deposit (CDs) .

Only 9% have a “great deal” of understanding of asset-allocation principles as they relate to retirement investing, according to the Transamerica survey.  

You can take four steps to help you start down the road to a strong financial future if you're a Gen Z member.

The amount that Gen Zers feel they need to save for a financially secure retirement.

1. Get a Comprehensive Financial Plan

Don’t wait until you're well into your career to seek advice for your financial future. Now is the time to seek input on how to maximize your savings if you have a steady job and you're already saving for retirement through an employer-sponsored plan.

Learn about budgeting . There are some great apps for that . Work toward building an emergency fund to help you through tough times and keep you from ending up with serious credit card debt if your car breaks down.

2. Manage Your Debt

Purchasing a home may still be some years away even for the oldest 27-year-old Gen Zers. It's not too soon to get your finances under control , however. A good credit rating and a low debt level will help your current life because hiring managers sometimes check this and your future ability to get everything from a car loan to a mortgage as well.

Work to get your student loan debt under control and keep credit card debt at a minimum. Learn about debt-to-income (DTI) ratio , a number that will eventually help you get a mortgage. Prospective lenders will want your DTI to be 43% or less to qualify for a home loan, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Paying off credit cards can give your DTI a big boost as can paying off any installment loans such as car loans or student loans.

A certified credit counselor can help you develop a plan of action if you’re having trouble paying down your debt.

3. Get a Head Start on College Costs 

It's important to look for ways to pay for college that won't leave you drowning in debt. Four-year colleges are considered a primary path to a college degree but other more affordable options can reduce how much you'll pay. Taking classes online, attending a community or junior college, or opting for a technical school all offer avenues to a secondary education that cost less than traditional four-year schools or make the first part of a college education less expensive.

Taking time off to work full-time and save up for tuition costs is another way to pay for college. You could also apply for the Federal Work-Study program in which you can work part-time while attending school either part- or full-time.

Searching for scholarships and grants is another way to pay for college. Don't rely solely on your school's financial aid office to match you with possible options. Several search engines are available to help you locate scholarships that you may qualify for to help pay for tuition and college costs. They include Fastweb, Mometrix, StudentScholarships.org, Unigo, and Scholly.

4. Get a Financial Picture From Parents 

Talk with your parents about how to build a secure financial foundation as you begin to take control of your finances. They can help answer any questions you may have about building up your savings, managing your credit card use, establishing a good credit history, and understanding employer-sponsored retirement accounts and benefits.

Search for a local banker or financial advisor you can talk with regarding your financial issues and goals if your parents don't have a strong financial history and build your financial expertise by learning on your own.

Who Belongs to Generation Z (Gen Z)?

People born from 1997 to 2012 are considered Gen Z. The eldest among them will reach age 27 in 2024. They're the generation right after Millennials.

Do Gen Zers Tend to Be Financially Secure?

Not yet. Half or 50% are making just enough to cover their basic living expenses and 35% have student loans to pay off. One-third of them report having suffered financially due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Are Gen Zers Saving for Retirement?

Gen Zers are the most retirement-conscious generation. A staggering 70% of them have some sort of retirement plan whether it's employer-sponsored or self-administered.

Gen Zers started saving for their retirement at age 19. Compare that to Millennials who started at age 25, Gen Xers at age 30, and Baby Boomers at age 35. They anticipate needing to save $500,000 for retirement, however, which may prove to be an underestimate given that financial experts tend to peg the number at as much as $2 million .

Gen Z’s oldest members are beginning to move into their post-education years and this brings a wealth of new financial considerations. It includes planning for retirement , finding ways to pay for college, setting the stage for a strong financial future, and buying a home. Having a firm financial plan in place can go a long way in helping them achieve their financial goals and provide financial security as they get older.

Pew Research Center. " On the Cusp of Adulthood and Facing an Uncertain Future: What We Know About Gen Z So Far ."

The Annie E. Casey Foundation. " Social Issues That Matter to Generation Z ."

American Psychological Association. " Gen Z More Likely to Report Mental Health Concerns ."

Rutgers University. " Key Figures of March for Our Lives ."

Pew Research Center. " Generation Z Looks a Lot Like Millennials on Key Social and Political Issues ."

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers ." Pages 14, 16.

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers. " Page 16.

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers ." Pages 16, 17.

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers ." Page 24.

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers ." Pages 26, 27.

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers ." Page 26.

Pew Research Center. " Defining Generations: Where Millennials End and Generation Z Begins ."

Chase. " What Is Debt to Income Ratio and Why Is It Important? "

Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. " 21st Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers ." Pages 24, 26.

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Discussion of Gen Z’s Core Beliefs Essay

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Introduction

Core beliefs of gen z and the differences from millennials and other generations.

In an increasingly growing skills gap across many industries in the United States, it is direr than ever for companies and institutions to replace their talent pipelines. While executives have tried to comprehend and work coherently with millennials in recent few decades, they must now accustom to even a younger and larger demographic of Generation Z (Gen Z). From this perspective, Millennials are a population group born from around the early 1980s to 2000 (Feingold, 2019).

The generation experienced vast technological revolutions as most of these advancements started from the era they were born. Contrarily, Gen Z refers to individuals born from around 1997 to 2012, translating to more members than millennials in the United States (Feingold, 2019). The essay provides deepened analysis of the core beliefs that guide Gen Z’s daily lives while also reflecting how this generation differs from others.

First, Gen Z principally believes in turning to the web for practically everything, from news and lifestyle to entertainment. Just like Millennials, Gen Z has been nurtured in the era of social media, and most of them acquire smartphones as early as ten years old. Recent generational research conducted by Fullscreen reveals that Gen Z devotes roughly fifty hours each week surfing social networking channels (Bond, 2020). Social media and such similar outlets make them feel motivated and empowered coupled with availed opportunities to make instant connections through stories, reposting content, or direct messaging. Therefore, Gen Z has natural relations with technology more than any other demographic cohort.

Second, Gen Z is pragmatic when matched with Millennials who appear idealistic. Millennials are an optimistic generation regularly seen to be pandered by their parents as ostensibly reflected in the axiomatic millennial involvement trophy. Gen Z experiences the challenge of being raised during the global financial recession but can withstand and comprehend the economic pressure, which communities and even most of their parents encountered. The group saw their parents struggle with financial and employment issues but have remained rational about the situation. Millennials are idealists nurtured during a period of economic boom (Bond, 2020).

Consequently, the global economic meltdown positively impacted Gen Z by becoming exceptionally practical with money. They are more oriented to saving money compared with Millennials during that age who are inclined in having wholesome experiences. Gen Z would love to make acquisitions that maximize the value of the money spent, perhaps a direct consequence of growing up during economic turmoil where conspicuous consumption looks unattractive.

In conclusion, I believe Gen Z is an interesting demographic cohort that manifests positive values. The analysis shows the core beliefs that guide this generation’s daily lives while also reflecting how it differs from others. Born from around 1997 to 2012, Gen Z has been natured at the heart of the social media epoch that has positively impacted their lives. They principally believe in consulting online resources for practically everything.

However, they are also a pragmatic group that believes in saving money and venturing into things that can optimally maximize their value compared with Millennials who are keen on product experience. Moreover, both Millennials and Gen Z were raised in different periods, but the latter has a stronger connection with technology, a different standpoint on money, and show resiliency despite harsh economic situation at childhood.

Bond, C. (2020). There’s a big difference between Millennials and Generation Z . Huffpost. Web.

Feingold, L. (2019). Not sure if you’re a Millennial or part of Gen Z? We want to hear from you . NPR. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, July 19). Discussion of Gen Z's Core Beliefs. https://ivypanda.com/essays/discussion-of-gen-zs-core-beliefs/

"Discussion of Gen Z's Core Beliefs." IvyPanda , 19 July 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/discussion-of-gen-zs-core-beliefs/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Discussion of Gen Z's Core Beliefs'. 19 July.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Discussion of Gen Z's Core Beliefs." July 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/discussion-of-gen-zs-core-beliefs/.

1. IvyPanda . "Discussion of Gen Z's Core Beliefs." July 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/discussion-of-gen-zs-core-beliefs/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Discussion of Gen Z's Core Beliefs." July 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/discussion-of-gen-zs-core-beliefs/.

To Gen Z, Google is just a relic – not a verb anymore

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Google first showed up as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary back in 2006. It was a milestone moment of sorts for the search giant , which by that point was already so ubiquitous that its very name had become synonymous with the act of searching for anything on the web. Likewise, that worldwide recognition of its search engine’s usefulness helped turn Google, the company, into one of the most important, powerful, and certainly the richest tech giants of all time.

That said, Rust Cohle wasn’t kidding around with that great line about time being a flat circle. Because nothing remains fixed or static in perpetuity — not even for a company with a more than 90% market share of internet search.

Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z is the first digitally native generation, a generation that was also the focus of a new Bernstein Research study published in recent days. And that generation’s “de-verbing” of Google matters, because for them? It’s a reflection of the fact that Google is simply no longer the useful one-stop-shop for information that it was in the good old days.

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Younger internet users who want to learn something, for example, are much more likely to start with TikTok. Want to know what real people think about a product, a book, a TV show? Reddit is a more natural starting point for that kind of query. When I’m looking to buy something, myself, I tend to start with Amazon or whatever retailer’s app or webpage that I have my eye on. If I want to know what time a movie is playing? I go to my local movie chain’s app, never Google. You get the idea.

“I feel like being a verb matters in internet given scale/network effects and a technology advantage,” Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik told a Business Insider reporter. “I think if you de-verb now, it’s because tech and user behavior has moved forward.”

Moved forward, indeed. It is endlessly fascinating to me that — in response to the rise of intelligent and useful chatbots like ChatGPT as well as a hunger for insights from real people — Google essentially took everything that people once loved about the search engine and chucked it all out the window. Goodbye simplicity, usefulness, and clean design. Hello ad-cluttered hellscape of AI-generated garbage. And hello a world where Google isn’t a verb anymore, as a result of all its many self-inflicted errors.

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Andy Meek is a reporter based in Memphis who has covered media, entertainment, and culture for over 20 years. His work has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Forbes, and The Financial Times, and he’s written for BGR since 2015. Andy's coverage includes technology and entertainment, and he has a particular interest in all things streaming.

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Spin Control: Is courting the Gen Z vote a great strategy for candidates?

Because this is campaign season, there’s rarely a day that I don’t receive an email, tweet or text from someone explaining the importance of young voters in the election.

On the rare day that doesn’t occur, someone on a cable news talking-head panel or some internet pundit is discussing how this candidate or that campaign needs to go after younger votes.

Because I was born the year the Spokane Coliseum was built, most voters are younger than me. But what these deep political thinkers usually mean in this context are voters of Generation Z – who may have to Google “When was the Spokane Coliseum built?” or even “What was the Spokane Coliseum?”

Gen Z, for those unsure of the demarcation lines for the various generations, are those born between 1995 and 2009. They come after Millennials, born between 1980 and 1994, Generation X, born between 1965 and 1979, and Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964.

Those born before 1946 are the so-called Silent Generation, preceded by the Greatest Generation that lived through the Great Depression and fought or worked through World War II. They are dwindling at such a rate that they are generally lumped together as “older voters.”

Gen Z is all the rage right now in discussing where candidates might find votes.

A result of this push may be found in recent registration numbers from the Washington Elections Office. Of the 29,610 registrations between July 26 and August 26 – roughly the month after President Joe Biden announced he wasn’t running for re-election through the Democratic National Convention – some 44% were in Generation Z.

This despite the fact that only people from 12 of that generation’s 14 birth years are old enough to vote.

Part of that may be attributed to excitement among those who just turned 18 in the last year, which is by far the single largest total, and those of the next three years who weren’t eligible to vote in the last presidential election. Registrations for those four years all top 1,000 for the month.

But the talk generally moves past the numbers to how candidates might appeal to Gen Z, with caveats these young voters should not be viewed as a monolithic voting bloc and are motivated by many different issues.

It’s good advice, albeit fairly axiomatic, as no generation should be viewed as monolithic or motivated by a single set of issues. What may be bad advice, however, is to put an inordinate amount of time and energy into registering voters and counting on their participation in the election.

That noise you just heard was some Gen Z-er saying “OK, Boomer.” To which I say, with all due respect, this is a quantitative, not a qualitative, analysis.

It’s based partly on a breakdown of the Aug. 6 primary turnout by age, from another set of figures supplied by a request to the state Elections Office.

That data show Gen Z voters are the smallest cohort of voters in the four main age groups, with just under 824,000 registered. Boomers are the largest, with more than 1.34 million, followed by Millennials with about 1.28 million and Gen X with almost 1.11 million. Again, Gen Z is at a slight disadvantage, because two years of their demographic segment is not eligible.

Turnout for Gen Z averaged 19%, compared to 27% for Millennials, 39% for Gen X and 62% for Boomers. Turnout for the older generations was an impressive 68%, although their numbers are down to about 315,000.

Turnout for every group was low, which is usual for a primary. But it increased with age.

This isn’t surprising. All of those previous generations, in their teens and 20s, had low turnout numbers. They began voting in greater numbers when they started getting married, having kids, getting good jobs, going to parent-teacher conferences, buying property and paying taxes – in other words, when they started coming to the conclusion that they had a growing stake in who got elected.

Each of those generations, at some point, was the subject of someone’s political analysis that their votes and issues would be key to deciding an election. Boomers, for example, were supposed to be a force that propelled an anti-war candidate like then-Sen. George McGovern to victory over then-President Richard Nixon.

It rarely worked out that way. In a close election, the youth vote can be critical. But so can the senior vote or the Black vote or the Catholic vote or the women’s vote. The thing about close elections is that all the votes matter, and no one really knows how it breaks down, despite what exit polls might suggest.

So when I hear candidates are courting the youth vote and Gen Z is registering in large numbers, I’m slightly skeptical, because math favors later generations. History suggests they won’t be a major factor, because some of those who register now won’t vote in November and most who have been on the rolls for a couple of years won’t send in their ballot, either.

For those saying, “OK Boomer,” I’d be happy for math, history – and me – to be proven wrong.

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Gen Z Beware: These 2 Financial 'Hacks' Are Actually Just Crimes

Published on Sept. 8, 2024

By: Ben Gran

• Viral videos on TikTok recently claimed that people were getting "free money" from Chase by writing bad checks.
• 42% of Gen Zers surveyed said that they have committed chargeback fraud by falsely saying that a credit card transaction was unauthorized, even though they made the purchase.
• Committing crimes against banks and credit card companies can send you to prison for years and cost you thousands of dollars in fines.

You can't trust all the personal finance advice you see on TikTok -- especially if it's telling you to commit financial crimes. Recently, there was a big kerfuffle on social media where some TikTok users showed themselves depositing bad checks into Chase checking accounts , and then withdrawing cash that they didn't actually have.

This isn't the only Gen Z "finance hack" in the news lately that's actually a crime. Let's look at a few reasons why committing fraud against banks and credit card companies can ultimately cost you a lot more than it's worth.

What happened with the Chase checking account "glitch" TikTok scheme

Our picks for the best high-yield savings accounts of 2024.

But writing a bad check and then withdrawing the money is a federal crime, a form of bank fraud called "check kiting." It's an easy crime for banks to detect, it's easy to prove in court, and it's punishable by up to $1 million in fines and up to 30 years in prison.

Chase quickly fixed the glitch with its checking accounts. Normally when you deposit a check, the full amount of funds are not available for immediate withdrawal because the bank has to make sure the check clears and the funds are legit. This delay helps protect banks and customers from bad checks, and from fraudulent TikTok personal finance advice.

The moral of the story: Don't commit bank fraud. And don't listen to sketchy TikTok advice that claims to help you get "free money" by gaming the system. If you don't manage your bank account responsibly and honestly, you could get a bad report on your ChexSystems history. If banks flag you as a dishonest or irresponsible customer, you could lose your privileges to open a bank account in the future.

Chargeback fraud: When buyer's remorse can put you in prison

Have you ever wanted to buy something that you couldn't quite afford? After buying a big-ticket item on a credit card , some people who struggle to make ends meet might feel tempted to get their money back. One way to do that is to call the credit card company and claim that the transaction was unauthorized, even though the purchase was legitimate and the customer was happy with it.

That allows people to get a refund on their credit card while keeping the items they bought -- "free money," right? Wrong! This is called "chargeback fraud," also known as "first-party fraud" or "friendly fraud." But friendly or not, it's a type of credit card fraud that can put you in jail. A recent survey from Sift found that 42% of Gen Z (more than any other generation) admitted to engaging in first-party fraud with fraudulent chargebacks.

Chargeback fraud hurts businesses because they often end up having to cover the costs of items when credit card companies cancel payments. It causes credit card companies to put more resources into fraud prevention and investigations, which can raise costs and hurt the customer experience.

Oh, and by the way, credit card fraud is also a crime -- with penalties in most states ranging from one to three years in prison, and fines of $1,000 to $10,000.

No matter how tight your monthly budget might get or how regrettable of a purchase you made with your credit card, don't commit crimes . Get a side hustle instead!

Bottom line

Some TikTok personal finance trends have actually been helpful for Gen Z, like cash stuffing to manage monthly bills, or loud budgeting to draw better boundaries with how you spend your money.

But if some social media finance trend is promising you "free money" by cashing bad checks, or encouraging you to violate personal ethics to get "free stuff" from a credit card company, put the app down and walk away.

Even if you're in credit card debt or your monthly cash flow is struggling, there are plenty of legitimate ways to improve your personal finances without defrauding banks. Preserving your reputation as a bank customer and maintaining your freedom and personal integrity, is worth more than some short-term, ill-gotten financial gain.

Two of our top online savings account picks:

Our Research Expert

Ben Gran is a freelance writer based in Des Moines, Iowa. He has written for regional banks, fintechs, and major financial services companies. Ben is a graduate of Rice University.

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