As I’ve mentioned here a few dozen times, I have quite the collection of children, some of whom were born between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. They all like to talk. They can talk a lot. Even though new words and phrases are being coined or re-adapted constantly, at any given moment in time, there is a finite number of words. It’s huge, but finite. And I reckon my kids have used most of them. That’s how much they talk.
Yet one phrase I’ve never heard them use is “Gen Z”. (Sidebar on cultural imperialism here: you probably didn’t read the phrase as “Gen Zed”, but the American “Gen Zee”).
More precisely, I’m sure they’ve used the phrase, but they don’t regard it as a profound mark of self-identification. They don’t move through life vividly aware of their Gen Z-ness. They don’t think of themselves as members of a unique generation, the likes of whom have never been seen before in human history.
Other people do that: and most of them are not members of Gen Z.
It’s easy to find all sorts of list-based articles declaring the uniqueness of people in their twenties: the pandemic had a big effect on them. (It had a big effect on everyone.) They are prone to anxiety. (Anyone who reads headlines is anxious.) They like to travel. (Don’t we all?) They value authenticity. (Don’t we all?)
The only indisputably unique aspect of Gen Z is that they grew up in the digital communications age: they didn’t have to learn how it worked. But even this assertion is a bit of a stretch. It’s not like people in their 40s, 50s or 60s don’t listen to podcasts or look at TikTok.
Obviously, events, both personal and historical, can have an effect on people. If you’ve lived through a world war, you’ll be different from someone who hasn’t. Yet there’s little evidence (and not much research has been done on the matter) that the values of the various-letter generations differ that much from each other.
[ Gen Z will become the propulsive force that drives Irish societyOpens in new window ]
So why the preoccupation with Gen Z? Why the lavish flattery, the constant churn of evidence-free articles that “we’re all obsessed” with a cohort of people who, with the greatest love and respect, haven’t done anything yet?
Depressingly, the answer seems to be money. Isn’t it always? The global marketing industry appears to be in a frothing panic about ways to sell stuff to younger people, because they consume media in a different way.
With time and experience, for good or ill, people tend to change
Yet it’s a bit of a puzzler as to why marketeers are going to all this trouble, given that people in their 20s don’t have that much money to spend. Presumably, they see it as an investment in the future.
The old adverts-around-the articles model may not have the same impact on Gen Z as it did on Boomers, so the industry has had to adapt. What we’re getting now is a template where the “content” and the adverts are close to indistinguishable. But the aim of both is the same: to convince them to buy soft furnishings or supermarket meal deals. The only difference being it’s because an influencer who “aligns with their values” told them to.
But for that strategy to work, the future will have to remain fixed. The world will have to remain exactly as it is now. People in their 20s will have to be the same when they hit 35.
In general it is possible to make sort-of true statements about differences in generations. Boomers may tend to be a bit more conservative than Gen Z. But that’s not because there is something innately conservative within oldies: when they were younger, they rejected the values of their parents. With time and experience, for good or ill, people tend to change.
In the future, we may look back and regard Gen Z as unique: as the most cynically manipulated generation in history.
