Gen Z is ready for the spotlight. Gen Z, the oldest of whom turn 24 this year, is the new “it” generation.
They’re setting trends in fashion and in the workplace, influencing consumer and worker behavior.
And they’re saving more than they’re spending and set to dominate the economy in 20 years.
Gen Z has stolen the crown from millennials as the media darling of the moment.
The generation, the oldest of whom turn 24 this year, is in the spotlight as they begin to wield influence over lifestyle, work, and consumer trends. Look no further than various headlines promising how-to meet Gen Z demands in the workforce or market beauty brands to them.
It’s a coming-of-age story, and Gen Z is shaking things up as they enter young adulthood. They’re the first digitally native generation and they’re best reached online, where they’re often catapulting new trends. They’re innovative, entrepreneurial social activists, ready to create and shape a better world.
They were hit by the pandemic during some of their most formative years, which could shape their futures over the long term. The oldest members of the “TikTok generation,” who graduated into a recession , run the risk of repeating millennials’ economic plight , but they’re already showing signs of behaviors that could define them for years, trying to save and invest early and embrace a lifestyle based on thrift.
By size and spending power, they’re set to take over the economy in a decade, but their spending restraint and skepticism about markets could make that economy very different.
While it’s hard to capture an entire generation when some members are still teens and others are adults — demographic differences that produce data filled with caveats — here’s what life looks like for the typical Gen Zer in 2021. Gen Z emerged in the limelight during the pandemic, taking over as the latest “it” generation.
Gen Z is the most ethnically diverse generation in history and set to unseat millennials as the most educated generation, too. But Jason Dorsey, who runs the research firm Center for Generational Kinetics (CGK), says they’re not millennials 2.0.
“They are really a distinctive generation with a different set of parents raised at a different time, that are coming into the world with some different views,” he said, adding that the oldest members are entering the life stage in which they’re exerting enough influence to take the mantle as the “it” generation .
Society feels like it finally understands millennials, he explained, and is switching focus to the next generation, which remains a mystery. That leaves Gen Z “shifting and driving much of the conversation,” and he predicted they’ll do so for the next 15 years. They’re the first generation to grow up in a wholly digital era, making them tech-savvy and mobile-first.
Gen Z was born into a world marked by technology, the internet, and social media. The average Gen Zer got their first smartphone just before their 12th birthday. They communicate primarily through social media and texts, and spend as much time on their phones as older generations do watching television.
The pandemic heightened their digital behaviors. With ample time to scroll on their phones, they digitally bonded with one another as many moved back home during the pandemic at a similar life stage, Dorsey said.
This helped TikTok, Gen Z’s favored platform, blow up during the pandemic. By September 2020, the social media app had grown by 75% , and expanded into intergenerational use. It signals the growing influence of Gen Z in leading consumer behavior, much like millennials did with Instagram. Like millennials before them, the typical Gen Zer has had — and will have — their share of economic troubles.
The pandemic put Gen Z on track to repeat millennials’ money problems. As is typical with recessions, the youngest workers were hit hardest. Gen Z students could lose $10 trillion of life cycle earnings due to Covid lockdowns, the World Bank has estimated.
A Bank of America Research report called “OK Zoomer” found that the pandemic will impact Gen Z’s financial and professional future in a similar way to how the Great Recession did for millennials.
“Like the financial crisis in 2008 to 2009 for millennials, Covid will challenge and impede Gen Z’s career and earning potential,” the report reads, adding that a significant portion of Gen Z entered adulthood in the midst of a recession, just as a cohort of millennials did.
“I’m a little worried about ending up like those who graduated around 2008,” Maya Tribitt, a junior at […]
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