GenerationZ is the most unpredictable generation to ever exist. But what kind of people come under this hyped tag?
GenerationZ or GenZ is a generation one million larger than the millennials. But you must be wondering who is or what are these ‘ millennials’ or ‘ GenZ’. According to Beresford Research, GenZ people are born in the timeline 1997 -2012 currently in 2024 their age group falls between 12-27 years and millennials are the older ones i.e. born in 1981-1996 ages between 28 to 43. But interestingly these are not the only two to exist. These terms existed earlier too like GenX, Baby Boomers, and Silent Generation. But why weren’t they in the limelight? Why were these other generations not much known let alone popular but GenZ had gained immense popularity and prominence in society? Where do they stand on the Popularity radar?
The GenZs were born when the internet was made available for mass use and later they came to be called Digital Natives i.e. the very first generation to be brought up with the internet as a part of their daily routine. Globally GenZ is growing very fast- “GenZers will make up a quarter of the population of the Asia-Pacific Region by 2025,” says an article by McKinsey and company. Also being the biggest generation in history, it now growing rapidly to hold the title of the most dynamic and influential force in the global economy. GenZ- the know-it-all generation is mainly popular because of social media. Now every household has a smartphone with an internet connection thanks to the Covid Pandemic. With unlimited access to the internet and free resources, people are free to browse whatever they want under the moon and the sky. Getting influenced by certain trends set on social media and following them helps them to find stability within this fast-moving world but all this is a virtual reality in which they are living in or in GenZ terms, they are living in “delulu”. There are many multiple GenZ slang such as Glow Up, delulu, cancel culture, ghosting, and many more because the list never ends. With emerging trends on Social media, this young generation takes up certain terms and creates hype around them making them popular.
Interestingly, this trendy lifestyle of GenZ is not everyone’s cup of tea. Millennials especially find it very hard to cope with it. If we look from our parent’s or grandparents i.e. Millennials perspective it’s an entirely complicated generation to grow up in. The kind of lifestyle they had been born and brought up is poles apart from what their children are now going through. They didn’t have an electronic device 24×7 with them which means they had time for the real world to experience. Today’s children prefer to stay indoors and use their smartphones or laptops rather than going outside to play. Books are replaced by Kindle or ebooks. While all these innovations started to make human life easier, somehow it feels like we might have come a little too far from our roots. A show called The Talking Stage hosted by iDiva invited Pankaj Tripathi as their guest and he was asked to guess the genZ terms meaning. This fun interactive video showed the actual difference between the lifestyle and understanding of a GenZ and a Millennial. GenZ likes everything short and crisp. Naturally, with this fast-moving world, their attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to 8.36 seconds. Where if they don’t like something they are free to change the channel as unlimited options are available to choose from. The kind of music they have now and the kind of childhood they have experienced are very distinct from that of millennials. The Millenials had great singers like Kishor Kumar and films like Anand, and Mughal-e-Azam during that time when everything was simpler and straightforward. But one of the most prominent progressions brought up by GenZ that the world never acknowledged was the Social Awareness culture. Before the internet era, people were mostly conservative regarding certain issues that needed to be addressed and this generation has correctly done justice by giving them enough attention to what they rightly deserve. Social stigmas like menstruation, gender identity conflicts, and mental illness need to be discussed, needed to be normalized. This generation is more open towards these sensitive topics and openly addresses them to reduce the stigma associated with them. There are millions of videos, interviews, books written, and workshops conducted across the world to normalize these issues. With an uprising in social media platforms, people share information and life incidents which helps people to relate and gives them them an edge, a platform to voice their issues and continue to inspire others thus keeping this chain growing. So, GenZs might not be the worst of all the generations now, or are they?
The biggest trend that GenerationZ has ever put up is to give a platform to all kinds of people irrespective of caste, gender, religion, and nationality to voice their opinions on any issue. Anyone can get any information across the world and is free to give criticism as per their perspective. With this, they connect with the world and get a platform to receive multiple viewpoints on multiple topics. Also, it gives them an edge to be more open and to grow which the previous generation lacked. But does just being open thinkers solve other issues with this generation too? GenZ is facing major cultural identity loss, they have been so busy in this virtual reality world that they have forgotten that a real world exists which is much more culturally rich and beautiful than the photos that they see in that 5-inch metal box. The Millenials get to see it all, they got to see it, savor it, and enjoy this. The movies, songs, traditions, norms, festivals, everything. Interestingly they didn’t only enjoy it but actually get to experience the essence and not just capture them in their phones and share them on social media to show how cool they are. But each generation has its own merits and demerits, categorizing them into good or bad won’t do justice to them. We need to accept the change and be acquainted with it after all change is the new normal.
As we navigate through this entire ocean of GenZ’s current and upcoming lifestyle trends, we must not let go of our values. Rather than debating about the existing generation gap if we try to build a bridge between them it would solve half of the conflict. We must try to learn and appreciate the qualities of all generations, right or wrong. Understand them, adapt to their diverse way of living, and become a part of it. This doesn’t mean that we have to change who we are but we could take a step towards this digital generation to understand them and blend in, as said by Alan Watts, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance”.