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Generation Z comprises people born between 1996 and 2010. This generation’s identity has been shaped by the digital age, climate anxiety, a chaotic financial landscape and a global pandemic. Gen Zers, as the first true digital natives, are extremely online, and spend much of their time working, shopping, dating and making friends online.
Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette explains his initial skepticism about Gen Z and then shares his unexpected findings.
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The following excerpt is from the above video:
I was skeptical at first, I wasn’t sure that the kids’ shoulders could sustain the weight of much analysis. Was there any “there there,” I wondered? See, I’ve heard from boomers and Xers who manage young people in the “Z.” The critiques are usually brutal, all about how twenty-somethings don’t speak up, don’t take initiative, don’t make decisions, about how they’re super woke and they want the employer to reconfigure itself to accommodate the worker, not the other way around — about how they say money isn’t that important to them, but they’re still entitled and they want to keep living the lives to which they’ve become accustomed.
The World War II generation saved the world. The baby boom thought the world revolved around them. And Generation Z, well, they don’t even live in the real world, or so I thought.
I had to find out for myself so I’ve taken on a number of projects that often put me in front of high school and college students. I talk, they listen. They talk and I listen and take notes. I’ve come away impressed. Generation Z is painstakingly deliberate, tech savvy, task oriented, politically engaged, desperate to be heard, and ready to leave the world better than they found it. The kids are alright. It’s the rest of us I worry about
