Retracing our footsteps

This is a Game Boy Color. This wasn’t my Game Boy Color — mine was purple. This was the second Game Boy in the series, after the Game Boy Original, before the Game Boy Advance. After that, the Game Boy SP.

If you look at this and feel nostalgic, chances are you often find yourself in that uncomfortable middle ground between the entitled Millennial and the iChild, or Generation Z.

More importantly, if you’ve ever felt alone in being stuck between two rather rigidly defined generations — in not quite fitting into either of the above — well, you’re not alone. I’ve felt it, my friends have, and I think it’s safe to say that the majority of 90s kids feel it.

We’re the kids who grew up with tech around us, but we’re also the kids who didn’t come out of the womb tablet in hand. We don’t really remember a time when the internet didn’t exist or when you had to dial somewhere external to access it, but we weren’t connected 24/7 from the get-go. We remember a time when respite from the Internet existed.

We’re the kids who were taught to touch-type from a young age; the guinea pigs who had I.T. lessons introduced into our curriculum. But we’re also the kids who felt the sense of pride from being allowed to transition from pencil to pen in class; the ones who received prizes for best handwriting of the month.

We listened to S Club 7, we got excited over the latest release of High School Musical, and we collected and traded stickers in the playground.

We discovered ad blockers and we loved them. At the same time, we’d also been taught to wait through the television ad breaks back in the days of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.

Sometimes named Millennial, sometimes Gen-Z, we’re neither of thw two. We’re a total hybrid, and I think we hold a lot of the answers to the future of coping with the rapid development of tech.

What are Millennials?

For context’s sake, millennials are typically those identified as born between 1980s-mid 90s. Some call 2000 the cut-off point, which I think, if we’re going to use generalisations, is far too late. You can’t possibly compare two people on either side of a twenty year age gap.

The general consensus across the media is that millennials are entitled, self-obsessed, and financially worse-off than their elders. Especially when it comes to the housing market.

Other millennial-typical characteristics are multitasking, information-sharing, and an aversion to speaking on the phone. The latter of which is extremely true. Millennials are seen as entrepreneurial and will strive to start their own companies. Apparently transparency and collaboration are important too.

But remember, these are all to be taken with a pinch of salt.

What is Generation Z?

Generation Z, or Gen-Z, has several overlaps with the above. Born in the mid to late 90s and spanning the period until around 2010, which makes another ridiculous age gap, this generation is depicted as sort of alien. Foreign beings glued to screens. Digital natives who never saw the world without a smartphone.

You’ve heard the tales of babies swiping as physical book pages, rather than turning them. You’ve seen toddlers in restaurants glued to tablets, while parents chat amongst themselves over what’s sure to be a rare evening out.

At the same time, those on the older side of Gen-Z are presented as ambitious and driven to make a difference to the, well, crap that’s going on all over the place. Greta Thunberg, to start with. So Gen-Z is viewed as an eco-friendly cohort that wants to make sure it won’t experience the planet in the way its elders have so naively left it. It’s a generation keen to reverse the attempts at blissful ignorance.

It’s a generation that’s frustrated at the lack of involvement it had in the decision-making process that resulted in the creation of the Trump and Brexit era.

And as for work, an increasingly important part of what’s deemed a good and meaningful life, Gen-Z’s expectations are apparently extremely high. They’re hopeful to reach the top, but they’re also a bunch of people who will prioritise finding the balance within the notorious work-life balance phenomenon. I don’t believe it’s a generation that will dedicate its entire soul to the job, because it’s one that realises that there are bigger and better things out there to see and to experience.

From one generation to another

We’ll call them Zillennials for the purpose of this post, and Zillennials are neither Millennials nor Generation Z.

The Zillennial is a unique generation, one that grew up in the transition from the non-digital to the digital-first.

And because of that difference, that critical factor, I truly believe that the Zillennial has an unparalleled view of what’s going on in the world and how we might be able to deal with that. While Millennials might be too late in certain respects, while Gen-Z might not indeed be able to conceive of much of a life before digital, the Zillennial falls bang at the intersection.

It’s perhaps an untapped resource for novel opinions, and there’ll be a bunch of Zillennials who can (and are trying to) act as agents for change. It’s a generation that won’t forget the time before tech entrenchment, which makes it aware of how powerful it has become.

Why does this matter?

This matters because of the ongoing debate between all sides of the equation. Those arguing in favour of and against tech, for instance.

I don’t particularly agree with the constant business need to lump groups of ages into different so-called generations with a limited number of shared characteristics (many of which are extremely wrong).

But, I also don’t disagree with the importance of identifying similarities and differences amongst groups of people. I think the idea of splitting decades into generations can be a good idea. Businesses need to understand audiences in order to target their ads — something that has been the basis of advertising and marketing since the beginning. Such identifications help us to find out what drives certain groups of individuals to behave in certain ways, which is exactly what allows us to design meaningful ads.

As for Generation Z, well the very notion that individualism is such a strongly-associated characteristic of this group should in fact prove how open to movement these generalisations should be. Because the more tools we receive — in the form of social media, free or cheap creative software, and so forth — that allow us to express ourselves, the more individual we’ll become. Which means the less effective such generalisations can be.

This is nevertheless just an opinion, and I’m interested and would love to know your thoughts. How does generational segmentation affect your business decisions? Does it affect your business decisions? Do you agree/disagree with the idea of grouping decades into such rigid generations?