TikTok currently rules trends, feelings, and culture for Gen Zers, who make up 60 percent of the app’s one billion-plus users. Video-sharing social media sites have seen a meteoric rise as Gen Z comes of age.

Having grown up with social media, Gen Zers curate their online selves more carefully than those in prior generations have, and they are more likely to turn to trends of anonymity, more personalized feeds, and a smaller online presence, even as they voraciously consume media online. They flit between sites, apps, and social media feeds, each one forming a different part of their online ecosystem. Gen Zers are known for working, shopping, dating, and making friends online in Asia, Gen Zers spend six or more hours per day on their phones.ĭigital natives often turn to the internet when looking for any kind of information, including news and reviews prior to making a purchase. While there are substantive differences within the cohort known as Gen Z, there are a few commonalities its members share.Īs the first real digital natives, Gen Zers-speaking generally-are extremely online. Generational theory should be understood with this caveat, and used only as a way of thinking about society, rather than the gospel truth. Some social scientists even believe that the practice of studying generations can obfuscate what motivates people on an individual level.

Of course, these are generalizations: every so-called generation comprises a multitude of unique individuals with their own opinions, values, behaviors, and plans for the future. More recently, millennials’ worldviews have been shaped by the September 11 attacks and the proliferation of the internet. Their children, born soon after the war ended, are called baby boomers their outlook, in turn, was colored by the Vietnam War and the social upheavals of the 1960s. Later, the Greatest Generation was named for the heroic sacrifice many made during World War II. The Lost Generation, for example, is named for the malaise and disillusionment experienced by people who lived through World War I. Specific major-scale events can also shape the outlook of a generation and are often reflected in how they’re named.

More specifically, each generation entering into a new life stage at more or less the same time is the pulse that creates the history of a society. More recently, thinkers like August Comte have argued that generational change is the engine behind social change. Social scientists have studied generations-in theory and more practically-for millennia. But each of them also belongs to a diffuse category of their peers, grouped together based on when they were born and what they experience during their lives. Your grandparents, parents, children, and children’s children all make up a distinct generation in relation to you. No doubt you’re already familiar with the concept of generation within families.

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