Understanding Gen Z

Hey Madison Avenue. Stop calling 18-to-34-year-olds “millennials.” “That’s not a generation. It’s a demographic,” said Jason Dorsey, a highly entertaining millennials and Gen Z expert for The Center for Generational Kinetics. One of the nuggets he dropped in a NATPE closing keynote that felt more like a standup routine is that “technology is only new if you remember it the way it was before.” So for, Gen Z (born 1996-present), they are coming of age without any expectation that content will be tied to a TV. Put another way, he said they’d view the TV show “The Jetsons” as a cartoon about the past. And with machine learning getting better at recommendations, Gen Z will expect everything to be completely predictive. This generation, whose oldest members are about 20, are entering the workforce with lower expectations than millennials, according to Dorsey. He said their philosophy is ‘We’ll take whatever job you have, just give me a chance.’ “That’s great for America, great for the economy, … terrible for millennials,” he said. As for millennials, they are actually splitting into 2 different generations—one that’s going to school, getting a job and the other less productive sector that gets all the media attention. “Around 30, you self-select into one part of the generation or the other, and you can no longer relate to the other part of your generation,” said Dorsey, himself a millennial. Millennials actually are the largest generational workforce in the US today. A few predictions he laid out: Millennials will outspend baby boomers in the US this year; the Center predicts the average age for marriage for Millennials will exceed 30; and Millennials aren’t techy savvy; they’re tech dependent and just expect the technology to just work. Gen X is tech savvy generation because they were there when hardware and software came together, he said. “They can plug a printer into a computer! They’re geniuses!”