This year, Gen Z will be between the ages of 12-27. At over 70 million strong–of our country’s 340 million total–you represent over 20% of our country’s population!
And the vast majority of your generation–58%–is eligible to vote as of this year!
As the first digitally native generation, you’ve grown up in a world more interconnected than any previous generation. How interconnected?
For those of you turning the voting age of 18 this year, Facebook, YouTube and
“Gen Z learned to swipe before they learned to wipe.”
Vera Chien
WBD Executive Director
Global Corporate Strategy & Insights
“What ‘Five Nights At Freddy’s ‘ Says About The Generation Gap, Top Brands Lose Their Luster”
Forbes.com
When you were a year old...
1-YO in 2007
iPhone unprecedented interconnectivity at our fingertips
2-YO in 2008
Pick any music you want to hear!
A new place to discover what’s new, what’s next, and what friends are doing!
5-YO in 2011
Non stop spontaneous connection with friends!
9-YO in 2015
Online communities
level up!
10-YO in 2016
Creative and
personalized shift in how
we find information!
So you’ve always had the ability to instantly choose exact content exactly when you want it and exactly how you want to engage with it.
“It’s exposing us to all these things we normally wouldn’t be exposed to and it’s expanding our world view in positive ways.”
Aliyah, 19-yo
While this guy’s generation uses social media to shine light on societal problems, your generation is using them more to collaborate and actually FIX these problems!
instead of being
problem spottersyou’re problem
solvers!
“[Gen Z] are known to value compromise… a byproduct of their diversity and comfort with working with peers from different backgrounds. They are also in line to be an “adaptive” generation. When adaptive groups come of age, they take the problems that were brought to light by their predecessors and try to work them out.”
Morley Winograd
Author
“Millennials Disrupted the System. Gen Z is Here to Fix the Mess.”
The Washington Post
this desire
to fix ourworld’s problems
was forged from the
historic
tragedies yourgeneration
endured.
While every generation witnesses its share of unique global and national crisis, Gen Z through its interconnectivity has more so closely than any previous generation. The overwhelming majority of you were born in a post-9/11 country...
Lived through two devastating recessions: first the “Great Recession” in the late 2000’s...
And then the “Great Lockdown”
in the early 2020’s...
You’ve witnessed horrific
mass school shootings...
And survived a global pandemic that reverberated through every part of your formative high school years...
And through it all, studies show that your generation’s unprecedented degree of connectivity has increased your resiliency and ability to process all the jarring things constantly happening in our world.
With this higher awareness of societal wrongs and what’s at stake, it may come to no surprise to you that your generation has and continues to experience higher rates of anxiety around elections than any previous generation.
But your unprecedented degree of interconnectivity also means you’re less confined to specific social groups and more inclusive than any previous generation.
As a result, your generation has developed the strongest sense of social consciousness: a collective ability to recognize and desire to help others who are suffering.
“[Gen Z has] proven to be a highly collaborative and self reliant. You deal with issues sensibly and realistically in a practical way concerned not just about your own well-being, but wanting to lift up your friends and communities.”
Murmuration.org
This desire to help your communities means greater awareness of equality and empathy. For example, 78% of your generation think systemic racism needs to be addressed versus only 60% of his Gen X.
Which makes total sense
since you’re...
the most
ethnically & raciallydiverse
generation in u.s.
history!
With 22% of Gen Z having at least one parent born outside the US (according to Census Bureau Projections), you’re paving the way for the next generation to be the first in our country’s history where the majority will be of multiethnic origins.
In fact, so much so that the label “Gen Z” has started to shift to “The Plurals” because it better reflects who you are and the future for this country you are building. But only time will tell which of those labels will stick so for this comic we’ll just continue using “Gen Z.”
(By the way, if learning that the US is becoming so ethnically diverse that Gen Z will be the last generation with a Caucasian majority results in a negative reaction in anyone you know, perhaps this resource may help them...)