Early Thoughts About the Post Generation (Gen Z) and the Pandemic

These are strange times. Not surprisingly, I've been gazing at the present and into the future through a unique lens.

(Please excuse the long “wind-up,” but I need to clarify a few things before I begin my more central argument.)

For roughly the past two decades, I’ve been learning and talking about generational theory – the notion that birth cohorts (people born around the same time, in similar geography and/or broad social circumstances) often coalesce around a shared set of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors – and how this can, in broad strokes, help to uncover a kind of “operating system” by which to understand and connect with large groups of people more effectively.

I’m always quick to stipulate that generational theory is soft (social) science; is built on vast generalizations; and is, in one’s tool belt, a blunt instrument, more akin to a large mallet than a Phillips head screwdriver. While it can be useful for some jobs, it’s hardly the be-all and the end-all of anything.

Nonetheless, I have personally seen the value of generational theory in helping large entities to develop a thinking framework within which they can develop better products, messages, and policies for targeted groups. Using generational frames, I helped a major sports brand connect with Millennials who viewed its athletes less as remote superheroes, more as people they might engage with. I helped our government compose anti-drug and anti-tobacco messaging for a generation that is able to do its own research. And I helped retailers transition from their “a few of us are cool” positioning to a more big-tent approach, something more resonant with reflexively inclusive Millennials. Of course, these are but a few examples of many. (I’ve also helped scores of employers to understand and engage their young workers, and helped their senior leaders to appreciate the unique talents and points-of-view of younger generations.)

Often when I speak, I’m addressing the current generation that occupies the stage of adolescence and young adulthood. For years, that meant I was discussing and describing “Millennials,” folks born roughly between 1980 and 2000, and who were the target of brands and governments, who aimed to connect with them in varied ways either to develop or sell messages, not to mention actual products and services. Of late, I’ve transitioned to describing a cohort I’ve named the Post Generation (or “PostGen”), and who the mass of media have taken to calling “Gen Z.”

Regardless of whom I’m addressing and talking about, I tend to remind people that, when we’re considering the crucible of adolescence, there often arises a “discontinuous event” – something that’s nearly outside of our imagining, that doesn’t represent a natural progression and/or a recognizable repeat of previous events, and that when it appears in our lives, can change many of our ideas about what “normal” means. Some recent-ish examples include the Challenger disaster; 9/11; the 2008 market collapse; the election of Barack Obama, and then of President Trump; and now, the COVID-19 crisis.

You can imagine how the Challenger disaster, among other events, might have inspired a generation of skeptical Gen X “slackers,” more attuned to opting out than in; how 9/11 and the election of a black president with a “funny name” might have opened up the worldviews of Millennials, making American geographic and racial and ethnic insularity seem anachronistic; and how the 2008 collapse and the 2020 pandemic might...

Aha! This is where my head is at right now, exploring what role current events will play in the emerging mindset of our youngest generation.

It’s true, a global pandemic is not entirely a surprise. It’s happened before, at varied scale. And yes, some experts have been warning of an event like this one for years. But let’s be clear: nothing like this was in our broad public consciousness before now. We are all, more or less, in shock.

Certainly we’ve seen nothing of this magnitude, pandemic-wise, since 1918; nothing like it since we’ve become a globally connected media community, able to parse updates from every corner of the globe in real time; and nothing that has so completely captured the public consciousness across so many borders at once.

Not even 9/11 had such an immediate impact on so many lives in such a short time. This single event is, perhaps, the most globally relevant event in more than 100 years, with the exception of World War II. (Perhaps the most obvious analogue for what we’re seeing today is the AIDS crisis. Sadly, that crisis felt for years largely confined to a single population – a misjudgment, practical and moral, that cost far too many lives.)

Given its uniqueness and also its scale, this COVID-19 pandemic will certainly be a defining event in the lives of all of us; but it will be profoundly impactful on those who are children, adolescents, and young adults, all of whom are forging worldviews, consciously or unconsciously. Unlike 9/11, which offered Americans a common enemy to confront, and a common purpose to enact (“We won’t let them change our way of life”), this virus is much harder to ally ourselves against, on a personal level. We are at the mercy not only of our leaders and our medical community, but more importantly we are at the mercy of the virus itself.

For young people, it must seem as if nobody has any real answers, that there is no expertise or power strong enough to confront this crisis in a meaningful way. Why didn’t we anticipate it? Why can’t we stop it more decisively? Isn’t there anything more active and impactful that we can do, other than shelter in place, buy gift cards for local businesses, and hope for the best?

This sense that adults and authority figures are imperfect, fallible, foundering...is something that most of us arrive at in time. Yet it’s happening for the Post Generation (Gen Z) during their childhood and adolescence. After seeing how vulnerable many adults were in 2008, they’re seeing it again in 2020. For a generation already attuned to fact-checking parents and teachers in real time and to seeing the vast divisiveness that characterizes our current political climate, adults and authority figures must look less trustworthy and more suspect than ever.

The Millennial trend toward distrusting experts and crowd-sourcing truth – relying on the so-called “wisdom of crowds” – might actually intensify. And yet, as disinformation and “deep fake” videos become ever easier to create and disseminate, and as foreign governments have successfully influenced our elections, it’s becoming increasingly clear that even crowds have their limits.

What becomes of a generation that grows up with precious few people they can trust? Without anything, individual or institutional, upon which they can rely? How does that shape their thinking, their actions, their emotional wellbeing? We’ve already seen data that suggests Gen Z is the most anxious generation in modern history. Will this pandemic and its fallout exacerbate that sad fact?

At the moment, much of life feels tenuous. As sports and school at all levels go on hold; as restaurants and movie theaters and gyms close; and as plays and performances and graduations and even college decisions are postponed, what thread of normalcy and reliability remains for our youth?

We have, for the most part, our handheld devices; our wi-fi and our streaming services; our online profiles and digital commerce platforms. These offer us personal(ized) windows on the outside world which allow us to choose what and who we see, when and how we interact or consume. For Gen Z, this feels perhaps more natural, more “the way things are,” than it does for the rest of us. They’ve never known anything else. Is it possible their sense of loss during this time will be less profound than the rest of us?

In the preceding years, I’ve written about four “P’s” that could define the Post Generation. I suggested the data pointed toward them being Precocious; Pragmatic; (Women-)Powered; and Pluralistic, among other attributes that hadn’t yet taken shape for me. At present, it seems clear that the fifth “P” of the Post Generation is going to be “Pandemic.”

What’s not yet clear is how this discontinuous – and sadly all too real – event will forever alter the worldview of our youngest citizens. Absent data, poised in the earliest days of this global crisis, I’m loathe to make any major guesses. Save for this one:

Gen Z, the Post Generation, will be searching for something they can trust; someone they can believe in; someplace that is safe and constant. They will crave reassurance, stability, and safety. Perhaps most important, their “bar of belief” will be higher than ever, and harder to clear.

For those of us whose job it is to connect with them, we’d do well to begin contemplating how we’re going to reach these heights.