I don't make yearly predictions but....

Dear Readers,

Happy New Year!

For those new subscribers, I’m Dr Eliza Filby, a historian of generations who explores how society is changing through the prism of age, tackling how we are evolving as consumers, workers and citizens.

In this newsletter you will find articles written by me as well as insights, links and news on generational shifts in the workplace, consumption and society at large.?Helping you feel out of touch and up-to-date in equal measure….?

In this week’s edition:

• Latest podcast news
• What the Census tells us about modern Britain
• Why TikTok is where society, satire and the class war are now happening
• Three trends to look out for in 2023

I don’t make yearly predictions but….

How I think society will change in 2023….

• Be nice to grandma
• Way back in the 2010s, it was commonplace to beat down on Boomers; they had all the money and all the power. If there was an intergenerational war - it was their fault, and what’s more- they were winning. In the UK, David Willets provided the intellectual argument in his book ‘The Pinch: Why Boomers stole their Children’s future ” while Zoomers provided the visuals with their 'ok boomer’ memes. Then came Brexit, an intensification of the climate change blame game and the culture wars…. and the rest is history.
• Or is it? Populism, I suspect, will turn out to be the Baby Boomers’ last dance on the political stage. Things too are shifting and as a result, society is beginning to take a much more benign view of Baby Boomers. Perhaps it was Covid. Classified as vulnerable by the state, the pandemic made the children of the sixties appear ‘old’ really for the first time.
• Perhaps it is also down to the changing dynamic within the family. Millennials traded in their political radicalism for reliance on mum and dad, the affluent millennials dependent on them for a deposit, the not-so-affluent, for free childcare. Millennials have also increasingly found themselves in the position of having to parent their ageing parents.
• Perhaps the?coastal grandma phenomenon ?that went viral in 2022 has played a part too. A moment when young people began to ape the trends and fashions of Baby Boomer women. (Paradoxically, we are living in an age where older people are aspiring to be young and young people are aspiring to be old).
• I am seeing this shift in the workplace too. Pre-Covid, Boomers would regularly make up about 15% of my audience, now it is more like 2% and that 2% is now emanating a paternalistic/maternalistic influence within corporate culture rather than as the cause of any angst or cultural agitation.
• In short the generational power dynamic (and therefore society’s cultural war) is changing in our workplaces, in the home and inevitably in politics. Boomers still have all the money and assets but oddly we have ceased to berate them for it. The real political challenge however will be to convince Baby Boomers to vote for their children’s and their grandchildren’s interests rather than their own.
• PermaCrisis
• It was word of year for 2022 for a very good reason but I predict it will lose currency in 2023, not because things will get calmer but because people will become used to the chaos and learn to protect themselves from it.
• The upheavals of the last half decade initially (and understandably) triggered an immediate desire ‘to stop and get off’ the rollercoaster. It was also followed by a nostalgia for calmer times (i.e. early noughties). But I predict that in 2023, people will become accustomed to the turbulence and learn to turn down the volume or switch off completely. This will be particularly true for millennials who are in the ‘building years’ of mid-life and arguably most vulnerable to external forces and less willing to make mistakes or take risks than Gen Z. I expect them to close ranks in these unsettled times and look to activities, networks, family, places and companies that provide ease, security, belonging and yes, the ability to quietly quit……. Needless to say, the most important (and likely) constituency to adopt this mindset will be millennial mothers.
• The Great Reorganisation (that will inevitably follow the Great Resignation and Great Layoff)
• There are wiser souls than me that dare to make predictions about the labour market over the next 12 months but I do think it is worth mentioning that one of the major themes of 2023 will be what I’m terming the ‘Great Reorganisation’ (add ‘Great’ to anything and it sounds definitive eh?). The fallout from the pandemic will take five years to bed in. I imagine however that 2023 will see the beginnings of this new regime albeit tempered by tough economic conditions. The best workplaces will begin to prioritise mandatory office days, an emphasis on more humanised (i.e. face to face) management and learning, thoughtful implementation of AI and automation, regulation of information overload, better hybrid tech, and yes, layoffs where excess fat is revealed.
• Where energies should be directed is ensuring that companies shake up automated and formulaic recruitment processes. The lesson that companies should take from the Great Resignation is to ask themselves ‘are they employing the right people?’ If relatively new employees are leaving your company to set up their own business or pursue an entirely different career, you are perhaps not hiring the right people in the first place.
• Where investment should, of course, be made (and probably won’t) will be in utilising those thousands of laid off tech workers by turning them into tech Professors with the task of up-skilling our predominantly analogue ageing workforce who need to be better equipped for the 21st century.

Bonus Episode 2 of It’s All Relative to catch up on. Featuring Britain’s youngest entrepreneur Jenk Oz, founder of Thred Media and his CFO, who also happens to be his mother Carmen. In this episode they talk about what it is like to work together, generational attitudes towards entrepreneurship and how their relationship has evolved and how Jenk manages to find the time to do his homework.

Season 2: Coming Soon

Season 2 of It’s All Relative will officially kick off at the?end of January?with a new host of guests and new format. Rather than interviewing families that interest me, I address key questions I want the answers to: from the cost of childcare in the West to the lying flat movement in China.

People to Follow

Office of National Statistics

Not a person as such but as the census data from 2021 is released the ONS offers the most detailed portrait of Britain right now. Twenty years ago, in the 2001 census 72% Britons declared themselves Christian, in 2021 it was 46%. But what we have seen over 20 years is not the decline of Christianity (that happened between 1960s-2001), but the decline of the cradle Christianity. No more is Christianity, specifically Protestantism, woven into the fabric of British culture, community and public life. I’m not saying whether this is either good or bad, just saying…..

Do also check?out? this map which shows where the different generations live in Britain - Wales- who knew?

Stuff I’ve Read

1. Is the tap of Mum and Dad running dry??New research suggests ?that the young cannot rely on BOMAD to get them through this recession.
2. Educate me, offend me, amuse me all in 60 secs- that’s why people love TikTok. But it’s algorithm is doing something else in the process; dismantling the influencer/celebrity model and creating a new breed of ‘viral-micro-famous ’ (which will have the effect of upending the advertiser model for sure). But?this ?article on the irresistible voyeurism of ‘day-in-the-life videos’ is great read. TikTok is the place where society meets.
3. ChatGPT is supposedly changing our on-line lives forever.? University lecturers are supposedly fearful that AI-generated essays will destroy educational assessment as we know it. But aren’t we looking at this the wrong way? ChatGPT doesn’t necessarily reveal the genius of AI but rather reveals the banal nature of most of what we do…..yes, including undergraduate essays. BTW it is the great false promise of tech that more tech in the workplace will mean we will have to do less…. that has?definitely not?been the story of the last twenty years.

Feast for the Senses

Listening:?What Really Happened in the ‘90s? ?An extensive look into the decade that is currently going through a ‘revisionist’ moment.

Reading:?Are We Rich Yet? ? by Amy Edwards, telling the story of the rise of investment culture in 1980s Britain.

Watching:?The compelling force that is?kidology ?on YouTube

Visiting:?Brussels in late January for a round of European media and a speech to European policymakers on intergenerational disparity.

and finally…

Read the full article in the?Economist?here

Thanks for reading,

Eliza