Generation Z - Google's smart student wizards

This article appeared on planning&analysis on August 13, 2019.

Understanding Generation Z

What makes Generation Z tick? Today's youth are smart, creative and self-confident. As digital natives, they have grown up with Google, Instagram and Netflix. For them, analog and digital are no longer opposites, but are blurring into a consistent reality. But what defines Generation Z's attitude to life? What are their dreams, their pre- or enemy images, and their unconscious life strategies? The rheingold institute is investigating this question in a new research series based on in-depth psychological interviews and cell phone diaries with young people between the ages of 13 and 22.

Chilling or the curse of paradise

For the most part, Gen Z has paradisiacal starting conditions. They do not experience the shortages of earlier war generations. They grow up in secure circumstances. Their parents are mostly tolerant and understanding. They therefore do not have the longing to free themselves from narrow, narrow-minded and authoritarian circumstances that the generation around 1968 had. In view of the comfortable services provided by Hotel Mama, premature emancipation from the parental home does not seem very practical to them.

Gen Z is growing up in a provision culture where seemingly everything is given and where everything seems possible. Just looking at the entertainment offerings shows an exponential development. Not only are there more than a hundred TV channels broadcasting 24 hours a day, but there are also media libraries that can be accessed day and night. Streaming platforms like Netflix or amazon prime allow access to thousands of feature films. On YouTube, there are countless channels where you can be guided through everyday life by your peers around the clock. And the smartphone acts as a modern all-purpose weapon in the daily crusade against boredom. With a magical swipe of the finger, contacts can be activated, gaps in knowledge filled, partners found or games started.

The flip side of this intoxicating magical world of 'everything is possible' is an enormous pressure of expectation that weighs on Generation Z: Everything that is provided in terms of opportunities and options can and must be seized. Boredom, loneliness, apprenticeships, lack of success or mediocrity are taboo. They therefore dream of "having a great career with a start-up company" or quickly becoming "famous as a Youtuber." In the future, they want to live "a luxurious life like the Geißens" or "protect the planet" and "build a better world.

In the face of this pressure from their own and others' turbo expectations, Gen Z sometimes finds it difficult to make decisions and take a certain direction in their development. After all, every decision limits the paradise of the possible and carries the risk of failure. That's why they long for freedom from pressure and purpose. They find this in the parallel worlds of the Internet, for example, when they play Minecraft for hours on end.

Chilling out in particular is a liberating and carefree transitional state for young people in three respects. With their demonstrative inertia, they rebel against their own and others' pressure of expectations. They create a time-out in which nothing seems necessary and in which everyday life seems to stand still for a long moment. At the same time, they muffle up - armed with a cell phone or iPad - in a cozy cocoon of all-round media coverage. And in this feeling of being surrounded and safe, they gleefully dream up all the great things that could become of them if they were to ever get their act together and decide on a path.

Secretly, the young people are happy when adults help them make the transition from chilling out to active everyday life. They readily take up fixed structures and appointments - whether it's club sports, a gym or a language course. With grumpy gratitude, they are happy to be assigned household tasks. They experience temporary cell phone restrictions as a relief. And they experience the message that they are loved even if they are only mediocre as a release.