The article appeared at planning&analysis on September 24, 2019.
The discussion about the video of the Youtuber Rezo, on the destruction of the CDU, made it clear how different younger and older generations are and, above all, how they communicate. Rezo, as a representative of the younger generation, "briefly" researched a few topics on the web and moved his millions of followers with a video. The CDU and the entire older generation don't really get it at first, don't even know who the young influencer with the blue hair is, and react after lengthy internal negotiations with a fax for a statement. It seems as if two completely different worlds are meeting here and are having trouble finding a common medium of communication.
Some media even see Rezo as the harbinger of a new revolution or Apo movement, such as the Spiegel title with the beautiful pun: Die Rezoluzzer. But is that really the case? How does Gen Z understand itself?
In-depth interviews with Gen Z reveal little evidence of a clash between the generations or even of a revolution. Rather, the young interviewees experience themselves in a complementary relationship with their parents' generation. They feel more like a kind of team or symbiosis in which the younger generation sees its task as drawing the attention of the older generation to certain grievances. The parent generations are supposed to take up the misery and settle things according to the younger ones' ideas.
Gen Z is not aiming to take power like the Apo movement, but to shake up the parent generation.
"Rezo wanted to draw their attention to the things that were going wrong, so that they would finally take care of them. He was also completely surprised by the effect his video had, and then he went underground for a while.
The younger generation does not see the parent generation as opponents, but as agents for fulfilling their own wishes and demands. After all, compared with previous generations, they have grown up with a much greater right to have their say. Whether it's daily shopping, planning vacations, buying a car, building a house or even choosing a partner from their mother or father - they are asked about their wishes everywhere.
Parents consult them from an early age about all areas of life and are seen by them as enablers of full provision. They are proud of their children's self-determination, also to avoid conflicts and not to be responsible for everything alone.
But it's not just the tolerant supply attitude of parents that can encourage young fantasies of omnipotence. The smartphone, as a kind of magical scepter of power, and the omniscient web also feed Gen Z's feeling that everything is becoming available and feasible at all times. While Google and Wikipedia know everything, parents, teachers or politicians appear quite ignorant and lose authority.
"Teachers Google everything themselves, so we can do that ourselves."
In general, the younger ones experience themselves as much more adept than the older ones, to whom they have to explain and teach many things, with a view to new technologies. From the point of view of Gen Z, the older generations lose sight of the important things, primarily with regard to the future, even seem to always ask the young offspring in which direction things should go. This almost seems insecure and a bit desperate when Gen Z is supposed to fix everything. In this sense, the politicians' very hesitant reaction to the Rezo video was also unsettling. The question arises among the younger ones whether the older ones are actually still reliable and capable of acting.
Especially when it comes to the environment, the successor generation of Gen Y feels that they are better adults, taking more responsibility for the future than their parents' generation, who wasted everything and left their trash lying around. As better adults, they see their role as educating and admonishing their parents: Share your resources and please clean up your trash that you have created here in the world!
However, the feeling of being able to determine a lot for themselves, or even having to do so, also leads to a longing among Gen Z to be able to lean on fixed structures and authorities. They like to look for supportive authorities on the Internet in the form of influencers who, like older siblings, have a little experience advantage and yet know their way around the modern world - like Rezo.
