Z Generation

Not long ago I read in the newspaper about “Z generation”. This is the name got to the generation who has born between 1994 and 2010 by the experts in marketing and sociologist. So it means that I am a member of Z generation and because that I would like to comment how they say that we are. 

The principal cause to do this study about my generation it quite easy: we are the coming potential consumers (it’s says that in 2025 we are going to represent the 75% of the workforce in the world) and it is important to the marketing companies to know what we like, what we want and how we want it.

Without taking this into account, the experts trace how is supposed we are, what we want and how we see the global future. 

The principal difference between Z generation and our predecessors (the millennials) is the indifference created by the selfishness, narcissism and the obsession for the consumption in the last generation. The experts say we are a generation who want save the world. 

We are a generation who has been educated between crisis and unemployment and with the threat of terrorism. We grow up watching how our predecessors have wasted their time, accumulating degrees and masters to disdain job interviews because of their over qualification.  

Now, we want to change this. Some investigators compare us with Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of The Hunger Games who reveals against the power. We have been molding by the technologist but more by the recession and austerity politics. We say no to the traditional policy and the study show how only a 10% trust in her government. A part of our learning is made out of the classes (in part thanks to new technologist) and it creates a personalization education, and our free time is invested in professional vocations (like photography, blogs…).

This new generation has a more social conscience and a critical spirit has grown in it. We are more altruists and consents about global issues like inequality or global warming. We try to find jobs with sense that could help us to change the world and our new idols are symbols of transparency and justice (like Edward Snowden). 

 All this characteristics about this new generation that is growing now are encouraging and they allow us to considered a big improvement in the future. Maybe what I like more is that I am a member of Z generation and all this things include me. Experts see us as a new force to change the world, a force more independent, conscience about global issues and with intention to improve it and out of what is considered the individualism and the necessity of consumption. They see in us a generation that doesn’t consider a good place the world that has been left us to live.  

All this is good and truly is a very big change of mentality, but I don’t watch it as real as it is shows. I think that in every generation there is a change in the view of how they see the world and it is linked with the time they have been educated and the principles that there was. But I think these last generations are the opposite of what the experts say. We are not more consents about the others, the opposite, we are more individualists and selfish and precisely what we need is more “collective consciousness”. New technologists, for example, have enlarged inequality and social problems, and the only thing that has changed is that now we know more about these real problems, but they continued increasing. 

Another thing I don’t agree with is that we have created a new critical spirit or we fight for the privacy. I think we don’t promote it. We adapt to what they say without question why we do the things, and this is the major problem: the carelessness and the lack of subjectivity. And in the other side, with the social networks we are fighting against our privacy and not for her. 

After all, I don’t want to sound pessimist about the future. I think it is impossible that everybody in a generation could think alike and could have a mentality to change the world, but I know, and it is proven by history, that we only need a minority to change things. Because are the minorities who change the world and not the “new generations”.