Move over Gen Z — there's a new crew in town, and they're making waves, many of them before hitting their teens. Generation Alpha, born from 2010 onwards, is the first group to grow up in a fully tech-immersed world, and they’re already redefining everything about the future.
They are the children of millennials; their digital footprint started building before they were born when their parents posted the first pregnancy scan on social media; their families are generally blended, diverse and globally connected; they act and speak with the authority of adults; they have the ability to weaponise AI — and in five years these “old souls of cyberspace” will be able to vote.
Futurist and trend analyst Dion Chang has been following Gen Z closely, is now monitoring the emergence of Generation Alpha and has presented his insights to the clients and followers of Fluxtrends, the agency he founded close-on two decades ago.
Chang, who describes himself as a professional cage-rattler and strategic thinker, believes Generation Alpha is significant in that “2.8-million of them are born every week, they will number 2-billion by the end of this year and financially savvy brands are already starting to target them”.
This crowd is already jaded, they're the honey badger generation that's generally fearless, tenacious and go after things without backing down. They're confident, strong-willed and spicy.
— Dion Chang, trend analyst
“This crowd is already jaded, they're the honey badger generation that's generally fearless, tenacious and go after things without backing down. They're confident, strong-willed and spicy. And they're pious compared to Gen Z, who are comparatively quite militant,” Chang noted at a presentation in Rosebank on Wednesday.
“Their formative years happened during the pandemic, so they know about lockdown, germs, global issues and they understand a polycrisis. They're often conditioned to believe they are immune to consequences,” Chang said, explaining this as the outcomes of current parenting styles termed 'snow plough parenting', where parents work hard to remove all obstacles, challenges and discomforts their children face, and 'gentle parenting', where parents don't use any negative terms, explore feelings, don't believe in punishments and don't say no.
This, Chang said, is the first generation of parents who have happily used YouTube as a digital nanny.
While millennials fretted over avocado toast and Gen Z grappled with TikTok fame, Generation Alpha is busy shaping the digital landscape without even trying. They were practically born with smartphones in hand, making them the true “screenagers”, navigating touchscreens before learning to put on their shoes.
Education, entertainment and even playtime happen online, not all of it just passive consumption — these children are coding, creating content and building virtual worlds in games like Roblox and Minecraft.
“We've been watching the toy industry and seen a radical shift from STEM toys to MESH toys,” he said, explaining how toys falling under science, technology, educational and maths were being shunned in favour of Mental Emotional Social Health toys like spinners and fidget therapy offerings.
“The need to address the early onset of anxiety must be a hugely growing concern if the toy industry is already recognising it,” Chang said.
Looking at the future for formal education institutions, big corporates and the world of work, Chang predicts huge changes ahead as Generation Alpha opts out of big-name universities in favour of micro credentials and a backpack of digital skills to adapt to rapidly changing business models.
“Generation Alpha don't want to be employees. We've already seen Gen Z's challenging and eroding traditional business models and they're rejecting the corporate ladder, while the Generation Alpha workforce is likely to be focused on crypto trading, gig-based and remote.
Communication and tech strategist Loren Phillips, herself a mother to two Generation Alpha children, agrees with Chang's views and has developed a ‘world weaving’ workshop experience in which she enables participants to engage with Generation Alpha and explore the way forward.
“These are children who are sociopathic, they think they're on the same level as grown-ups and they're not easy to control. They don't want corporate jobs, and for those who have started earning lots of money through online activities, every day is payday,” she said.
“The kidfluencers are out there on social platforms, influencing society and the internet as a whole, disrupting the system.”
Phillips predicts political activism taking on new forms, digital democracy and big changes in governance.
In short, while Gen Z is rattling the establishment, Generation Alpha is setting about writing a whole new digital rule book with AI-generated illustrations.
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