From her hot new book, Invisible Diversity, Julie Coates outlines more ways Gen Z may be different from Millennials.
Following is a list of other ways that Gen Z may differ from Millennials, published by Digital Information World (DigitalInformationWorld,2018).
- Less tolerance for being disrespected.
Raised by Gen X parents who are less tolerant of most things and a little edgier, this generation has not had parents who modeled tolerance. Additionally, they have lived a lot of their lives online where no one knows how old they are, and do not expect or accept age dis- crimination.
- Collaboration.
This generation is less collaborative than Gen Y. Boomers, parents of Gen Y were known for being strong team players, and so are their kids. GenX—not so much. They are more independent minded, and so are their children.
- Individuality.
This is even a higher value for Gen Z than for Millennials. Again, Gen X parents celebrated their differences, popularizing body art, demanding authenticity, and being unafraid to point out when the emperor had no clothes. This generation perceived itself to be different in every way from the Boomer generation and set out to let that be known. This was not lost on their children.
- Impatience.
Gen Z is more impatient and less tolerant than Millennials. While Millennials have been on the cutting edge of innovation since birth, creating more chances for things to go wrong (technology), for Gen Z, many problems have been resolved. For this generation of young people who are also children of impatient parents, there is not a lot of tolerance for things that don’t work as they should.
- Privacy.
This generation has seen the pitfalls of being too open in a world dominated by social media. The emergence of platforms like Snapchat, which are impermanent, has met Gen Z’s need to being able to be public and maintain an higher level of privacy.
- Pragmatic.
Again, like their parents, Gen Z is more pragmatic than Gen Y which is more idealistic (Young,2017).
- Authenticity.
Millennials demanded authenticity, but Gen Z takes it to another level.
- Multi-tasking.
Gen Z is a multi-tasking generation. In fact, technology is so ingrained in everyday experience for this generation, that it is viewed as a fact of everyday life. Older generations saw technology as a tool, but Gen Z sees it as an essential part of daily experience. They have unlimited information and communication channels at their disposal, and according to Karen Wondergem, writing online for eLearning Industry, the average teen can multi-task over five different devices at one time (Wondergem,2017).