What will COVID19 do to GenZ?

According to the Pew Research Center, Generation Z, sometimes known as iGen, Gen Z or AppGen, were born sometime after 1996 up to the early 2010s.  1997 marks some interesting events: Pokemon, Harry Potter, Princess Di’s funeral, Mother Theresa’s passing and the first cloned sheep.  It’s doubtful that Gen Z will be remembered for these events because it is not the dawning events which characterize a generation, rather, it is the events of their lifetimes which do.

Gen Z were raised with the shock and trauma of 9/11. They were taught about “others,” their history classes incorporated this event as it shifted the United States’ global policy and turned a scrutinous eye on fundamentalist religious groups.  The first iPod was introduced in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010. They are the real digital natives and have come to see information as ubiquitous.  Currently, over half of U.S. teens are concerned about how much time they spend on technology.

As a new generation comes into our elementary schools (Generation Alpha), our older Gen Zers are experiencing something we haven’t seen in our lifetimes: a global pandemic.  These young adults, adolescents and pre-teens are learning about social-distancing, using technology to connect with their teachers and being forced into reconnecting with their families in ways that a 1950s family did just about every weeknight.

I stopped by the school last week to pick up some items and saw a few students scrambling to get their books (they were being let in two at a time). Each one that said hello expressed how much they miss school, their friends and their teachers.  On any given day, these same students may walk by my office and randomly yell, “This school sucks!” and just keep walking. 

I am not someone who sees this pandemic as a blessing, but I do see tragedies as opportunities to learn…but if we don’t learn from them, they become catastrophic. I see Gen Z in a unique position: their childhoods were marked with images of 9/11, their school years with fears of school shootings and their emergence into adulthood, with COVID19.  If they’re paying attention to what’s going on right now, they might see Americans hoarding toilet paper.  But they can also see countries offering help to others, Europeans singing to each other from balconies, manufacturers producing face masks, distilleries generating hand sanitizer, parents worrying about money, staying on top of their kids’ school work and trying to work from home.  All in an effort to flatten the curve.

Gen Z, while you are depending on older generations to get us through this, I hope you will learn that individual sacrifices can help the greater good.  That lesson will help younger generations who will come to depend upon you.  They’ll be depending upon the lessons you’ve learned from tragedies and that spending time at home is not just good for the soul, it’s good for humanity.