For the longest time, all you heard was how millennials were going to turn the world upside down forever. But now this generation is all fully grown, with the oldest already in their 40s.
It’s Gen Z’s turn. The cohort born roughly between 1997 and 2012 appears to be inspiring seismic shifts in all areas of life. A millennial woman got a front-row seat to how these emerging adults are changing things, and it gives a glimpse into how different our world might be when Gen Z also hits their 40s.
A millennial shared the lessons she learned from her Gen Z peers.
It’s fitting that TikToker Bailey Henry got his Gen Z crash course at work, because it’s in the workplace where the generation has so far seemed to stir things up the most. She laughed in a video that the first lesson she learned from one of her 19-year-old Gen Z colleagues is, “I’m not 19, that’s lesson number one.” But for Henry, this was just scratching the surface.
Krakenimages.com | Shutterstock
Some of the lessons she learned from Gen Z focused on trends like the retail site DHGate, a low-cost Amazon-style site Henry had never even heard of (nor had this Xennial writer), which is so ultra-cheap that Henry joked it “seems illegal.”
Then there was the lesson that “(influencer) Alix Earle and (model) Sofia Richie are very important” to Gen Z. Earle is one of TikTok’s biggest stars, and Richie is the daughter of singer Lionel Richie and the sister of Nicole Richie (for all you Millennial, Xennial, and Gen X old men who have no idea what Henry is talking about!).
Henry found that Gen Z have different approaches to practically everything, and they do it their own way.
Another of the Gen Z trends Henry learned about seems frivolous at first. “There’s a big difference,” she said. “There’s the Golden Goose Girlies, and then there’s the Air Force One girls.” Of course, she’s talking about the popular sneaker brands, and for the record, Sofia Richie apparently prefers the former, while Alix Earle prefers the latter.
But it goes even further than just being a fad. “Obviously it’s shoes because you don’t wear heels to the bar anymore,” Henry said, “so in 2008 I would have really appreciated you not wearing high heels when you go out.”
It may seem frivolous, but it’s really a big shift from previous generations, and one from which you can extrapolate Gen Z’s attitudes to past notions of what women are and aren’t supposed to do and look like when they’re out on the town, which of course also plays into their views on dating and attracting mates. Long story short, they want to be comfortable while doing it, heels be damned. It has rarely been a fashion for women until now, and it is one that future generations will surely thank them for.
However, Henry noted dark spots that add some beautiful bracing marks from time.
In a follow-up videoHenry shared more of what she learned from Gen Z at her job this summer, and three specific lessons paint an unsurprisingly bleak picture of the times we live in. As you can probably guess, she found that when it comes to the way the economy has shaped Gen Z, the story is…well, pretty sad. “We’re going to take a bit of a dive,” Henry said. “They haven’t seen big financial examples, especially in the U.S. … So they just go for it. They just are living credit card debt.”
Seventy Four | Shutterstock
Like their millennial predecessors, home ownership is particularly bleak, but in a way that goes far beyond the struggles we older generations have faced. In short, they don’t even think it’s possible. As Henry put it, “Whose ownership? They don’t care … the economy is going to implode any minute, so they just really don’t care.” She said this has created a situation where “they’re just living” because things feel like they’re on the verge of collapse. Which is beautiful in its own way, but it’s also heartbreaking.
This is also reflected in many of their relationships with their families, according to Henry’s Gen Z colleague. “They’re not super close to their parents,” she said. “A good number of them are just not really close to their families. And that makes me sad. As a mother, it makes me sad.” One has to wonder if the extreme political polarization that has torn countless families apart in recent years has something to do with it. Gen X, the generation of Gen Z’s parents, has quite bent to the right nowadays, after all.
There is no way around it. Gen Z has a tough road ahead, far tougher than even us Millennials had, which many probably assumed was impossible until recent years. As Henry put it, “I wouldn’t trade places with them for anything in the world. I really wouldn’t.”
But one thing is for sure, they do things their own way and they don’t seem to feel any compulsion to honor the old ways of doing things. It may be tough now, but that kind of attitude is exactly what we need to eventually pull ourselves up from how far we’ve fallen when the reins are finally handed over to this maverick generation.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers topics in culture, mental health and human interest.
Leave a Reply