By Danuta Bregula and Liesbeth Nizet, authors of the How Publishers Can Grow with Today’s Youth report and the Youthquake and stuff newsletter for publishers.
GenZ are the trailblazers, Gen alpha the biggest opportunity
In our report published last year, we picked and examined several macrotrends influencing how younger generations, particularly Generation Z and Generation Alpha, consume and trust news brands (or choose not to). These trends included climate optimism, a strong aversion to “washing” and a keen bullsh*t detector, TikTok therapy and open vulnerability, self-discovery, surreal humor and wholesomeness, the balance between asynchronous work and hustle culture, the influence of journalists and influencers, social commerce, social gaming, content creators’ monetization strategies, and a growing willingness to co-create.
Then, inspired by the classic McCrindle Generation Map, we analyzed these trends across multiple generations of media users. And guess what? The differences are quite striking!
