You're Not Like Everyone Else

Someone on a podcast explained Gen Z to me this week.

Gen Z are roughly aged between 14 and 29. They values honesty. Gen Z wants authenticity. Gen Z doesn't trust institutions. Gen Z discovers music through social media. Gen Z wants brands to stand for something.

And their perfect example of all of it?

Justin Bieber.

He's thirty-two...A millennial.

Apparently we're just making this up now.

And yet we do it all the time

Millennials value experiences over possessions. Boomers don't understand technology. Gen Z doesn't want to work. Gen X is fiercely independent.

Entire generations, reduced to the personality traits of a moderately interesting Labrador.

And everyone nods in agreement.

So I thought I'd introduce you to someone.

Meet a Typical Gen Z Consumer

She doesn't trust big institutions much. She thinks politicians are mostly full of shit and she's suspicious of anything that feels too corporate or polished.

Authenticity matters to her. She'd rather hear someone speaking honestly, even if she disagrees with them, than listen to another carefully managed PR statement.

She spends time on social media. Quite a lot, actually. Short-form videos, clips her friends send her, music she discovers online. Her media habits have changed dramatically in the last few years.

She's curious about new technology but also worried about what it's doing to society. She thinks traditional media has lost touch with ordinary people. And she has less and less patience for being told what to think.

Pretty Gen Z, right?

Except I should probably mention that I've been describing my 79-year-old mother.

Sorry.

Meet a Financially Anxious Middle-Aged Man

Let me try again.

Meet a financially anxious middle-aged man.

He thinks about money a lot. Financial security. What things cost. Saving. Housing. Whether he'll ever be able to afford the life he wants.

He knows the economic assumptions that worked for the generation before him probably won't work for him. He's sceptical about whether the state will support him in the future. Retirement already concerns him. He knows he needs to prepare early because he doesn't entirely trust the system to look after him.

Sounds like a bloke in his forties having a minor financial crisis.

It's my 18-year-old son.

Which proves absolutely nothing.

And that's the point.

Here's where this is going.

I'm not going to try to ban the word Boomer, and I'm not going to tell you demographic research is worthless.

But the moment we stop saying "there are differences on average" and start saying "Gen Z are like this" it all falls apart. These broad brush statements are so completely worthless and such lazy journalism that it really pisses me off.

The Great Generational Bullshit Machine

Somewhere along the way, we became obsessed with generations.

Baby Boomers. Gen X. Millennials. Gen Z. Gen Alpha.

I assume we'll eventually run out of alphabet and start naming generations after storms.

And look, the labels aren't completely useless. Researchers need ways of dividing populations. And there can obviously be statistical differences between groups born at different times.

Someone who grew up before the internet experienced a different world from someone who had an iPhone at twelve. Of course that matters. Economic conditions matter. Technology matters. Wars matter. Culture matters.

The problem comes when we make one tiny leap.

We go from:

"There is a measurable difference between these populations on average."

To:

"Gen Z are like this."

Those two sentences are not the same.

One is statistics.

The other is about as useful as astrology.

Fifteen Years Is a Bloody Long Time

Gen Z is generally defined as people born across roughly fifteen years.

Think about that for a second.

Millions of people. Born in different countries. Different families, religions, cultures, economic circumstances.

Some grew up rich. Some poor. Some in London. Some in Lagos. Some in rural villages. Some with five siblings. Some only children. Some went to university. Some left school at sixteen.

Some spend six hours a day online. Some barely use social media. Some want to start companies. Some want secure jobs. Some want children. Some don't. Some are ambitious. Some couldn't give a shit.

Yet apparently they all value "authenticity." Whatever that means.

Why would the year someone happened to emerge from their mother's womb matter more than their family, their wealth, their education, their personality, their friendships, their geography, and the thousands of experiences they've accumulated since?

It obviously doesn't.

A twenty-two-year-old in London might have almost nothing in common with another twenty-two-year-old five streets away. And that same person might share values, interests and attitudes with someone who's seventy.

People are inconvenient like that.

They refuse to behave like datasets.

Why We Love the Labels

So why do we keep doing this?

Because labels make life easier.

Imagine I'm writing an article about young people entering the workplace.

I could say: "There are millions of young people entering employment with wildly different motivations, backgrounds, personalities, expectations and economic circumstances, making broad conclusions difficult and often misleading."

Accurate.

Also fucking useless as a headline.

Or I can write:

"GEN Z DOESN'T WANT TO WORK"

Now we're talking.

You know exactly what to think. The journalist gets a headline. The consultant gets a presentation. The company gets a strategy. And LinkedIn gets four thousand people arguing underneath it.

Everyone wins.

Except reality.

Reality is messy. And we don't like messy.

The Label Is Not the Person

But here's the thing. Generations aren't really what bothers me.

They're just one example of something much bigger.

We've become obsessed with categorising ourselves.

Gen Z. Boomer. Introvert. Extrovert. ADHD. Founder. Creator. Liberal. Conservative. Urban. Rural.

We collect labels like stickers on a suitcase.

And some of them are useful. They can help us understand ourselves.

The problem starts when the label stops describing something about us and starts explaining us.

Because once I know your label, I can stop doing the difficult work of getting to know you.

Oh, you're a Boomer. Got it.

You're Gen Z. Makes sense.

You're an introvert. That explains it.

You're a founder. Of course you think that.

Except it doesn't explain anything.

It just gives me the comforting feeling that it does.

Humans Are Terrible Filing Systems

There's something slightly ridiculous going on here.

We talk endlessly about individuality. Be yourself. Find your authentic voice. Don't let society define you. Celebrate what makes you different.

Then we spend half our lives working out which box everyone belongs in. Including ourselves.

Because being an individual is quite hard.

A label gives us certainty. It tells us who our people are. It gives us a ready-made explanation for why we behave the way we do.

And, perhaps most seductively, it tells us what other people are like without requiring us to spend any time with them.

That's efficient.

It's also dangerous.

Because once I believe I understand you because I know your category, curiosity disappears.

I stop asking questions. I stop listening. I start predicting.

And then I only notice the things that confirm what I already believe.

The person disappears behind the label.

The Most Interesting People Don't Fit

Think about the most interesting person you know.

I bet they're difficult to describe neatly.

They're probably full of contradictions.

The successful businessman who writes poetry. The seventy-five-year-old who loves TikTok. The twenty-year-old obsessed with pensions. The introvert who comes alive on stage. The accountant in a punk band. The socialist with three houses. The conservative who spends weekends volunteering at a refugee centre.

The contradictions are what make people interesting.

Actually, I think there might be a rule here:

The more interesting someone is, the less useful their labels become.

Because interesting people leak out of their categories.

They surprise you. They hold ideas that don't neatly belong together. They change their minds. They behave inconsistently. They have histories. They contradict themselves.

In other words, they're human.

The Problem With Knowing

There's another cost to all this categorisation.

It makes us intellectually lazy.

If I tell myself "Gen Z doesn't want to work", I don't have to investigate why a particular twenty-three-year-old doesn't want to work for my company.

Maybe the pay is shit. Maybe the job is boring. Maybe their manager is an arsehole. Maybe they watched their parents sacrifice thirty years to companies that made them redundant at fifty-five. Maybe they desperately want to work, just not for me.

"Gen Z" saves me from considering any of those possibilities.

The label becomes the answer.

And answers stop questions.

That's why I increasingly distrust any sentence that begins:

"Gen Z are..."

Or "Boomers think..."

Or "Millennials want..."

What comes next might be statistically true. It might even be useful.

But I want to know what disappeared when millions of complicated people got compressed into three words.

Try Removing the Label

So here's what I'm going to try. And you can steal it.

The next time I catch myself explaining someone with a category, I'm going to remove it.

Instead of "he thinks that because he's a Boomer", ask: "Why does he think that?"

Instead of "she behaves like that because she's Gen Z", ask: "Why does she behave like that?"

Instead of "they're an introvert", ask: "What makes them quiet here and animated somewhere else?"

It's a tiny change.

But it forces us back towards the person.

And people are nearly always more interesting than the categories we've put them in.

So What?

So no, I'm not suggesting we abolish demographic research.

I'm not launching a campaign to liberate Millennials from PowerPoint presentations.

And I'm definitely not claiming my mother disproves research about Gen Z because she watches TikTok.

I'm saying something simpler.

Treat averages as averages.

Treat labels as shorthand.

And treat people as people.

This week, catch yourself the next time you explain somebody with a category.

Then get curious. Ask one more question. Find the contradiction. Look for the bit that doesn't fit.

Because that's probably where the interesting person is hiding.

And if someone tells you they know what Gen Z wants?

Ask them which one....

Until next time,

Jon "Elder Millennial Gen X Boomer Thing" Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

And one last thing.

Apparently Gen Z really values sharing newsletters with friends. I read it in a report, so it must be true.

You wouldn't want to disappoint an entire generation, would you?