Hello everyone and welcome to our newsletter on all things Gen Z.

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Up the mountains we go . . . 

This week sees the World Economic Forum gather in Davos in the Swiss Alps. The annual event brings together political and business leaders, the NGO community, entrepreneurs, policy experts and team Get to Know (natch). The theme is “Rebuilding Trust”, so eroded following the financial crisis, multiple political scandals and an economic model in the West that has seen income increases stagnate and inequality gaps widen.

Complete with oxygen masks . . .

Davos is Europe’s highest town, and as well as a very fine raclette, is a place for deep conversations and a hunt for solutions. Equity, the new world of work, a better planet and empowering the voices of younger people are vital if 2024 is going to be the “break-through year” so many of us would love to see.

Two years ago, Klaus Schwab, the founder of WEF, opened a session on the growing need to understand “the next generation” with a startling fact that has stayed with us ever since.

The average age of the world is 29. The average age of decision makers is 55. 

On a panel the same year, Taylor Hawkins, a political campaigner in Australia, said it was time to ditch talk of generational conflict and talk instead about partnership. This touches on a growing concept that we at Get To Know are increasingly attracted to: “intergenerational sympathy”. Whatever age we are, parents 👴🏽 or young funksters 👩‍, we want our network to be able to get on, to navigate the world, to be successful and to make the world a little better tomorrow than it was yesterday.

You know we at Get to Know can become a little soppy at times but, really, the generations aren’t in conflict. We are all, actually, in it together.

We have followed Taylor since then, and here is her latest post on the growing threat of generative AI increasing the digital divide.

Worth a read.

Viral moment

This week’s viral Gen Z conversation came from actress Jodie Foster, who was quoted saying that Gen Z are “really annoying, especially in the workplace” in the Guardian. It’s not a great quote, we’ll admit, and she goes on to say that Gen Zs “come in at 10.30am” if they aren’t feeling it, and use incorrect grammar in emails. Missing from lots of the outrage is some other context, including that Foster, as a former child star herself, has reached out to Gen Z actors like Bella Ramsey to offer her support. “They need to learn how to relax, how to not think about it so much, how to come up with something that’s theirs,” is her advice. The interview is a mixed bag: a lesson in avoiding branding an entire generation as one thing, but also highlighting that empathy and coaching are a better path to mutual understanding and support. 

A new Chinese dream

We like to use this newsletter to look at Gen Z trends across the world, and this week the magnifying glass is on China, where young people are graduating into a harsh jobs market. There are more grads than jobs, and more than one in five people aged 16-24 are jobless in China. The result is not just unemployment but a shifting mindset: what happens when everything you’ve been raised to believe (that if you work hard in education, a well-paid job and a nice life will be waiting) is falling apart? New phenomena include “lying flat” (a term coined for those opting out of the rat race and finding ways to exist away from the competition of modern life) and being a “full-time child” (returning home, delaying looking for work, and receiving money from parents for helping with chores and care).  

Living authentically

A team at Harvard interviewed 80 Gen Z college students and found “an overwhelming desire to double down on their efforts to live authentically”. In practice, this means doing work they’re passionate about, building meaningful relationships, and “making public their private selves”. The students also had specific asks of their employers: they want to combine their passion for hard work and entrepreneurship with self-actualisation, work-life balance, social inclusion, and political engagement.

A new colleague

Here’s some major AI news: Deloitte is rolling out a new chatbot called "PairD" to 75,000 staff across Europe and the Middle East as part of an effort to boost productivity. Deloitte believes the tool can be used to speed up laborious tasks. But - and there’s always a but - employees are also being urged to do their own due diligence and quality assurance checks to confirm the "accuracy and completeness" of the chatbot's output.

And finally…

64%

…of voters on Good Morning Britain’s X poll think that Gen Z are lazy in the workplace. 35% disagreed, and the poll had 6,925 votes. We are going to contact them all and say “sign up to our newsletter”.

Have a good weekend everyone, and see you next Saturday.

How can we help?

In my many travels and conversations, I’m increasingly talking to CEOs, executives and civil society leaders wanting to better understand the next generation of consumers and the next generation of employees. Gen Z is putting pressure on us all to transform in fascinating ways, and many of us are asking questions about how to cater for younger workers and future proof our organisations.

If this sounds like you, we’d be keen to have a chat and see if TNM can help. From our own content production to work we have done, for example, with The Oliver Wyman Forum, we have a raft of insights and data which can support you. We work closely with a number of global organisations – helping with high-impact story-telling, digital media, internal communications, through to employee benefits, HR and working structures.

Email me direct and all of us at TNM look forward to speaking further.

Kamal Ahmed
Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder
The News Movement

Our Top 5 News List

The top stories young people cared about this week, from our audience team and newsroom debates.