Will Generation Z sound a retreat from technology?
The question is prompted by a Bloomberg View commentary by Leonid Bershidsky, who wrote: "Today's hot tech companies may soon be in for some nasty surprises. Teenagers are pushing back against the technology dependence that previous generations have developed ..."
The commentary dovetails with an Associated Press story published in the Nov. 14 News Tribune and headlined: "People feel loss of control of personal info."
Users fearful of losing privacy also are a topic of a San Jose Mercury News editorial headlined: "Tech industry must lead privacy fight." The editorial makes the case that technology companies have a vested interest in protecting personal privacy and adds: "Technology firms would have a much better case in Congress and with the American public if they were more forthcoming themselves with consumers about how their personal information is being used."
Much of the data and resulting opinions are based on surveys.
The Associated Press story references a Pew Research Center survey and points out free Internet services are not exactly free. Users who sign up agree to be targeted by advertising or to participate in what is tantamount to a huge marketing survey.
Survey results also abound in Bershidsky's commentary on Generation Z, defined as people born after 1995. The author cites surveys from: Northeastern University; Sparks & Honey, a marketing and research agency; and Piper Jaffray, an investment bank.
To understand where Generation Z stands on the social and cultural spectrum, it follows:
• Generation Y, also called millennials, the Millennial Generation or, as dubbed by Time Magazine, the "Me Me Me Generation." The term refers to people born between early 1980s to early 2000s.
• Generation X, the post-Baby Boom generation includes people born between the early 1960s and early 1980s.
• And, of course, the post-World War II Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964.
Generational labels, like surveys, deal in generalities. Bershidsky admits "we should understand our children better from talking to them than from polling a broad group," but adds "some common features do pop up in these surveys."
Among the common features, he writes:
• "Generation Z, as previous studies also showed, is innately liberal."
• "Gen Z may be different in being genuinely bigotry-proof. It may be the first generation for which diversity is a natural concept ..."
• The generation is "less comfortable in cyberspace because 61 percent of them know somebody who has been cyberbullied or stalked online."
• "Gen Z is overconnected, playing with multiple devices, online all the time. ... But this suggests this generation is beginning to push back against what we saw as the technological revolution."
Change is inevitable.
Advances in technology have ridden the crest of the recent wave of change. An item this week on Digg, a web site featuring popular Internet topics, reports people now spend more time looking at their phones than at televisions.
Future change - prompted by loss of privacy, online discomfort and being overconnected - may come in the form of a retreat from technology by Generation Z.