Linda Woodhead

Jane Shaw

Sarah Ogilvie

Roberta Katz

"Our newest generation, Generation Z, or Zoomers, are coming of age in a world rife with amazing new opportunities and unprecedented challenges. Born around the time the World Wide Web made its public debut in 1995, they are "digital natives," the first generation never to know the world without the Internet. They have grown up alongside powerful global networks that offer endless information and connectivity. They have also had the clear realization that their elders know no better than they do how to navigate ongoing crises; that they and their planet have been badly betrayed by decisions which preceded them. In Gen Z, Explained, a team of social scientists set out to take a comprehensive look at this generation, drawing on wide and lively interviews, surveys, and comprehensive linguistic analysis (deploying the authors' proprietary iGen Corpus, a 70-million word collection of Gen-Z-specific English language scraped from social media, time-aligned video transcriptions, and memes). It paints a portrait of an extraordinarily challenged, thoughtful, and promising generation--while sounding a warning to their elders. The authors show that despite all the seemingly insurmountable difficulties they face, this generation continues to be idealistic about the future and highly motivated to make change"--

The Art of Living in a Digital Age

Gen Z, Explained

An optimistic and nuanced portrait of a generation that has much to teach us about how to live and collaborate in our digital world. Born since the mid-1990s, members of Generation Z comprise the first generation never to know the world without the internet, and the most diverse generation yet. As Gen Z starts to emerge into adulthood and enter the workforce, what do we really know about them? And what can we learn from them? Gen Z, Explained is the authoritative portrait of this significant generation. It draws on extensive interviews that display this generation’s candor, surveys that explore their views and attitudes, and a vast database of their astonishingly inventive lexicon to build a comprehensive picture of their values, daily lives, and outlook. Gen Z emerges here as an extraordinarily thoughtful, promising, and perceptive generation that is sounding a warning to their elders about the world around them—a warning of a complexity and depth the “OK Boomer” phenomenon can only suggest. ​ Much of the existing literature about Gen Z has been highly judgmental. In contrast, this book provides a deep and nuanced understanding of a generation facing a future of enormous challenges, from climate change to civil unrest. What’s more, they are facing this future head-on, relying on themselves and their peers to work collaboratively to solve these problems. As Gen Z, Explained shows, this group of young people is as compassionate and imaginative as any that has come before, and understanding the way they tackle problems may enable us to envision new kinds of solutions. This portrait of Gen Z is ultimately an optimistic one, suggesting they have something to teach all of us about how to live and thrive in this digital world.

Roberta Katz

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