Generation Z also known as post-millennials or centennials, accounting for about twenty-five percent the U.S. population are considered the generation that is more racially diverse with more friends from various ethnic, religious, and racial groups, more risk-adverse, less confident in the current economic system, more inclined to entrepreneurialism, more religious, and most obviously spend more time online and use phones more than television for entertainment. Companies consider Generation Z is known to currently have the largest purchasing power with online shopping steady growing every day. They are considered “digital natives” who consumer far more media on their smartphones than any generation before. It is embedded in the daily lives of Gen Z’s, used to consume social media, music, games, videos, and TV shows. They are secondly considered “Social Media Natives”, with social media being a key way of engaging with his or her community, with this also being the case for younger millennials. The younger the Gen Z the more they will consume their content digitally in a more natural and seamless way.
Although Generation Z is still mostly in primary and secondary school the older members of the generation are entering the workforce, and already have shown a noticeable difference from their predecessors, the millennials. They are more private, have a larger desire to feel connected in the job or career, and prefer to constantly get feedback from their employers. When it comes to communication in the workplace, Generation Z is to fall right into email and phone call based communication but also adding in more use of the still considerably new forms of communication like texting and messaging apps, all being done more from their phone than from a desktop which is the only major difference from the previous generations. There will always be level of professionalism that has come to be a characteristic of emails, and sending sensitive information will never suffice on platforms like GroupMe or Facebook Messenger. Communication in general however has shifted to a more digital approach being that the Gen Z’s are more open to have conversation with people of all different backgrounds from across the globe and do this on a public forum such as Twitter, Instagram, or Twitter. However, Gen Z is fonder of face-to-face communication than millennials who have become swallowed by the “virtual realm” of life.
As smartphones and the virtual realm have the shifted the workplace, communication, and reality of Generation Z, it will also affect their education if it hasn’t already had some form of change. Generation Z, a more multi-modal generation, are basically demanding a more engaging, visual, and hand approach to learning. With their online presence, they have all the information they could ever desire or learn in a school setting at the tip of their fingers (depending on the age) and even without a smartphone a younger Gen Z could still obtain the information because of their knowledge of how to simply search the web or Google it.
Generation Z is a large generation, who will have a big influence, and force some major changes in the future. Only so much can be predicted about how older generations will react to the impact that this generation will bring with their natural approach to the digital world and social media. Shifting to make this generation fit in to the professional world will be difficult when they are out making there building their own standards with they’re strong entrepreneurship skills, communication skills, and creativity skills that they obtained simply from looking and tapping their thumbs on a screen.
Sources:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Generation-Z
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2017/06/20/gen-z-media-consumption-its-a-lifestyle-not-just-entertainment/#297333d118c9
https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/03/29/10-ways-to-prepare-for-gen-z-in-the-workplace/#16dc7fcf29ee
https://www.4thoffice.com/blog/?p=142
http://generationz.com.au/influencers/