“Who are Millennials and Generation Z?”
In the developed world, pretty much everyone born after 1980 is a “digital native.” They have spent their lives being exposed to digital media and have an almost instinctive fluency with new technologies. In Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, internet and law experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser describe how digital technology is shaping the values, attitudes and behavior of the new generation.
Generational researcher David Stillman and his gen Z son Jonah Stillman expand on this theme in Gen Z @ Work: How the Next Generation Is Transforming the Workplace. The authors also stress how events like the Great Recession, terrorism and the September 11, 2001, attacks have turned gen Zers into sober realists who expect the world to be a tough place. Meanwhile, the authors also stress how the internet and YouTube has turned gen Zers into the ultimate “do-it-yourself” generation confident to handle new challenges on their own.
Born into a world in constant flux, millennials thrive on change, explains David D. Burstein in Fast Future: How the Millennial Generation is Shaping Our World. In the book, he describes millennials as optimistic, idealistic, pragmatic and resilient, and who want to see a world where corporations take on social responsibility.
