If you’ve had a baby since 2010 you may be wondering what this generation of kids will grow into. What kind of world, what kind of person?
Who are our kids going to be – this generation dubbed “Generation Alpha”?
There are 2.5 million Generation Alphas being born around the globe each week.
Some 6000 a week in Australia. Each new addition to the Alpha Gen born into a world of technological and medical advances their grandparents couldn’t have dreamed of.
Their names are Charlotte or Ava, William, Emily, Jack, Noah or Mia.
Many of them are already celebrities. North West, Harper Beckham, Prince George and his sister Charlotte.
Their lives will have been documented on social media, a digital footprint already set in stone and impossible to erase. They will live lives more sheltered than their parents, but they will be less hovered over than the Generation Z a few years ahead who suffered helicopter parenting.
According to social researcher Mark McCrindle, who coined the term "Generation Alpha", these babies will become the most influential generation the world has ever seen.
Technology
At every turn there has been a screen and they know innately how to interact with it. Via IStock.
These kids never knew a world without it. They were born as the first iPad was born – in 2010 – and their lives will be seamlessly integrated into technology.
From the moment they could see, screens were all around them, much more so than even children a decade older.
Screens took photos of them from the second they were born. Screens were placed in front of them as a babysitting device. Screens were used at day care and kindy. For entertainment and as education.
At every turn there has been a screen and they know innately how to interact with it.
The world they grow up in will be connected through social networking, they would have already had their first swipe, their first download, their first app. They will take technology for granted. Mark McCrindle says they will be “more influenced by the visual and the video than the written and the verbal.”
The prediction is that our Gen Alpha babies will be wealthiest generation ever - but also the most socially conscious.
So while we might feel guilty at raising them in front of a screen we might just be doing something right.
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