Generation Beta: Meaningless grift or useful demographic identifier?

All hail the new generation. The futurists and the demographers have spoken, and lo, the new generation is named Generation Beta. And they shall be the ones born between two arbitrary dates so that a bunch of gurus and consultants can make millions selling reports, talks and consultancy, extending the grift for a score more years.

OK, maybe that’s a bit harsh. Things change over time, and maybe there is some value in thinking about groups of people based on when they were born. Even if the dates do seem to be chosen more based on when there is a desire to sell a new report, rather than any real material shift in culture. See generations passim, the supposed boundaries of which have changed repeatedly as their supposed characteristics firmed up.

I was on Times Radio recently with my good friend Darryl Morris, talking about Generation Beta, how they might differ and what life might be like for them as they grow. Naturally this is a broad topic and got us talking about a whole range of different subjects: global power, life expectations, work, religion and spirituality. 

In spite of my scepticism, I thought it worth exploring the idea of Generation Beta. What might differentiate them beyond the date of their birth, once their differences resolve?

New to the timeline

Generation Beta will be born between now and 2039 (told you it was arbitrary). And according to the person who named them, Mark McCrindle, they will be “more globally minded, community-focused, and collaborative than ever before.” They will also “embody the balance between hyper-connectivity and personal expression.”

In the manner of a psychic, I suspect you could make all that sound very prescient, whatever happens in the next 20 years. But I sort of know what he means. You can read the full description here but I think those sentences give us enough to start an exploration.

‘Globally Minded’

Take the ‘globally minded’ piece. It’s true that the world has never been smaller. For all that we worry about social media, it is a window into the (heavily filtered) lives of people all around the world. 5bn-ish people are online and in the next 20 years, more and more will have the bandwidth and hardware to create rich media. And we’ll likely see the rise of new cultural superpowers. My bet is on Nigeria but there are lots of countries with large, young populations who might start to drive the narrative on food, music, fashion, film, literature and games - as well as politics and morality. 

‘Community Focused’

For all that we might be linked with peers around the world, it’s still local people you share the classroom, the bus, and the workplace with. It’s your street who share your issues with bin collection, weather, and bad parking. One of the perhaps surprising aspects of social media, from Facebook to Whatsapp, is that it has been a vehicle for re-connecting communities as much as continents. 

Place matters, and in an age of great social challenge, as Generation Beta will face, it matters all the more. If you want to know how community-minded we are, go back to stats from the pandemic. There are two opposing views. In 2020, the ONS found that 77.9% of adults thought people were doing more to help others since the COVID-19 pandemic began. There were lots of stories - and stats - about neighbours keeping an eye on each other and making sure everyone got their shopping in.

But post-pandemic the figures don’t look so rosy. The Institute for Social and Economic Research found that post-pandemic we trust our neighbours less.

This isn’t necessarily pandemic-related: it has been a tough time for many reasons since the 2008 crash. Worsening economic conditions are bound to make people a little more tense and perhaps over time, less community minded.

Generation Beta will be dealing with the fallout from climate change, as well as a very uncertain geopolitical scene. And collapsing (collapsed?) local public services. I hope they are community minded in the way that sees them make sure their neighbours get fed, and not in the way that leads them to find peers who share their conspiracy theories and storm government buildings.

‘hyper-connectivity and personal expression’

Long-time readers will know I’m a little obsessed with the tension between our on and offline lives. I strongly believe that the more we are bound to the digital realm, the more we crave the analogue. The physical realm will offer a much richer experience for some time to come - and I say this as a videogames enthusiast who devotes hours to everything from retro hits (hello Wing Commander: Privateer) to modern VR classics (yes, I get my John Wick on in Pistol Whip).

Digital interaction will be near inescapable for Generation Beta if, as I and many others expect, we transition from handset to headset as our primary mode of digital interaction. 10 hours a day in mixed reality is the prediction I’ve made before and I stick by it. It might even be an underestimate if it becomes the medium through which we travel (navigation and ticketing), shop (payment and AI assistance), work (digital tools interface), date (mixed reality Tinder anyone?), and get entertained (it’s the obvious format for gaming, and media - shared or solo).

So escaping it might become part of the point. Doing things that are outside the digital realm. And this is a trend we’re already seeing. From sofa hobbies like knitting to more raucous exploits - by some measures, it looks like grassroots motorsport is growing fast. Dating, shopping, making, exercising - all I think will be places where the next generation is studiously offline.

So it all makes sense then?

I started this post with a bit of snark, then went on to say that actually I could see where the authors of Generation Beta were coming from. Let me bring those two disparate views together and quality.

Generational definitions only really make sense in retrospect. When you can poke real fun at them and set up artificial intergenerational battles for the sake of funny social media posts. We only really knew what it meant to be Gen X when Gen Xers themselves started to write about the experience. And over time the definition of who fell into that generation shifted to loosen or tighten the boundaries in order to separate them from Millennials. The same thing happened with Millenials and Gen Y/Z and will happen with Gen Alpha (though they are so chronically online that they are already defining themselves in the public discourse).

We can make bets now about what it will mean to be Generation Beta now, and how that will differ from the preceding and subsequent generations. But we won’t really know for some time.

Until then though, there’s plenty of money to be made in talking about it.