New Generations Require Changes Beyond the Digital

Abstract

As journalism educators undertake curricular change to adapt to a fast-paced digital revolution, understanding audience in the teaching-learning relationship-our students-sometimes lacks priority.Yet, Generation X (Gen X), Baby Boomer, and older professors need to understand Generation Y (Gen Y) and Generation Z (Gen Z) if we are to teach them effectively.Thanks to most advertisers' covetous focus on Gen Y, as we dub those born between 1979 and 1997, we know a lot more about them than the newest generation now reaching adulthood. Researchers say Gen Y, also called Millennials, are close to their parents (Gen X, born between the early 1960s and the early 1980s) and boomerang back to their parents' home, as necessary. Their parents also helicopter around them, sometimes liaising with professors as they see the need. Gen Y also mistrust institutions, a fact that can challenge big and bureaucratized college settings. More than 40 percent of U.S. Millennials are non-White, the highest of any generation, a positive turn in the decades-long effort to increase diverse perspectives among our students and our newsrooms. With at least 85 percent of Millennials on Facebook, this is the first generation of digital natives.1If Millennials are the first digital natives, Gen Z represents the first generation to have lived entirely in a digital era. This cohort, born after 1995 and numbering one billion globally, is just beginning their college-age years; the oldest of this generation will have graduated by or in 2020.Research so far suggests that this demographic is marked by smaller families, closeness to their Gen X parents, but perhaps most importantly by their intimate and pervasive use of digital technologies. Gen Z students will have had the highest rates of homeschooling in U.S. history and will be accustomed to order, structure, a strong work ethic, and a sense of predictability.Bombarded with digital technologies from birth, Gen Z will have placed social media at the center of its social world rather than as a supplement to face-to-face relationships. This phenomenon may cause problems with social interactions and conflict resolution at college, work, and so on. Mentoring may be increasingly important for Gen Z to overcome social problems, but given Gen Z's naturalness with technology, they may engage in reverse mentoring with those from older generations.Online applications will be integral to the collaborative nature of Gen Z, who may thrive as avatars and in interactions within simulated work settings. Online gaming is important to this generation, a group that will exert leadership and have an advantage in managing online business interactions.2Sixty percent of Gen Zs want jobs with a social impact, compared with 31 percent of Gen Ys, according to 2014 research by the New York City advertising agency Sparks & Honey. The findings show that Gen Zs areentrepreneurial (72 percent want to start their own business), community oriented (26 percent already volunteer), and prudent (56 percent indicate they are savers, not spenders). …