Modern Youth — a Threat or a Great Opportunity?

Previously we have written a lot about ongoing digitization process and its perspectives. The situation is that sooner or later in every state there will be a unified information system that processes everything from booking a visit to a doctor to decisions taken by the government. There is also a probability that the system will be single for the whole world, but this is even more distant prospect than implementation of national ones.

In today’s article we will explain who will be early adopters of the system and why the process of common digitization is already late.

For whom digitization is?

Some recent researches of new behavioral patterns of the youth in the economy inform that there is an ongoing civilizational shift, another wave of post-industrial societal development, which is characterized by a change in values — the new conditional “generation Z” has a worldview, mindset, which is commonly referred to as “post-materialism”.

By the end of the 2010s, due to the fantastic digital breakthrough, the rapid development of the Internet and the special sector of the economy associated with it, post-materialism has turned from a not very intelligible sociological concept into a real phenomenon.

The thing is that today digital technologies for young people are something ordinary, they are not a dream, like they were for their parents. There is even a special “digital active persons” term that describes the young who constantly online and use internet services as much as possible in their daily life. And many of them mastered navigation on YouTube and Google search before they began to pronounce their first words.

Seeing the whole world on the screens of convenient gadgets, the young formed their own values and mindset. In general, they are focused on a rapid social “take-off”, on a frequent change of life conditions, on quick results from the efforts made to something. They build their lives around multidirectional interests, but, together with this, they do not want to take care of the distant future. After all, one of the main values is their own self-realization — professional, creative, personal.

Recent research says that such people and their lifestyles are a threat for global economy. Let’s enumerate some characteristics of such people and try to understand why they considered to be a threat:

1. They quickly switch when consuming information. They concentrate poorly. They perceive visual information well. They don’t like to read a lot of text, they understand icons, emoticons, videos and pictures better. Significant effort is required to perform complex, long-time tasks.
2. There are no long-term trends for this generation. The planning horizon for young people is minimal. They are formed almost every second
3. Motivation for activity is weak. Interest in real physical life, in the world is reduced. The very concept of “value” is blurry and loses its material form. They are abstract and presented in a virtual environment.
4. Success is considered as personal happiness. Success is measuring in diversity of life and the pleasure of being, not wealth and social status. Work, of course, should be profitable, however, no one is ready to work hard. Talking about happiness, young people practically do not use the words “career” and “prestigious work”.
5. The Gen Z have a habit of escaping from the state and from the family. They are individualists. Finding personal path is a basic “feature” of Gen Z.
6. The concept of “territory” does not make sense in a virtual, digital environment, which leads to difficulties in the formation of concepts about the rules of “hostel” in a particular place. The youth is not easy to agree on the responsibility for the territory and the maintenance of a normal existence. This creates difficulties in adaptation in the team when working “in real life”.
7. The Gen Z are afraid of lifestyle, in which there is no place for spontaneity, intense experience and vivid impressions.
8. Young people are passive about their own health and lead a sedentary lifestyle. They are comfortable with long sitting with gadgets that have Internet access.

What is the conclusion?

The thing is that Gen Z representatives do not want to stay in one place and do boring work, not seeing the quick results of their work. They do not take care of earning a lot and saving money. What’s more, the young are not willing to run their own business, and most of them will not create any business.

Due to the too close planning horizon, young people do not want to accumulate personal material resources and save them. Why should they buy a car if they can order Uber anytime? The same is with apartments and other staff, everything can be rented today. What’s more, owning something limits their mobility that they value very much.

Such approach leads to stressing current economy that is built completely on consumption, buying, taking a loan. Gen Z representatives do not do this. In CIS countries this leads to stressing a pension system. The young work part-time or in freelance and do not pay a lot to pension system. Research say that, for example in Russia 25 million of people are considered to be Gen Z post-materialists. According to forecasts in 5–10 years there will be around 50 million of them. The “problem” is also relevant for other countries, Generation Z mindset is a global phenomenon.

It has been mentioned that generation Z representatives are threat to modern economy. But as far as we know no one says that this is a great possibility.

There is a great challenge to involve these people in the social life, providing them with a convenient digital environment. The question here is not just e-government solution, this is about the penetration of digitalization in all spheres of life. The possibilities to study online instead of going to school or university, visit a supermarket without any staff, visit another country without applying to visa or at least with a simple online procedure, get a remote doctor consultation without the necessity to visit a hospital and stay and queue will be positively received by the society and especially by Gen Z guys. And ideally everything this should operate via a single application, without the necessity to download a few dozens of applications and register in all of them.

In case we manage to create such a digital environment, this will make possible to unleash the potential of generation Z representatives.

Research show also that young people value creative intellectual work in several industries, somehow connected with the Internet, software development, design, science, art, music etc. They are more likely to invest in themselves as “human capital” than in tangible assets. It is supposed that this capital will become fully capable of creating solvent demand in the market in the future.

The potential of generation Z representatives in the mentioned spheres can be unleashed only in case of there is a convenient digital environment that benefits to their self-realization. Only in this case they will be completely involved in business activities and benefit to general progress development. If there is no such an environment, people, whose mindset has been formed with the influence of digital progress, will migrate to countries with better digital environment, because for most people of Gen Z foreign languages are not a problem.

Speaking within the frameworks of business model canvas, postmaterialism adopters are the early adopters of all the state digitization activities.

Today more and more founders and product-managers consider “digitally active persons”, and a so called “connected customers” as a core segment of the product’s or service’s target audience. Both categories are represented by Gen Z people, who are constantly online, how like to choose and compare, make conscious choice on any issue.

There is already a great number of Gen Z people and its growing fast. Right now they have a strong demand in availability of online service that processes daily operations in complexity. Creation of a single, completely paperless, automated economy, where everyone is represented, is our future.