{"text":[[{"start":6.3,"text":"Did you know that Gen Z is drinking less, watching birds more, ditching social media and developing a fundamentally different relationship with the truth?"}],[{"start":16.05,"text":"Were you aware they also think that AI is making them dumber, that TikTok beats recruiters for career advice and a four-year degree might not be worth it?"}],[{"start":25.55,"text":"All this is a droplet in the wave of Gen Z bilge that has come crashing into my inbox this month."}],[{"start":31.9,"text":"I say bilge for a reason. This coming Tuesday marks the fifth year to the day since an American sociologist named Philip Cohen took an unusually spirited stand against Gen Z, millennials and other generational labels."}],[{"start":46.849999999999994,"text":"Using them “promotes pseudoscience, undermines public understanding, and impedes social science research”, he wrote in an open letter to the Pew Research Center that scores of other researchers signed."}],[{"start":58.89999999999999,"text":"Cohen targeted the respected US think-tank for good reason. "}],[{"start":62.64999999999999,"text":"Pew had done a huge amount to legitimise the idea that people born between 1946 and 1964 were baby boomers who were followed by generation X (born between 1965 and 1980), then millennials (1981 to 1996) and generation Z (1997 to 2012)."}],[{"start":84.04999999999998,"text":"But as Cohen pointed out, there was no scientific basis for most of these divisions, which fuelled crude stereotypes and undermined public understanding. "}],[{"start":94.09999999999998,"text":"A few months after Cohen’s letter, British social researcher Bobby Duffy published Generations, a book that showed that, while there are some genuine distinctions, a lot of what we think about generational differences in no way matches reality. "}],[{"start":107.49999999999999,"text":"Older people are just as concerned as the young about climate change. The young may obsess more about safe spaces and cancel culture, but younger people have always outpaced their elders on shifting social conventions. "}],[{"start":120.49999999999999,"text":"Lumping everyone into age-related groups is of more than academic concern. It muddies genuine lines of race, gender and class. As the Australian economist John Quiggin wrote in 2018, blaming baby boomers for ruining America “lumps together Donald Trump and a 60-year-old Black woman who works for minimum wage cleaning one of his hotels”. "}],[{"start":144.04999999999998,"text":"To its credit, Pew responded to its critics, declaring in 2023 it would avoid the generational lens in future, except when it added value to debates and lent meaning to social trends."}],[{"start":156.49999999999997,"text":"But as my inbox shows, the marketing-media industrial complex has taken precisely no notice of this, particularly when it comes to Gen Z."}],[{"start":165.04999999999998,"text":"There is no mystery here. Journalists, including me, use generational labels as shorthand more than we should, even when we know better."}],[{"start":172.6,"text":"Companies fixate on the young in the hope they will become life-long customers, and on young employees who might help to attract such clients."}],[{"start":181.7,"text":"This is why professors like Duffy get so many invites to away days and corporate strategy sessions held by employers eager to know how to devise a Gen Z workplace strategy. He delivers bracing advice. "}],[{"start":194.2,"text":"“I try to get people to realise that that’s exactly the wrong question and you’re part of the problem, not the solution, if you’re framing it like that,” he told me."}],[{"start":204.14999999999998,"text":"He tells employers that Gen Z does differ from previous younger generations in some ways. They face tougher economic pressures, higher mental ill-health rates and, crucially, delayed adulthood and work experience. The share of 16- and 17-year-old students in the UK with a job has plunged from 42 per cent in 1997 to just 20 per cent in 2024."}],[{"start":226.79999999999998,"text":"But many people in older generations face similar woes, and strategies aimed at the Gen Z “problem” are deeply unhelpful at a time when we are living more separately than ever before."}],[{"start":238.29999999999998,"text":"Four decades ago, there was little difference in the age mix between town and country in the UK, but since then, villages have grown older and cities younger. We also live very separate lives online and even offline, we don’t do as many activities that bring all generations together. "}],[{"start":256.29999999999995,"text":"As Duffy points out, the workplace is one of the few places where people of all ages have to mix. "}],[{"start":263.19999999999993,"text":"Strategies aimed at the young alone reinforce irksome typecasting and ignore the many benefits of mentoring, networking and recruitment measures designed to bring people of all ages together."}],[{"start":274.94999999999993,"text":"I think he is dead right. It is disturbing to see studies showing one in five Gen Z workers has not spoken to a colleague aged over 50 in the past year, but not shocking. Good luck to any employer who ends this workplace divide, and good riddance to those who widen it."}],[{"start":299.94999999999993,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779595199_4078.mp3"}