Divided or Dependent? The Real Gen Z Story

0:00Vicky Spratt:Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.

0:20Professor Bobby Duffy:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics, the Gen Z story with me, Vicky Spratt. This week in Divided or Dependent, the real Gen Z story, we're going to be unpacking some big myths about generations. We're going to be separating fact from fiction. What do we think we know about Gen Z and what do we really know about them? Are they work shy and difficult to have in the workplace, too dependent on their parents? or are they a generation that have grown up differently to everybody who came before them? I've just finished interviewing Professor Bobby Duffy and what he had to say about this was absolutely fascinating.

1:04Professor Bobby Duffy:In case you're not familiar with his work, he's the director of the King's Policy Institute. He's written six books, three of which are about generations and the differences or not between them. And really the message I've taken away from him is we've got far more in common than we like to think. So here's episode two. Have a listen and let us know what you think. And if you are a student and you want to subscribe so you can hear the full episode, you can use your student email at therestispolitics.com and you'll get a subscription for the whole year for just£20. You said something to me recently that I found really, really striking when we were researching this series, which is that one of the biggest mistakes made with Gen Z is assuming that they're completely different to the generations that went before them.

2:00Professor Bobby Duffy:What did you mean by that? I thought it was fascinating.

2:02Vicky Spratt:I just get really tired because I get asked a lot about generational differences and what's real and what's not. And so often, people are asking me about things that they ask me exactly the same questions about millennials. I'm very old now, so I've seen this go through a few cycles of generations. And it comes to those points where the entitled label was exactly the same for millennials. Millennials were called Generation Me when it first started. So we just repeat these cycles of putting these types of characteristics on the younger generation, whether that's lazy, entitled, but then on the more positive side, that they're particularly socially conscious or they're really into brand purpose and that's all they care about, or they're very entrepreneurial.

2:50Vicky Spratt:And hardly any of this stacks up against the data that these kind of cliched shifts are not really backed up. And I just get tired because it keeps coming back generation after generation. I guarantee it will be the same for Generation Alpha in 10 years or so. People will be making the same claims about these big breaks that we're suddenly seeing. And the reason I get cross about it a little bit is that people try to sell stuff on the back of this. It's whether it's just stories or whether it's a particular brand or product or whether it's consultancy and people saying Gen Z are completely different in the workplace.

3:31Vicky Spratt:I need to come in and teach you how to engage with this new cohort of people who have different values, different behaviors. Otherwise, your workforce won't work together. And that makes me really upset because it's kind of exactly the wrong way to frame it. Because if you're coming in and say Gen Z are really peculiar, all you're doing is adding to that sense of generation separation and conflict, which is the last thing we need and really not held up by the data.

4:02Professor Bobby Duffy:I'm shocked to learn that brands and consultants are trying to monetize generational warfares and misunderstandings. But there is something going on in the workplace, right? There does seem to be a disconnect between older people and younger people. What can we put that down to?

4:20Vicky Spratt:Well, I think the big conclusion I came to in the book is that a real problem is not generational conflict, it's generational separation. We have drifted apart by age group in a way that we just haven't really noticed. So if you go back to the 80s and even early 90s, and you looked at the age profile of villages through small towns, bigger towns up to the big cities, there was no difference in measures like the old age dependency ratio. So the proportion of retired people to the proportion of working age people, they were all the same. But then since then we've just splayed apart in an incredible way where towns and villages are getting older and cities and large towns are getting younger to really big degrees.

5:02Vicky Spratt:And I say we haven't noticed it because when we poll people on this and you ask them, do young people tend to live in cities and older people outside, they say, yes, of course, that's the case. But then if you ask them, was that always been the case? They also say, yes, of course, that's always been the case 50 years ago. And it wasn't. We used to live much more mixed by age. On top of that, I would say, you know, our digital lives are much more important to who we are nowadays. And still the biggest gaps I see in any of my generational analysis is between use of social media platforms and other technological communication behaviors.

5:40Vicky Spratt:So, you know, huge take up among Gen Z, steps down to millennials, then bigger steps down to Gen X, and then baby boomers and pre-war really not engaging that much. So we're on different platforms doing different things to very different intensities in our digital lives too. And then third factor is on top of that, we've lost a lot of the kind of community support connections, whether that's religion, trade unions more as a social thing rather than a work-based thing, so many community groups. So we've lost a lot of the scaffolding that pushed lots of young people and older people together in our day-to-day lives.

6:15Vicky Spratt:We're still very connected in the home through the family, even more connected than in the past. But outside of the home, we have very little contact across the age groups compared to the past.

6:26Professor Bobby Duffy:Do you think that's because of the decline of community spaces or the third space, as we would call it in sociology? I mean, I remember as a teenager, before I was legally able to drink and after, There was a social club in the town where I lived that we would go and you would have everybody from 16 through to 90 years old playing pool cards, drinking, but also not drinking. And those spaces have closed down. Definitely.

6:53Vicky Spratt:That is definitely part of it. I mean, I think, and then even a step back from that is those people are no longer living in the same towns and villages or cities to the same degree. So we've actually kind of completely physically separated, but definitely the loss of our community infrastructure has been part of that too. So you end up with a workplace where people just have had much less contact with people of other age groups outside their own family, being pushed together in the workplace and really not understanding each other as much as you should. So this is why when I try to talk to people about Gen Z workplace strategies, which is what it's often framed at, is I try to get them to realize that's exactly the wrong question.

7:35Vicky Spratt:What you should be talking about is an intergenerational workplace strategy that brings people together. Don't do something special for Gen Z. Try to bring the different generations together, not just the oldest, include the middle two in this. Trying to get people to that kind of idea is, I think, incredibly helpful. and people get it intuitively. But it's so interesting that all the background noise about difference and conflict colors people's views so they don't really see that, that actually it's separation, not conflict, that's the issue.

8:07Professor Bobby Duffy:Sounds like we're trading in quite a lot of lazy stereotypes, which ultimately are making the division greater rather than bringing us closer together. We've had a lot of responses from the trip audience for this series. And just on social media, I wanted to tell you what Luke, a 23-year-old graduate from Newcastle, had to say. Essentially, that he's incredibly lonely. I can't overstate how lonely the modern world feels. Moving somewhere new, it's hard to find community in the real world, making it difficult to find and make friends. No wonder so many people my age are driven to social media and into their own tribes.

8:47Professor Bobby Duffy:What influence and impact has growing up on social media had for this younger cohort?

8:56Vicky Spratt:Yeah, it's definitely huge. It is a completely different way to live, which we haven't really prepared ourselves for. We haven't really changed much about our other behaviors. And I have some issues with the kind of Jonathan Haidt thesis about an anxious generation, but it is more sophisticated than it's often discussed. Because what Jonathan talks about is we have underprotected people, young people online, particularly children, but overprotected them in the real world. And it's those two things together that have left people feeling a bit lost and lonely or having to hold onto an identity and small niche groups that can lead people astray.

9:38Vicky Spratt:So I do recognize that I think that is really important. It's those two things together that we've effectively let the online space run wild while restricting young people's freedom within the real world. And that has left them quite scared and anxious, as your listener says. So yeah, it is a key part of shaping this generation and in a way, definitely more digitally native to that world than most of the previous generations, even in millennials. So this is something that they've grown up with as completely natural, but we've done nothing, I think, to consider the implications of that. And we have let it rip quite a bit.

10:26Professor Bobby Duffy:It's really interesting. What do you think stepping in sooner might have looked like?

10:31Vicky Spratt:I mean, I do think, when you think about Jonathan Haidt's kind of points about how there is no age of adulthood on the internet. And we just have let people get access to content in a way that we just would not in the real world. So we didn't think enough about how do we protect young people and get some proper age verification into these systems sooner. I mean, they're starting it now, but it's really hard. The trouble is, I mean, a lot of our work is more generally on culture wars, which includes that sense of loneliness and loss that people feel because that is a key part of people looking for tribal identities.

11:11Vicky Spratt:The trouble is the big answers are around proper regulation and control of these global platforms. And when you get to that, you get incredibly stuck on what strengths do we have? What capabilities do we have to control something that is truly global. And again, you're starting to see things inching forward from European Union and others, but they are inching forward 10, 15 years after this has actually been a life-shaping technology for lots of people. So we're way behind on that. And it looks increasingly difficult for nation states to have the power to control that.

11:50Professor Bobby Duffy:I mean, it's shutting the door after the horse has bolted, right? It's really interesting because what I'm hearing from you is that on the one hand, we've got this generation who see really clearly because they've been exposed to so much information, but there is division in the world between older people and younger people. Some of it manufactured, some of it down to what they've experienced. But then there's this dependency that's been created for young adults because they've been wrapped in cotton wool or mollycoddled a bit in some ways, but then exposed to quite extreme political material, material about relationships, pornography online.

12:32Professor Bobby Duffy:And then they are also, many of them, more dependent on their parents, certainly than I was and older generations were. Financially, because of the economic climate, they're entering adulthood in, more likely to live at home longer, more likely to be able to move out and buy a house of their own, if they've got homeowner parents who can give them some money, more likely to end up in a good job if they've got wealthy parents who can help them at university and they don't have to work part-time during their degree to pay off their loans. It's a really, really difficult situation to be in and it's not entirely fair, is it?

13:12Vicky Spratt:Yeah, no, that dependence on family is a real thing. So we've seen a massive shift in the past couple of decades to that utter reliance on family to say, support your first home. So it's now a third of new homeowners rely on gifts from family or friends. And it's almost always parents. So you've got a third of people relying on that now. And it was like 4 % in a couple of decades ago, but it is only people at the top end of the wealth spectrum who can afford that. So it's kind The vast majority of that comes from the top third of the wealth spectrum in that baby boomer cohort. So yes, you've got this sense of reliance, but also great inequality and unfairness within the generation on who actually can get that sort of support.

14:02Vicky Spratt:Otherwise, then you are stuck with people living at home to much, much longer. So we've gone from about one in five young people living at home in my generation up until their late 20s. And now you've got two in five young people living at home. That's an extra 2 million people living at home 10 years into their adulthood, 10 years and more into their adulthood. So you've got that kind of choice on the one hand, a lot of support from some parents. And then on the other hand, no choice at all for other groups of just having to stay at home, try to save up, et cetera. So yes, it's like it is an aggregate overall level.

14:43Vicky Spratt:It's giving that sense of greater dependence on parents. But for some people that works out really well and it gets them the leg up. But for other people, it forces you into a situation where it's not one that lots of people would choose. I talk about delayed adulthood in this and it's a kind of broader theme than just being stuck at home. We are just doing lots of things later. So people are getting married eight years later, having kids four years later than 20, 30 years ago. And all of those changes are just slowing down the development of younger people. So the death of the Saturday job is a real thing.

15:27Vicky Spratt:Half of older millennials had a Saturday job. It's a quarter of older Gen Z had a Saturday job. We've just seen this collapse in it for all sorts of reasons. And that just gives a bit less exposure to the workplace. So when Gen Z are coming into the workplace or going to university, they've got a little bit less of that real life experience. That does have an effect on how fast people are growing up, how independent they are, etc. I mean, I do have a take on that though, because it is, and it's a kind of personal one from just looking at my family, where my mum left school at 15, went to work in a factory full-time at 15, and then that was more or less her career.

16:11Vicky Spratt:By the time I was 17, I'd had like 12, 15 terrible jobs, lots that I probably shouldn't have done, dodgy temp agency type work that I shouldn't have been doing, and boots and Sainsbury's and all those types of things. My daughter at 17, the only commercial thing that she's ever done is selling stuff on Depop and Vinted. And it's stuff that we bought her and we do all the admin for her. And when I say that to people, it's kind of like, obviously, it's slightly at my daughter's expense, but it's more to point out to people that we think that the way we grew up just happened to hit upon the right speed of development for young people.

16:54Vicky Spratt:I think we'd all agree my mum leaving school and working full-time at 15 is not a model that we would support. We've got a slight sense, oh, are we mollycoddling this young generation because we're not asking them to do as much. And just by sheer coincidence, the model we grew up with is exactly the right one. But my daughter has got a 50 % chance of living to 90. She's probably going to work for 45 years. Going a little bit slower at the beginning may not be such a stupid choice, and it may actually be more natural going forward. So I'm quite relaxed about slowness in some ways for young people.

17:35Vicky Spratt:In general, the trouble is there's these incredible structural inequalities where some young people are getting loads of help to get started and other young people are getting no help at all and I think that that is a real problem.

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