Google ‘generational stereotypes’ and these are some of the many headlines you’ll find:
- Gen Z are an employers’ nightmare!
- Millennials afraid of the lunch break backlash!
- Boomers are actually just as lazy as Gen Z!
Beyond the exclamation marks and dramatic content, it’s interesting to reflect on what these headlines tell us about much of the generational research out there:
- Generations make for great headlines
- Differences are often framed as competition
- Young people are always described as lazy.
It also tells us that one of the reasons generational thinking has taken hold is because we identify with generations in a way that we don’t with a simple expression of our age cohort; most of us don’t feel our age, but when we hear about our generation we definitely feel something. Generations are part of our identity, they reference the culture we consume, the way we dress, the way we view the world and yes, how we’re different, better, more progressive (or increasingly recessive) than the one before.
These headlines also follow a similar pattern of taking a partial truth and magnifying it to become sensational and often absurd. That can be fun, but it’s a shame too, because lazy sensationalist stereotyping is one of the reasons that generational thinking is often dismissed as an insubstantial way to look at the world.
Yet generational thinking and research, when done with integrity, can reveal so much about what drives people.
Rather than an insubstantial marketing construct, it is built upon the very foundations of sociology, the concept of ‘collective consciousness’. The thought that while humans are egocentric, a shared sense of norms, beliefs and values allow for social cohesion.
The Strauss-Howe generational theory from 1992 framed collective consciousness into generational bands, discussing how culture shifts over time. It observed that groups of people who experience their formative years together, share more than a birth date, but rather a collective view of the world, different from the cohort before. And this view of the world lingers as they mature and develop.
In our new study, This is Us: Generations 2025, we have gone deep on these different generational views of the world.
One area with some of the largest generational differences is healthcare and body image. Our data shows how generations feel differently about many aspects of healthcare, including emerging treatments such as weight loss injections.
When we spoke to healthcare professionals (part of our ‘everyday experts’ approach) they described fundamental differences in generational attitude to healthcare advice; Gen Z and Millennials rush to social media for their intel , while the Gen X and Boomers seek out trained professionals.
This cannot be explained by age alone, there are strong socio-economic and cultural generational differences at play. This is just one example of the myriad real and tangible differences that exist across generations, and demonstrates why Generational Thinking should not be dismissed, but instead lauded as a vital lens to understand the world around us.
Our new report, This is Us: Generations 2025 explores differences and comparisons across generations in the UK and US. It is based on a sample of 2,000 adults in both UK and US. Contact hello@the-nursery.net for more information