Generation Z may prove to be the most activist group of all
In the battle for the soul of America in the early 21st century, let it be known that the revolution is being led by teenagers. Generation Z has arrived, and this is just the beginning.
The March For Our Lives movement to protest school shootings and gun violence has made waves around the world. The roiling debate over guns in the United States resonates with many here in Quebec, where violent rampages at École Polytechnique in 1989, Dawson College in 2006 and at a Quebec City mosque in 2017 are still close to the surface.
Make no mistake: We are witnessing a generational changing of the guard. While there is still a disproportionate fixation on Millennials, I think Generation Z — born after the Millennials, roughly between 1995 and 2010 — is the one to watch.
Young people are biologically hardwired to take risks and push back against authority. Nothing new about that. But here’s the difference: Gen Z has been shaped by a set of social and cultural conditions unlike anything we’ve ever seen. We’re only just starting to get a sense of who they are, what they want and what they can do.
While American youth have identified gun control as their prime issue, their Canadian counterparts may well take on other ones. I could easily see a youth movement in this country crystallizing around issues such as affordable housing, education, precarious work, gender equality, privacy and surveillance, and government transparency and accountability.
These kids are the masters of our digital, social media age. They’ve never known anything else.
Gen Z has been shaped by a set of social and cultural conditions unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Theirs really is the first real global generation, where ideas about place, politics, identity and community have no limits. They openly and proudly embrace multiple identity categories. Example: The face of the movement is Emma Gonzalez from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed last month when a young man opened fire. She refers to herself as “18 years old, Cuban and bisexual.”
In the U.S., they have been referred to as the school shooting generation.
It’s a generation that is distrustful of institutions it doesn’t feel represents it, and it isn’t afraid to push back. Not surprisingly, it has put government and media on notice.
These young people watched people just like them go from anonymity to global celebrity in the blink of an eye. Imagine: just weeks ago, these kids were living in obscurity; today, they are on the cover of Time magazine, convening CNN town halls, giving interviews to major international news outlets and speaking to hundreds of thousands of people in Washington. They are almost freakishly brave and articulate.
For better or worse, disruption, surveillance, instability, complexity and hyper-interconnectedness is the air they breathe. Gen Z is the only generation intuitively capable of weaponizing digital tools and the celebrity they create, and using that momentum to effect change at a political level.
Their cri de coeur in the U.S. right now? “Vote Them Out.” Their target: the midterm Congressional elections in eight months. In 2020, many more will be eligible to vote. And they’re registering to do just that.
That’s some generational firepower, right there.