What comes after Generation Z? Alpha, of course

If Siri had any feelings she would know she was being affectionately teased. When 10-year-old Belinda and her friends have a play date they sometimes pepper Siri with questions in the hope she will say something random and make them laugh. “Do a rap,” they urge Siri. “Tell us a bedtime story.”

“The stories and raps are very funny, because they don’t make sense,” Belinda says. “So it’s like a duck went up to a store, the duck came back from the store, you went to school the next day and stuff like that.”

Belinda and her friends are part of a tech-savvy generation who have grown up interacting with artificial intelligence in the form of Siri, Alexa and Google. They were born into a world of portable devices.

Belinda, 10, is already comfortable interacting with artificial intelligence.Credit:Jason South

In 2010 when the first of their generation were born, Apple released the first iPad, internet activist Julian Assange published thousands of classified documents, Mark Zuckerberg was Time’s person of the year and Instagram was launched.

Sydney-based social researcher Mark McCrindle first coined the term Generation Alpha to describe those born between about 2010 and 2024.

It was 2005, the cut-off for Generation Z was fast approaching and no one seemed to be thinking about what would come next.

After running a survey on what the new label should be – suggestions included Regeneration and the Onliners – McCrindle settled on Generation Alpha to signify the start of something new.

He’s been pleased to see the name picked up across the globe. It’s been used by Forbes, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Atlantic – although since the pandemic, there has been some talk of Generation C or the Coronials. McCrindle believes these are unlikely to stick “because by the 22nd century COVID will be a footnote in their lives”.

McCrindle and his colleague Ashley Fell have written a book, Generation Alpha, aimed at helping parents, educators and leaders understand the world in which children are being shaped.

“Even prior to 2020, I began to notice an increase in the interest the world was taking in the next generation of children. To many people, they are a bit of a mystery,” McCrindle writes in the prologue.

At present there are 3 million Generation Alphas in Australia and more than 2.8 million are born globally each week. By 2025, when all of this generation will have been born, they will number more than 2 billion – making them the largest generation in history.

They have access to more technology, information and external influences than any generation before them, McCrindle says, and at a younger age.

They are globally connected, with their popular culture no longer solely exported from the West, with social media juggernaut TikTok coming out of China and K-pop (Korean pop music) originating from South Korea.

“There are transformative times in human history from the Reformation to the enlightenment to the industrial revolution to post-modernity,” McCrindle says.

“With this digital era we’re entering one such transformation, and on top of that we have a global pandemic. If ever we wanted to understand the future in a time of uncertainty it’s now.”

Dan Woodman, a professor of sociology from the University of Melbourne who studies generations, has also noticed a focus on Generation Alpha, when the narrative around previous generations was not formed until much later.

Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X about listless, over-educated, underemployed 20-somethings with McJobs, did not come out until 1991, when that cohort was already well into their teens and early 20s. “It’s when people are in their late teens and 20s that they start to really confront the culture they’ve been given, and change it or rework it,” Woodman says.

“When I read things about Generation Alpha, I’m thinking, ‘Well, you are just talking about kids’.”

Woodman says big money is involved in coming up with a label that sticks. “You can almost build a career out of being the folk who name a generation,” Woodman says, pointing to United States authors Neil Howe and William Strauss, who are widely credited with coining the term “millennials”.

“But I also think we’re probably talking about Generation Alpha because of anxiety; we worry about what these technologies will do to them, we probably worry about what the future will hold for them. And we are interested in them because they are children living during a period of upheaval, they’re living through a pandemic.”

Mila, who at 11 was born on the cusp of Generation Alpha, bought a phone last month after saving up by working at her mother’s shop.

In 2020, just under half (46 per cent) of Australian children aged six to 13 used a mobile phone, up from 41 per cent in 2015, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Mila, 11, already helps her parents with their devices.Credit:Justin McManus

Mila’s favourite game is Among Us, where crew members are trapped on a spaceship with imposters who are trying to murder them.

She played it a lot during lockdown. “There’s a chat [with other players], and you have to try and figure out who the killer is,” Mila says.

She also uses her phone to message friends and scroll through Instagram and video-sharing app TikTok. Mila follows her friends and TikTok influencers such as American dancer Charli D’Amelio, who has 118 million followers, and English singer Dua Lipa.

She also searches for life hacks and iPhone tricks. “Like with Google, for instance, if you type in ‘do a barrel roll’ your screen will roll around.”

All the year 5s and 6s at Mila’s school study computer and digital technology. “Last year we made a game on Scratch, which is a coding website,” she says.

Mila already helps her parents with their devices. “They will be really stuck, and then you just press a button, they’re like, ‘Wait, how did you do that?’

Mila’s mother recently cracked down on Mila’s phone use, banning it before 9am and after 8pm and imposing time limits of one hour per app. “She will be bleary eyed after being on her phone or watching too much TikTok,” Elisabet says. “They don’t know how to stop. It’s like an addiction, even for adults … but for kids it will be even harder.”

McCrindle says screens are often a source of tension. Parents want to ensure their children are equipped with the necessary digital skills while having the life skills that come from activities away from screens.

“The socialisation that technology brings is an incredible plus,” McCrindle says, pointing to the role it played in keeping young people connected and learning during global COVID-19 lockdowns.

Social researcher Mark McCrindle at his office in 2011.Credit:Domino Postiglione

But he says concerns remain about the increase in sedentary lifestyles, the addictive nature of devices, cyber-bullying, children growing up faster than previous generations and internet security.

“In some ways, Generation Alpha are part of an unintentional global experiment in which screens are placed in front of them from the youngest age,” McCrindle and Fell write in Generation Alpha.

They recommend showing an interest in children’s viewing choices, having a screen-free bedtime, modelling screen-free family time and using devices as a reward.

Belinda has had an iPad since year 3. “They had to have the iPads for school otherwise we wouldn’t have got them at that age,” says Catherine, her mother.

Belinda is allowed to use her iPad as a reward after doing violin and piano practice. “It’s always ‘Can I use my iPad, I’ll do that afterwards’ and the afterwards never happens,” Catherine says. “Change the order and it gets done.”

Belinda’s favourite platform is Roblox, a collection of games created by its community of users. She likes playing Adopt Me!, an online game where you adopt and trade virtual pets, and Brookhaven, a role-playing game where players choose where they live and what car they drive. “You just make up a life as you go along,” she says.

Belinda is hypervigilant to “stranger danger” – something she learnt from her parents and school – and ensures her privacy settings mean that only her friends can join her in games on Roblox.

Last year she deleted video sharing app TikTok when it was facing a ban in the US amid privacy concerns and fears that the company may share user data with the Chinese government.

“My parents said I shouldn’t have it any more because of China having your information if they see your face,” Belinda says.

“It’s fun to watch because I like the dances that they do, but I normally now watch them on YouTube because you can search up the famous people like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae.”

On occasion Belinda has wiped all her apps off her iPad, worried that she has disclosed too much, such as her date of birth and photo. “I got scared because I didn’t want my personal information being leaked everywhere,” Belinda says. When she downloads apps now she doesn’t use her real date of birth.

“These guys grow up a bit quicker than you expect them to,” Catherine says. “You think, ‘We’ll get around to understanding that when we need to’, but they’re probably four steps ahead of that.”

In 2018, Ryan Kaji, a member of Generation Alpha from Texas, became the highest earning YouTube star of the year, raking in $31 million.

A so-called “kidfluencer” Ryan, who is now nine years old, has his own YouTube channel, Ryan’s World, on which he reviews toys. His parents took videos of him unboxing toys when he was just three. Ryan’s World now has 29.9 million subscribers.

“I watched one of them and then gave up on it forever,” says nine-year-old Ndahmowa. “It’s boring. This kid who just plays with toys and makes train tracks has got like millions of subscribers and it’s just dog water.”

Ndahmowa, 9, talks to relatives on FaceTime.Credit:Justin McManus

Ndahmowa attends a Steiner school, which his mother, Rachel, says is anti-technology in the early years, and she tries to maintain that philosophy in her home. But he has a Nintendo Switch, which he mostly plays at his dad’s place.

Ndahmowa also listens to audio books on his mum’s phone, Face-Times his relatives in Cameroon and downloaded an app to learn German during lockdown.

A Liverpool fan, Ndahmowa likes watching soccer on his iPad or playing gaming videos such as Minecraft on his Switch. Sometimes he watches YouTubers such as Wisp or Dream play Minecraft. “I don’t mind watching Dream speed-run with hunters, where he tries to beat the game as fast as he can,” he says.

When he was younger, he would have long conversations with Siri. “It was so funny, he used to say: ‘Siri, what’s the password for [Ndahmowa’s older brother] Sunny’s iPad?’” Rachel says. “He couldn’t understand why Siri wasn’t intelligent.”

Generation Alpha says a generation who grew up with Siri and Alexa will see artificial intelligence and voice recognition become increasingly common methods of communication between human and machine.

“This will lead to keyboards and screens giving way to controller-free gestural interfaces and two-way conversations between device and human.”

But the book warns that Generation Alpha will be faced with ethical decisions which we can hardly contemplate, particularly when it comes to robots and sentience, the ability to perceive, feel and experience.

“In a world where you will be able to give some level of human intelligence to machines, and where there is potential for superintelligence, issues like bioethics and transhumanism are also likely to be on the agenda for the Alphas.”

But Woodman, professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne, says it’s very difficult to predict what Generation Alpha’s future will hold or the ethical dilemmas they will face.

When his baby boomer parents were young, he says, futurists predicted technology would make everyone so productive that they would have a 15-hour working week.

“That was the generation that invented burnouts, and many worked extremely long hours,” Woodman says. “Being a futurist is a hard game.”

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