Gen Z and Performative Apathy

The Generational Trope that Typifies their User Persona

Boomers have their “back in my days”, Millenials have the “everyone gets a trophy”, and Gen X has something too... probably (I don’t know, because everyone forgets about them). But every generation becomes known for a certain type of persona. This is the generational glue that holds a group of people together and gives them a nugget of both identity and community.

Well, Gen Z has entered the scene, and I’d argue that their generational trope is performative apathy.

Who is Gen Z?

First let’s clear up the nitty gritty. Generation Z (also known in some circles as “zoomers”) is anyone born in the late 1990’s to the early 2000’s. So right now these are folks headed out of college and interacting with the workforce for the first time. These aren’t kids. These are grown adults with different lived experiences.

It’s easy to write off an entire generation when they’re the youngest, but they aren’t right now. Those in school today are members of Generation Alpha, an entirely new demographic we’ll get to learn about in the years to come.

Let’s “zoom” out and see what their lives have been like. This entire generation has had technology from birth. No dial-up, no cassette tapes, no land lines. They’re digital natives- and that includes social media. Unlike their Millenial predecessors, they’ve been engaged in social media since they were allowed to, with many terms of service allowing them to have profiles at the age of 13. They’ve grown up with the imperative of technology, not just the capability. Consider them the first truly paperless generation.

In a political context, these folks have also all been born into a chaotic climate. Since their birth, they’ve seen Obama, Trump, and Biden in office- a true ping pong across the political landscape. The only consistency? An ongoing nihilistic perspective about the world’s environmental and social outlook. This generation has lived with climate meltdown fears in the same manner that Boomers lived with nuclear bomb drills in school. They’ve seen more kids die in school than any generation before. They’ve seen movements like BLM and #MeToo fail to make substantial meaningful change. They’ve seen both the chaos and the lack of any meaningful resolution to the chaos.