The phenomenon of Generation Alpha’s digital dominance
Move along long-suffering Gen X, whining Millennials and entitled Zoomers; these Alpha kids (born between 2010 and 2025) are already rich, and will have an economic footprint of more than $8.2 trillion by 2029.
Baby Boomers beware, the babies are coming.
Actually, they’re already here. Generation Alpha has arrived and comes of age as the eldest turn 14 this year.
Sorry? 14? These kids already have real and virtual power despite not yet being able to vote, drive or work.
This is our youngest generation, just off their trainer wheels and still in training bras, not yet fluent in phonics but well accustomed to pronouns and already with influence and purchasing power beyond their years.
With that they are shaping, not only the social media landscape, but society in general. As well as their voices, they also have fans, followers and subscribers, and many have essentially been “brands” since birth.
Some footprints occurred even before their first breath. First photos were grainy ultrasounds shared widely for the consumption of family, friends and billions of strangers online.
Move along long-suffering Gen X, whining Millennials and the entitled Zoomers; these Alpha kids are already rich, and will have an economic footprint of more than $8.2 trillion by 2029.
Demographers define Generation Alpha as those born between 2010 and 2024. More than 2.8 million new Alphas are born around the world every week, most of them in India, China and Nigeria.
Come the cut off in 2025, they will number almost two billion. The largest generation in the history of the world has not experienced world war (yet), its youngest members have not lived through a large-scale pandemic (yet) and most of them will live longer than any other previous generation.
According to social analysts McCrindle, Alphas will stay in education longer, delay their working lives and will take full advantage of the “bank of mum and dad”.
You think the audacity of the financial institutions is rude now? Well these kids will adopt those behaviours (plus interest) by cohabitating with their parents later than their predecessors and remaining in their childhood bedrooms until their late twenties. Screens will be the one constant in their lives, with interactive devices being used as their pacifiers, entertainers and educators.
“Gen Alpha looks like it might be quite different from all the other generations,” Alice Crossley, a foresight analyst at the Future Laboratory, told London’s The Times. “They’ve grown up exposed to technology, but they’re the first children to be born to parents who have experience on the internet and can be role models for digital habits.”
These “screenagers” are different to the post-war youthquake of the “teenage”, which was an advertising concept created on Madison Avenue in the 1940s to define a new consumer category that separated children from their parents.
Gen Alpha are the children of tech-savvy Gen Y and the socially and politically-engaged Gen Z. Their parents were beta tested for a world that involves a plethora of screens, unrelenting connectivity and social media with few rules.
They are thrust into this brave new world, except this generation’s Aldous Huxley may well be the likes of tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
“Normal” for Gen Alpha will see the rules of engagement – in reality and online – completely redefined as the internet evolves and the world morphs again in the wake of covid and digests myriad economic, social and political changes.
Gen Alpha will potentially learn the alphabet from an iPad, know how to swipe a screen before they encounter solids, drive (or be driven by) electric cars, have no idea what a landline is or remember linear television.
The youngest members of the first fully 21st-century cohort are still twinkling in their parents’ eyes, but the eldest will this year burst onto the scene with their first Instagram and TikTok presence, having reached the approved age for their own official accounts.
Not that they will be novices. Gen Alphas established their digital footprints inside the womb and are set to follow in their parents’ online footsteps.
Beyonce and Jay-Z’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter, 12, is redefining what it means to be a child prodigy. She remains the youngest person to have appeared on the US Billboard charts when her in-utero heartbeat and first cries were sampled on her father’s song, Glory, released two days after she was born.
When she was eight she featured (and co-wrote) on her mother’s single, Brown Skin Girl, a song for which she also won a Grammy. Last year she was also a part of the dance troupe for Beyonce’s Renaissance world tour.
There are already Alpha pin-ups. Including the children of the rich and famous and those who want to be.
Many are already “online famous” in their own right thanks to enterprising, and oversharing, parents.
Koti and Haven Garza have half a mouthful of baby teeth and can hardly pronounce the word “influencer”. But the seven-year-old twins are already sharing their skincare routines and “satire/reality” get-ready-with-me “fit checks” to their 4.8 million followers on TikTok.
Forget the Lipstick Index, Alphas using vitamin A – yes, retinol – is the next frontier for the beauty industry. Girls aged between eight and 12 are the largest growth market for cosmetics in the US, with tweens spending $60 million per month on products by brands such as Drunk Elephant and Glow Recipe.
At 10, future King of England Prince George is an Alpha, as are his siblings Princess Charlotte, eight, and Prince Louis, five, as well as their cousins, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s son Archie, 4, and daughter Lilibet, 2. Other Alpha heirs and heiresses across Europe include Princess Estelle of Sweden, 12.
Another Alpha, Harper Beckham, 12, has been wearing $1200 Zimmermann dresses and other designer garb since nursery school and despite not having her own (public) social media accounts, she has made cameos in many viral short videos produced by her older brothers and father, former soccer star David. On Instagram the hashtag of her name #HarperSeven – established by her former Spice Girl turned fashion designer mum Victoria – has close to 20,000 images.
Across the Atlantic, the next generation of Kardashians has almost as many fans as Australia has citizens. Despite famously snapping at the paparazzi as a toddler,
“I said no pictures”, North West – daughter of Kim Kardashian and ex-husband Kanye West – now has a TikTok following of more than 18.8 million. The account is called “Kim and North” and carries the disclaimer that it is “managed by an adult”. Videos of the pair playing dress-ups, applying make-up, and North completing dance challenges with her 11-year-old cousin, Penelope Disick (daughter of Kourtney Kardashian), regularly chalk up millions of likes and shares. The comments are disabled.
Last month, the 10-year-old also announced the release of her first album, Elementary School Dropout, during a listening party for her father’s Vultures 2 collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign, on which North already features.
As The Times reports, if Gen Z is known for its identity politics and mental health challenges, the Alphas are shaping up to be less insular and with the knowledge of when to “log off”. Although 57 per cent of Alphas already spend more than three hours per day on digital devices, much of that time is dedicated to homework, learning apps, gaming, or making their version of scrapbooks on Pinterest.
“Gen Alpha will benefit from past mistakes,” says Andrew McDougall of consumer research agency Mintel. “They will still be digital natives, but they’re also going to be comfortable turning off as well, to play in the real world.”
Hanging up the hashtags is something Australia’s, if not one of the world’s first Gen Alpha influencers, Pixie Curtis is now doing. The daughter of former PR dynamo Roxy Jacenko has “semi-retired” from her lucrative and popular Instagram account in preparation for high school
The 12-year-old, who amassed a multimillion-dollar empire selling bows as a toddler before launching her fidget spinner business during the covid years, stepped back from “work” and her 174,000 fans on Instagram to instead focus on homework.
“It was fun when she was young and she loved dressing up and taking part in various activities but at the age of 12 she’s more focused on being out and about with friends and focusing on school than posting on social media and I respect that,”
Jacenko tells WISH. “These days if she posts that’s because she has looked at the opportunity and wants to do it. Prior to that she was younger and it wasn’t a question; now what she feels and the impact of what she posts is something that’s important.”
Thomas Edison may have invented the light bulb, but these kids have turned it on before they’ve even grown out of their Thomas the Tank Engine phase.
