More than 65% of India’s population is under 35 years of age. This essentially means that the biggest productive workforce in the decades to come will be the ones who are youngsters today, showcasing their “influence” across society, social media, polity, etc.
In order to effectively understand them, communicate with them and work along with them, we need to understand the life-world of Gen Z and millennials. As many of us lead an increasingly digital life, social media and other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and WhatsApp provide a great opportunity to learn more about GEMZ (Gig Economy, Millennials & Gen-Z). For instance, data shows that Gen Z in India spends about 8 hours per day online on an average. Thus, these platforms offer a huge potential to learn more about them.
More comfortable with text messages than calls
Social media platforms provide a variety of ways to engage, share and communicate. Millennials and Gen-Z members are constantly interacting with their networks through platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
The one underlying commonality that these platforms provide is that they allow for asynchronous communication. Unlike calls, such communication provides the flexibility to engage with people at one’s own convenience, through texts, audio or video messages.
However, it is important to reflect on how such forms of interaction might start to affect socialisation habits in general. As we get more used to conversing with our friends and family through such mediums it will begin to (and already has) change the way we prefer to communicate with our networks.
Over time, GEMZ might interact less through formats that demand synchronous communication such as calls as it would seem more demanding!
SHARING WITH THE WORLD IN ONE GO
Social media platforms are constantly innovating and providing people with new means to communicate. For instance, Instagram allows its users to share ‘stories’. Millennials and Gen-Z individuals often share multiple ‘stories’ on Instagram in a day to share the various happenings in their lives.
This provides them complete control over what they want to share with their communities. Moreover, to a certain degree, it is one-way communication. Although their networks do have the option to react to their ‘stories’ and respond to them privately as well.
The other significant attribute of such a format is that it allows them to converse with their community together as a whole. However, this format of communication needs to be seen more as “a way to inform people of the various happenings in their life”, rather than a form of interaction. What we would earlier share with a few friends, family or colleagues, now can be shared with everyone in one go, but without engaging with anyone at all.
REVALUATING PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS
In the last couple of years, we have all been a witness to not only the emergence of new social media platforms but also how several platforms have evolved to provide us with a variety of ways to interact. Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and others provide millennials and Gen-Z members with the opportunity to express themselves in creative ways.
Further, some social media platforms have created opportunities for millennials and Gen-Z members to earn as well. This has led many to start earning even before they graduate from schools and colleges (which was the conventional idea of employment post-education). There are many stories in the media of teenagers and young adults who have acquired a celebrity-like status through such platforms and are earning way more than the average income of someone with even a postgraduate degree.
With such platforms becoming a more mainstream and acceptable means to earn an income, we need to reflect upon the various ways in which they might affect our social fabric. One of the immediate effects that we would have to take cognizance of is the effect it might have on the parent-child relationship.
In India, parents often have a considerable say in a child’s educational and professional decisions. Education continues to be given a lot of significance and is considered as a means to create a better lifestyle (both financially and socially). Generally, even if kids want to pursue sports/entertainment or other alternative careers, parents ideally expect their children to have a university degree, with the assumption that it would bring financial stability. Further, parents often financially support their children’s education and continue to provide such support even after the child starts earning. Thus, a parent often has a considerable say in a child’s professional and personal decisions.
Thus, as such GEMZ begin to earn a lot more than their parents at the young age of 19 or 20 years, in jobs that their parents understand very little, it would definitely start affecting the parent-child dynamic.
CHANGING NON-FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND DYNAMICS
Over the last 3-4 years, we have witnessed several individuals gain immense popularity from social media platforms such as Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. We observed many who started individually and formed online and offline friendships with other content creators. Often, as their audience, we also got to watch these friendships and relationships evolve in real time as many of these individuals share a huge part of their lives on social media platforms.
Occasionally, such friendships lead to the members forming a group as they realise that together they can create a stronger brand value, which increases their monetary value.
Further, it allows them to collaborate and spend more time planning and creating content which helps them to pursue their goals. What needs to be highlighted here that such friendships/relationships would be a lot more complex, as they are entwined not only between the digital and physical worlds but also involve a professional/economic engagement.
It would be vital to observe the various ways in which it changes GEMZ’s approach to non-familial relationships. As such professionals become more mainstream, it would be important to understand if GEMZ’s expectations from friendship/relationships are changing in a way that changes the current social fabric.
Increasing relevance of the digital
Another shift that we have been observing is the growing comfort that people are developing with digital spaces. We are all constantly capturing aspects of our lives for social media. Clicking images for Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook during any social occasion has become a ritual for many. For some, uploading stories and posts on social media platforms is almost like a sacred act that is as significant as the social occasion itself.
Such a varied range of digital interactions have led to an increase in the time we spend engaging with the digital world. One of the direct consequences of this will be that it is increasing the relevance of the digital in our lives. The binary between the physical and the digital world is becoming blurred and we are constantly navigating both the worlds simultaneously. For instance, sometimes an entire occasion is being constructed just to create a digital moment.
Thus, GEMZ might understand the physical and the digital world quite differently from non-digital natives!
Srinath Sridharan is an independent markets commentator. Rupali Kapoor is a social and cultural anthropologist. Views in this article are personal.