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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics, The Gen Z Story with me, Vicki Spratt. This week in Divided or Dependent, the real Gen Z story, we're going to be unpacking some big myths about generations. We're going to be separating fact from fiction. What do we think we know about Gen Z and what do we really know about them? Are they work shy and difficult to have in the workplace?
too dependent on their parents? Or are they a generation that have grown up differently to everybody who came before them? I've just finished interviewing Professor Bobby Duffy, and what he had to say about this was absolutely fascinating. In case you're not familiar with his work, he's the director of the King's Policy Institute.
He's written six books, three of which are about generations and the differences, or not, between them. And really, the message I've taken away from him is we've got far more in common than we like to think. So here's episode two. Have a listen and let us know what you think.
And if you are a student and you want to subscribe so you can hear the full episode, you can use your student email at therestispolitics.com and you'll get a subscription for the whole year for just £20.
You said something to me recently that I found really, really striking when we were researching this series, which is that one of the biggest mistakes made with Gen Z is assuming that they're completely different to the generations that went before them. What did you mean by that? I thought it was fascinating.
I just get really tired because I get asked a lot about generational differences and what's real and what's not. And so often, people are asking me about things that they ask me exactly the same questions about millennials. I'm very old now, so I've seen this go through a few cycles of generations.
And it comes to those points where, you know, the entitled label was exactly the same for millennials. Millennials were called Generation Me. when it first started.
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Chapter 2: What myths about Gen Z are being challenged in this episode?
So we just repeat these cycles of putting these types of characteristics on the younger generation, whether that's lazy, entitled, but then on the more positive side that they're particularly socially conscious or they're really into brand purpose and that's all they care about or they're very entrepreneurial.
And hardly any of this stacks up against the data that these kind of cliched shifts are not really backed up. And I just get tired because it keeps coming back generation after generation. I guarantee it will be the same for generation alpha in 10 years or so. People will be making the same claims about these things. big breaks that we're suddenly seeing.
And the reason I get cross about it a little bit is that people try to sell stuff on the back of this. It's whether it's just stories or whether it's a particular brand or product or whether it's consultancy and people saying, Gen Z are completely different in the workplace.
I need to come in and teach you how to engage with this new cohort of people who have different values, different behaviours. Otherwise, your workforce won't work together. And that makes me really upset because it's kind of exactly the wrong way to frame it.
Because if you're coming in and say Gen Z are really peculiar, all you're doing is adding to that sense of generation separation and conflict, which is the last thing we need and really not held up by the data.
I'm shocked to learn that brands and consultants are trying to monetize generational opportunities. warfares and misunderstandings. But there is something going on in the workplace, right? There does seem to be a disconnect between older people and younger people. What can we put that down to?
Well, I think the big conclusion I came to in the book is that a real problem is not generational conflict, it's generational separation. We have drifted apart by age group in a way that we just haven't really noticed. So if you go back to the 80s and even early 90s and you looked at the age profile of villages through small towns, bigger towns up to the big cities.
there was no difference in measures like the old age dependency ratio. So the proportion of retired people to the proportion of working age people, they were all the same. But then since then, we've just splayed apart in an incredible way where towns and villages are getting older and cities and large towns are getting younger to really big degrees.
And I say we haven't noticed it because when we poll people on this and you ask them, do young people tend to live in cities and older people outside, they say, yes, of course.
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