Modern WisdomThe Problem With Millennials | Theo Watt & Eve Young
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 28,435 words- 0:00 – 1:03
Millennial stereotypes vs. the reality of the generation
- CWChris Williamson
I'm joined by Eve and Theo from the Social Minds podcast. So, what are we going to talk about today?
- TWTheo Watt
Millennials.
- EYEve Young
Millennials.
- TWTheo Watt
Millennials. We have to. If you believe everything you've read, if you fall into that bracket, you are lazy, you're very narcissistic, you're probably not doing very well for money. You'll never be able to afford a house.
- EYEve Young
(laughs) Eat too much avocado toast.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly. Being Millennials, we feel that Millennials are less defined by the situations around them, stuff like 9/11 and whatever. They're less defined by these situations and more defined by this boom of innovation that has happened between, say, 1982 to present day. You know, what defines a Millennial i- is the people who have lived through a vast speed of technological change.
- EYEve Young
All this media attention that Millennials are getting and the reputation that they've got just refers to the, the snowflake generation, which people assume is, like, teens and 20-somethings-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
... when it's actually not.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- EYEve Young
So when... I think the majority of the time, when people are saying, "Oh, Millennial, Millennial," they just mean young people-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
... and they don't actually realize-
- TWTheo Watt
And that's probably-
- EYEve Young
... it stretches up to the age of 38.
- 1:03 – 2:41
Studio banter and a detour into cake vs. biscuit (and internet ‘truth’)
- CWChris Williamson
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Eve and Theo from the Social Minds podcast here in my beautiful new studio. Welcome.
- EYEve Young
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
Hello. Hello.
- EYEve Young
Hi. You all right?
- TWTheo Watt
Good to have you-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
... back again. (laughs)
- EYEve Young
This is your studio.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, well, I mean, today, um, uh, it's an adopted studio for me-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
Of course.
- CWChris Williamson
How are you? You good?
- EYEve Young
Good.
- TWTheo Watt
Yes. Yeah, really, really good. We've got you something, haven't we?
- EYEve Young
Got you a Soreen 'cause I know how much of a fan you are.
- CWChris Williamson
Look at that. How-
- EYEve Young
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
It's actually from Manchester as well, I believe.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
Soreen, yeah.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
It's a Manchester, it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Is it really?
- TWTheo Watt
... a Manchester cake-
- EYEve Young
Cake?
- TWTheo Watt
... I suppose you could call it, a squidgy loaf.
- EYEve Young
(laughs) It's a mult-
- CWChris Williamson
It is. So let me tell you-
- TWTheo Watt
It's very, uh-
- EYEve Young
A multiloaf.
- 2:41 – 4:44
Who counts as a millennial? Why the boundaries are messy
- CWChris Williamson
So, what are we gonna talk about today?
- TWTheo Watt
Millennials.
- EYEve Young
Millennials.
- TWTheo Watt
Millennials. We have to. We have to talk about Millennials in a way that we don't talk about Millennials at the moment. Uh, we need t- we need to see Millennials differently, basically. And, well, I suppose we could take it from the beginning. Um, the theory around at the moment is that if you were born into 1982 or 1981, between then and 1996, let's say, you are classed as a Millennial. So, right now, the oldest, uh, 38-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
... 37. Uh, the youngest, say about 24, 23.
- EYEve Young
It depends on which definition you look up as well, which is another massive issue because no one knows exactly where the timeline-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... starts and where the timeline ends, which is causing a lot of confusion. So, at Census Bureau starts at 1982 to 2000, and Pew Research is 1981 to 1997. So, the youngest Millennial could be 23 or 24.
- TWTheo Watt
It shifts, yeah.
- EYEve Young
And the oldest one could be, like, 37 or 38 and no one really knows where the boundaries lie.
- TWTheo Watt
And if you believe everything you've read, if you fall into that bracket, you are lazy, you're very narcissistic, you're probably not doing very well for money. You'll never be able to afford a house.
- EYEve Young
(laughs) Eat too much avocado toast.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly. It's all these stereotypes that have come along that we... You know, whenever you see the word Millennial, that you see. And, and it's, and it's as simple as that really. And our argument with this is that, you know, in what other context would you group the sort of behaviors of a 38-year-old or a 34-year-old or whatever with that of somebody 15 years younger than them, 'cause that's how-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... long the Millennial generational span is, is about-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
... 15 years.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, I, I definitely count towards the top end. I'm 31 and I would count myself as a Millennial. Um, but you are right, there seems to be a negative connotation-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... with them.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, what, what defines a Millennial then, do you think, in terms of their behaviors, in terms of what they... how they act and stuff like that?
- 4:44 – 7:30
The ‘snowflake’ narrative and Simon Sinek’s workplace critique
- TWTheo Watt
Well, this is, this is something that we've thought a lot about, and we've thought about it in a way that... (sighs) If you tell the Millennial story, it's you've got this, you've got this group of people that fall into this generation, who have been affected by major events. So, you've got things like people will always list the, uh, financial crash. They'll list 9/11, they'll list... there's stuff like that. Um, and also the way parents have been with their children, uh, uh, Millennials are seen to be very... There's the term that goes around, snowflakes, that we always use.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
And many of them every day.
- EYEve Young
So they're meant to be... Like, because... That's a good point you brought up about, like, so things like the financial crash and 9/11-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... and the launch of the first iPhone all happened right in the middle of the Millennial timeline.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
So, they're meant to be, um, a little bit more savvy, um, with career roots. They don't follow traditional paths. They're more, um, likely to go into entrepreneurship and things like that. They're less likely to get married, um-... they're just a little bit more easygoing in some aspects than their, than their parents were.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly.
- EYEve Young
And that, yeah, like you said, a bit narcissistic-
- TWTheo Watt
And, and if-
- EYEve Young
... and a little bit self-obsessed. (laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
And if we focus on that snowflake angle, um, that is always sort of tarred with millennials, it, it's basically because, uh, you, I'm sure you and a lot of your listeners would have seen the, uh, video that Simon Sinek did. Um, so he was a, or he still is an author, I should say, on YouTube, and he put out a video saying millennials in the workplace, where for about 15 minutes, he basically tarred millennials with this brush and said, "They are like this because of this." And one of the main points on that was that millennials, our, our parents, they were very, uh, very safe with us, you know, they wrapped us up in sort of cotton wool, and we were given, uh, medals and trophies for coming last 'cause it's about the participation-
- EYEve Young
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
... that counts. So, you know, if you look at millennials, the, the idea is that we're very sort of, uh, you know, a little bit self-effacing, we're very much wrapped in cotton wool, um, we're very kind of, you know, butter wouldn't melt in some ways, but you don't wanna ... you know, every, we take everything very much to heart in a way. So, that's where this whole snowflake idea comes from. Um-
- EYEve Young
They're just stereotypes, though.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly. Yeah.
- EYEve Young
Like you said, like, the, the main problem is, because it spans, like, 15 to 18 years-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... there's no, there's no way in hell all of those people are the same, like, they're all narcissists or, like, none of them want to get married or n- like, none of them can afford-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... a house.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
Like, they are just sweeping generalizations. But the problem is, is that like no other generation, our industry has sort of taken those stereotypes as gospel, and because they don't understand the generation, because no one really knows, uh, like, what they want or how to speak to them, they take the stereotypes as gospel, and they're using them to target them.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
But they're just completely wrong.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- 7:30 – 9:42
An alternative definition: millennials as the ‘rapid tech change’ generation
- TWTheo Watt
So we've got a com- well, we've, we've, we've got a completely different take on it, in a way, and that is, um, you know, we're probably skipping forward a little bit, but it's, uh, we've, we feel that millennials, you know, b- being millennials, we feel that millennials are less defined by, uh, the situations around them, stuff like 9/11 and whatever.
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- TWTheo Watt
They're less defined by these situations and more defined by this boom of innovation that has happened between, say, 1982 to present day, really. So, uh, if we can list it off, we, we, th- you know, the first Nokia phone, I remember, came in the mid-'90s, and then from there, it was, you know, it, we would ... talk way before the-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... iPhone, putting cameras into phones was a massive thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
Then video phones came, and then you go on from there, and you've got stuff like Windows, dial-up, broadband. So ...
- EYEve Young
Mm. And it's like every year, you can remember it, like, we're probably all about the same age where we can literally remember a world before all of that-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm.
- EYEve Young
... and sort of we watched it happen.
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
Um, like literally year, year on year. I was a little bit younger. I think I went into secondary school when I got my first flip phone.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- EYEve Young
Uh, and I remember me sister getting a Nokia when I was still in primary school and being really, really jealous 'cause her and her friends were all playing Snake, and I wasn't allowed one.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
(laughs)
- EYEve Young
It was like, it was a whole, it was a whole saga. But yeah, like, uh, literally-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
... every single year after that, like, when I was in year eight, someone brought in the first iPhone 3, and everyone was, like, cooing over that, and by the next year, everyone had iPods, and the years-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah. Exactly.
- EYEve Young
... after that, like, there was something else.
- TWTheo Watt
And then that big thing social media happened-
- EYEve Young
Yeah. (laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
... halfway through that. So, to sort of answer your question in kinda a succinct way, it is, you know, what defines a millennial i- is the people who have lived-
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- TWTheo Watt
... through a vast speed of technological change-
- CWChris Williamson
Unprecedented.
- TWTheo Watt
... that has just come in rocket- exactly.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
Unprecedented. And there's stats that, you know, there's stats that say and, and sort of opinions around that there's been more innovation in the last five years than there has in the last 30 years. Believe that to some extent, because if we take, you know, to get-
- 9:42 – 12:51
Culture and law can’t keep up: coddling, exposure, and adaptation
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, the world is evolving faster than our minds can to cope with it. It's evolving faster than our, um, social, uh, causes, our understanding of how society works, uh, our laws.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, to be whoever a lawmaker is, if that was, I don't know how it works, I'm gonna guess it'll be the sort of thing which is actually done through the government, but if you were a private firm that was able to write laws as new technologies come along, like, you're probably one of the richest companies in the world.
- TWTheo Watt
Yes.
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, 'cause all you've had-
- TWTheo Watt
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... to do is go, "Oh my God, first we have to work out what's happening with this internet thing."
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"Oh shit, now they've got it in their pocket. Oh my God, now they're downloading music illegally."
- EYEve Young
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... do you know what I mean? It's just-
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... this monster that's grown so many different limbs. Um, so, have you read The Coddling of the American Mind?
- TWTheo Watt
No.
- EYEve Young
No.
- CWChris Williamson
So that book is about as seminal, by Jonathan Haidt, it's about as seminal for what you're talking about now-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... as you can get. And for anyone who is listening, go back and listen to Jonathan Haidt on Joe Rogan, fantastic podcast, and he talks about, uh, links between depression and anxiety and suicide in young girls and the advent of social media.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
There's this line around about 2008, and then another one around about 2012, where there's marked differences in behavior and stuff like that.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
But one thing that you mentioned was to do with the, um, awards for coming last-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... this participation-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... this kind of coddling, right? That's what Jonathan refers to it as. And personally for me, as someone who was born in '88, I never saw any of that.
- 12:51 – 17:06
Marketing’s misuse of generations and the ‘buzzword’ problem
- TWTheo Watt
This is, but this is exactly it. At the root of this problem is this need to, uh, put these conditions on what we call Millennials. I mean, let's, let, you know, and let's make no bones about it. It's very easy to use the term Millennials-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
... in stuff like marketing. And, and, you know, when a marketer says-
- CWChris Williamson
Sounds trendy, doesn't it?
- TWTheo Watt
... Millennials. Ex- exactly. It's, it's also, you know, we can and we, and we do define demographics, you know, in the same way that you've got Gen Xs-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... you've got Boomers. The problem seems to be with the focus on Millennials under the spotlight and that is setting a precedent for, we, we were, we were speaking about it in terms of that, you know, now, now that we've done the whole Millennial thing, let's call it that. And we've sort of, you know, "What do they want? What are they like?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
"What, why do they feel like this?"
- CWChris Williamson
Where do they shop?
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly, yes-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... and all of that. And grouping 16-year-olds, you know, what it would have been back then, grouping 16-year-olds with 34-year-olds-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- TWTheo Watt
... and saying they are exactly the same. No, they're not.
- EYEve Young
Just wildly, wildly unhelpful.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
They, they, you know, if you've got people at the start of their, you know, before they reach spending power and they're going to university, you've got people who are, you know, you're ta- you're put, you're telling me you're putting them in the same boat as people who are 34-
- CWChris Williamson
Two kids, two dogs, mortgage.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly, yes.
- EYEve Young
Do you know what it is? When you said before about, so there's Millennial stereotypes, which you say don't apply to you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
Um, maybe because you're on the older end of that spectrum.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
And then there's the snowflake generation.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
But I think the problem is that the entire general public, and it may be like it's not so bad in the marketing industry because if, if you know it, then you-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... like, you know, we're putting it to good use. We know what the actual boundaries are.
- 17:06 – 24:58
Innovation slows: why Gen Z may not diverge as much as expected
- EYEve Young
... "There's another one already." But I think we're making a mistake there because like we were saying earlier about the speed of innovation that happened in the Millennial timeline is not gonna happen again. It's already slowed. If you look at before the Millennial generation-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... innovation was more invention and it was quite slow, you know.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
You had the computer and then the first Apple Mac, and then all of a sudden it was like boom, boom, boom, new products for consumers. And now it's like, okay, now we're expecting voice to kick off. We're expecting VR to do the same thing. But it's not going that quickly. It's, it's taken a little bit of a dip.
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
So I don't think it'll have-
- CWChris Williamson
No, not there.
- EYEve Young
... the, you know, the same, the same effect as-
- CWChris Williamson
See-
- EYEve Young
... the Millennial generation did.
- CWChris Williamson
You think it's been like a, a real state shift through the Millennial generation-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and now it's just different flavors of the same cake?
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
Definitely, yeah.
- EYEve Young
That, that's why they were so hard to figure out, because nothing like that had ever happened before. All the new technology that came in, that's what shaped their-... mindset and opinions like slap bang in the middle-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... it's why older millennials differ so much from younger millennials because if you grow up with the influence of a smartphone and social media-
- TWTheo Watt
Yep.
- EYEve Young
... you know, you can't underestimate the effect that that's gonna have on you. Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
You, you could, you could put a, you know, you could get an empty room and put a bit of masking tape down, uh, down the line of the room and say, "Right, everybody born in the 20th century, stand on this side of the room. Everybody s- born on 21st century, stand on this side of the room." Um, or, oh, sorry, I should say, "Anybody who sort of grew up formatively in the 21st century, stand on this side of the room." And that is what we are, that is what we are looking at. And like, like we said, you know, we, we covered briefly on the innovations that happened. Just to sort of reiterate that, I mean, okay, so we had smartphones, uh, so, sorry, let's start take it from the beginning. We had, uh, mobile phones, uh, you know, that, that were bricks back then-
- EYEve Young
Yep.
- TWTheo Watt
... in the mid-'90s. They were- Yeah, car phones.
- EYEve Young
Exactly. Yeah, they, they, you know, and they were still on wires and we still called them mobile phones. Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- TWTheo Watt
And then you had-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... camera phones, and you had video phones, and you had MP3s, Bluetooth-
- EYEve Young
Sony Ericsson, who remembers that one?
- 24:58 – 28:45
Labels imposed from outside: identity, backlash, and millennial self-distancing
- TWTheo Watt
I take a hard line stance on this in a way because I feel, uh, you know, it's exciti-... This, if, if we... I sort of want to use the word Millennials sparingly, but young people at this time of technological change, this was an exciting time, and this was us finding it out for ourselves. It was like, you know, your parents' generation or their parents' generation discovering rock and roll. This was our rock and roll moment.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
It was like, "Wow, I can be anybody I want to be."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
"And post on my Facebook, and post on my Bebo, and do whatever." Now, the problem I see with, from my own observations with the Millennial generation is that past generations have been able to define who they are themselves in a sense. So, uh, we think about Gen X. Gen X is s-... Gen X is the, you know, they're the alternative generation. It was MTV, and it was this and that. Now, Millennials, they've sort of had this label just put, put on them, pushed on them-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
... you know, unwillingly. Um, and that's sort of stuck to the point that, you know, a Mil- a Millennial can't... We, we, we can't shift this reputation that's been put on us.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
You won't see that with Boomers, you won't see that with Gen X. I doubt you'll see it with the generation that comes after, Gen Z.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
Just that-
- EYEve Young
That's why people get so disillusioned with it as well.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm. They become, like, so separated from their own generation because they feel like these labels and these stereotypes have been put on them-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... against their will.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
And no one wants to be categorized against their will.
- CWChris Williamson
See, we're bad again.
- EYEve Young
And of course, like, yeah, like everyone... Like, we like belonging into groups, don't we?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
We feel, you know, affinity is just that and, like, nationalities or football team or-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... a hair color.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
But all of a sudden, like, someone tells you, "Oh, you're a Millennial, which means you're this, this, this, this and this." You go, "Wait a minute. W- why are demographers and marketers-
- CWChris Williamson
It doesn't apply to me. Yeah.
- EYEve Young
... deciding who I am?" Um, so a lot of people have, yeah, gotten a bit fed up with that-
- TWTheo Watt
That's the irony of it.
- EYEve Young
... haven't they?
- 28:45 – 31:53
Stereotypes still ‘work’ in advertising—at a cost
- EYEve Young
Yeah. Yeah. I think what's really, um, bad, like, a bad side effect of that es- especially for our industry, is what a lot of marketers and brands haven't realized, is that all of that has bred, like, a subgroup of this generation of people who actively do the opposite of what their generation is stereotyped to do. So people who are of the Millennial age but don't use social media.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
The people who, you know, started buying vinyl records-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
... and they'll do things very sustainably, and they'll act similarly to how their grandparents did because that's the new cool.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
And it's like the people-
- CWChris Williamson
Contraries, yeah.
- EYEve Young
... who are targeting-
- TWTheo Watt
Definitely.
- EYEve Young
... like, this age group are doing so by, like, the majority of the stereotypes. And actually, there's a really, really large portion of the, of them that are acting completely oppositely-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
... because they don't want to be tarred with the same brush.
- TWTheo Watt
Th- th- there is a, a caveat to all of this as well, and that is, uh, that the (laughs) whether we like it or not, these stereotypes still work-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
... in advertising. And I know this was something you touched on in a past episode, uh, Chris, I think with, uh, Rory Sutherland. And let's take one campaign for instance, the... A lot of people I'm sure would have seen it, the British Army's campaign-
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... that, uh, you know, "Snowflakes, we want you."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
Um, that went, that went around, um, a l- a play on the Lord Kitcher, um, s- uh, status that he, that he did. Um, and it was that the, uh, after they broadcast this advert that, uh, you know, it was appealing to the gamer who stays up for 48 hours at a time-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
... and these people, you know, your, your agility, your endurance.The army actually found that their recruits doubled within a month, basically.
- EYEve Young
That really surprised me-
- TWTheo Watt
... within a month of releasing this campaign.
- EYEve Young
... because I absolutely-
- CWChris Williamson
Really?
- EYEve Young
... hated the campaign.
- TWTheo Watt
There was a massive backlash to this campaign. "Snowflakes, we want you to join the army."
- CWChris Williamson
But it's effective.
- TWTheo Watt
You know, "Come to the army. We, we need millennials." And it worked. (inhales) And-
- 31:53 – 35:56
Gen Z targeting: shift from demographics to behavior and mindset
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... YouTube. So now what does that say? And I, I don't ... Again, I don't know what that's translated to in terms of sales. But yeah, the manipulation of the meta-narrative about millennials is a dangerous game to play. Um, so what, what do you think is gonna happen as we move forward then with Gen Z, because that's ... Is that people after '96, '98?
- TWTheo Watt
Gen Z, they say '96-
- EYEve Young
'96.
- TWTheo Watt
... '97, yeah-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
... born after that, so I-
- EYEve Young
I think-
- TWTheo Watt
... make the oldest Gen Z about f- coming up to 22.
- EYEve Young
Oldest Gen Z is 22-
- TWTheo Watt
... at the moment.
- EYEve Young
... or 23, depending on your definition.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- EYEve Young
Because as I said, there's, like, (laughs) a few different research, um, things you can listen to.
- TWTheo Watt
But on that as well, on ... Just, just to, just to add on that, the US ... I can't remember who, the, the, an organization in the US, uh, only class, only really recognized boomers as a official generation, as an official demograph. It's just-
- EYEve Young
Why?
- TWTheo Watt
... boomers, just the ... And the, well, the word boomers comes from that everybody was having kids after the w- after the World War-
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- TWTheo Watt
... so said this was the population boom. These are the boomers, so-
- CWChris Williamson
We've lumped, like, 50 years of people in together.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Difference, difference between someone being born today and someone that's 50 years old.
- TWTheo Watt
That's it, yeah.
- EYEve Young
Y- you can see the flaw-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
... in the system.
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
But to answer your question, for Generation Z, I don't know what's gonna happen, but what we're trying to make happen, and what we hope will happen, is basically learning from the mistakes that were made with the millennial generation. We don't want to assume that just because, let's say, a group of people, uh, spanning 15 to 18 years are exactly the same, uh, just because of their age. So what marketers should be focusing on now is their mindset and their behavior. So if you look at things like Facebook Pixel's ability to track absolutely everything you do based on a click, based on a purchase, based on your cookies, they know everything, whether, like, it's your plans for the weekend or, you know, what play you want to see next week. They know absolutely everything. And when there's that much detail out there that tells you, you know, who your customers are and what they're doing, why are we still paying attention to how old they are?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EYEve Young
Like that says anything about the way that they act and the way that they behave. Like, we can still, we can still use, um, demographics loosely, but the point is it's not the most important thing that we should be focusing on.
- 35:56 – 46:12
Social media and attention: harms, benefits, and the need for ‘idle time’
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. No, you are right. That's a really, really good point. I think social media was a, (clears throat) I guess you could call it, a, a technological revolution, but it was on existing hardware, right?
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but certainly for me, one of the things that I am most concerned about, and, uh, as a good, um, avatar for someone who's regularly in contact with people that are 18 to 21, and some of them I'm heavily, heavily invested in, especially our managers that work for Voodoo Events, I want them to be-... the most efficient, the best that they can be, not only for the fact that it makes us more money, and then, but also just that I take personal pride in creating these monsters of their age who go out into the workforce and just walk all over everybody else because they've had this crash course in intensity on how to be efficient and how to behave and how to have discourse with professionals and customers, and all this sort of stuff. Um, and what I see from a lot of them is that social media, forget the technology, technology was simply the root. It was a delivery mechanism for the virus, but the virus itself was social media. And I know that that's a- a inflammatory term to use for it. There's a lot of good that comes from social media, but I think that for the vast majority of people, at least at the moment, I think it's netting a negative. I think that one of the, um, podcasts I've done recently, someone analy- uh, uh, analogized, uh, Instagrammers, uh, swimming through sewage looking for a diamond.
- EYEve Young
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
That you have this serendipitous connection with people, and once every couple of months, you might make a really, really good connection, and you're like, "That's exactly why I do it," but it's a gambler's fallacy.
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like, how much cost have you sunk into this in order to turn this around?
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And you think, "Well, can I have my cake and eat it too? Can I have the serendipitous connection, and have the, um, things that I want, which is keeping up to date with my family and knowing the real stuff, whilst evading all of the sewage?" And I think that that, um, overall situation, that environment for people formative, people's formative years to be growing up in, I know certainly, and it may be different for yourselves, Theo I know that you're a little bit, uh, l- less on your phone as, uh, than I am. But for me certainly, my capacity to be able to read and focus on a book, which is low stimulus, has, versus 11 years old to now, it is so much less.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, I have to work-
- EYEve Young
I- I agree with that, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... so hard to sit there and not even just not fidget, because my body is conditioned to a particular level of stimulus-
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... That a piece of paper with non-moving words that are in black and white, it can't match up with, and it's been, the last year's basically been spent on a morning retraining myself to be able to sit and look at something-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... That's not triggering dopamine every couple of seconds.
- EYEve Young
You know, so on our, um, our most recent episode of Social Minds, we had a guest in from Iceland, she was a CBT therapist, um, called Dr. Fjöll Helgadóttir, and she was very, very-
- CWChris Williamson
Nice. Well done, well done.
- EYEve Young
It's a good name, isn't it? It's a good name, yeah. Phew. The hard part over.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
No, but she was telling us about some research that came out in January that actually says, you know, we always say that social media's causing depression. It's earned that reputation-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EYEve Young
... Because there's been, like, an uplift in reports of people, more people being diagnosed, and half of that's 'cause more people are aware that it's happening, and they're more open about, uh, you know, reporting it, or, like, going to the doctor's. Um, and half of it probably has to do with social media. But she said that what they found is that people were more likely, especially young girls, were more likely to turn to social media when they were already diagnosed with depression.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EYEve Young
So it wasn't actually, there's a correlation there for sure, but social media wasn't actually the cause, it was the symptom.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Coping mechanism, almost.
- EYEve Young
Yeah, definitely, but like you were saying about being able to, you know, stop and focus and read a book. Like, I've noticed that myself. It, 'cause you're so used to just being switched on all the time, and, um, Dr. Fjöll actually said that it's very important for our brains to have idle time. Um, like, we need to be bored for the brain to develop properly, especially in young people. Like, we just need time to do nothing, and it's something that no one gets these days because we just, I don't know about you, but I feel guilty when I'm doing nothing and just sat there, 'cause you're expected to-
- 46:12 – 57:32
Catching up: best practices, regulation, and the ‘seatbelts for tech’ analogy
- CWChris Williamson
I get it. Well, I mean, uh, y- uh, to go on to what you said about the, um, about the car analogy, it's perfectly correct. And what really that should be given for people who were the patient zero avatars-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... for the advent of all of these technologies, where the technology came before the best practices for healthy use did, and before the legislation did-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... we should be giving compassion.
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
There should be a degree ... And I, I feel that myself. Like I have ... Because for me, my mobile phone was a, a, a conduit for my business, which meant that I started to get into the rhythm of using it, and then the tactics which are used by particular social media apps to keep you on, infinite scroll, autoplaying videos, red notifications, et cetera, et cetera.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
I've now become a victim of those particular cognitive tricks, and I'm now having to undo the work that was done. But if you're someone who's coming through in Gen Z, screen time on an iPhone only came out six months ago.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
The way, where it, um, allows you to track the time that you've spent on individual apps. If you haven't got it turned on, I, I, I urge you to do so, just so that you can have a look.
- EYEve Young
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Go into your settings, have a look at screen time, and it'll be very revealing as to-
- EYEve Young
Yeah, very revealing.
- CWChris Williamson
... where you've spent your time. Crazy revealing, right?
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
But then so perfect example here, and this is within the same window, right? We're talking same device. Did you have an iPhone when you needed to download an app that allowed you to use a flashlight? So you didn't-
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-mm.
- CWChris Williamson
It wasn't always in the dock at the bottom. You needed to download an app-
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... or you had-
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... to turn your video camera on with the flash activated.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- TWTheo Watt
No.
- CWChris Williamson
And then it took them a while to realize, "Hang on, this is something which people need. This is a feature which we need to add." You think now like, "Why would you not swipe up from the bottom and turn your flashlight on?" Whereas in the past you had to scroll, find like flashlight app.I- IOS-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and press that, and then it was like a little flashlight, and you press that. So even within the window that we're talking about of technology, we have seen something come about which was needed and then be, uh, internalized by the company that's creating the, the technology. And the same thing is occurring with social media, that it was this monster that's come about, and before, uh, you know, Tristan Harris and the Humane cer- the Center for-
- 57:32 – 1:04:32
Platform feedback loops: users push back, products adapt, and transparency matters
- EYEve Young
I think that'll improve.
- TWTheo Watt
... funny thing is, as well is that you're seeing features that have come out, you know, that somebody, you know, a, a group of sort of directors who have, who work at, you know, Facebook have sort of dreamed up and said, "Oh, yeah. The world needs this."
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- TWTheo Watt
You're seeing a lot of consumers saying, "Oh, actually, fuck off."
- CWChris Williamson
No bother. Do you remember when Instagram...
- EYEve Young
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Do you remember when-
- EYEve Young
"No, we don't."
- TWTheo Watt
"We don't need that."
- EYEve Young
"I'll take that feature and I'll hack it to do that."
- TWTheo Watt
We don't want it, we don't want that."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Do you remember when Instagram updated a bunch of people's apps? Did you see this? It must have happened in here.
- EYEve Young
Yes. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And it, it... Did you see this thing?
- EYEve Young
I know what you're gonna say.
- TWTheo Watt
It was so annoying.
- CWChris Williamson
So Instagram, Instagram sent out an update, I think it was to around about 10% to 20% of users, and it complete- imagine the app's completely gone and imagine s- a stories feed that you have to move through individually one by one and you can't navigate.
- TWTheo Watt
Hmm.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And they released this update to, like, 10 or 20% of users, and just all hell broke loose.
- EYEve Young
It was meant to be a very, very, very small test to, like, less than 1% of users. It came out over the Christmas break. And I was on our Twitter, and I had to report on it. And about an hour later, I had to c- amend the report 'cause I'd said, "Oh, my God. Instagram, massive update. It's changed its entire interface."
- TWTheo Watt
Oh, I remember this. Yeah, yeah.
- EYEve Young
"It's gone from a scrolling feed..." (laughs) Same boat as Adam.
- TWTheo Watt
Mark Zuckerberg on the phone saying, "Stop talking about the update."
- EYEve Young
Yeah, I know.
- CWChris Williamson
"Uh, excuse me, Mark."
- EYEve Young
It's like, "Adam, sorry."
- TWTheo Watt
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"Listen, Mark, mate, we don't care. You talk about this update."
- TWTheo Watt
(laughs)
- 1:04:32 – 1:06:41
Responsibility: platforms vs. society—and why compassion is the through-line
- TWTheo Watt
... I, I, I go back to my point because you, you're completely right. And my, my stance on this will still be okay. Like you said, you know, that this is the medium of delivery, this is the media, this is the technology, this is whatever. Society, you know, for, for the large part we have sort of put, you know, what we want to see onto this.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- TWTheo Watt
You know, we, the, the, and this newsfeed for instance, you know, and the scrolling for instance probably started off as a good idea.
- CWChris Williamson
Well the thi-
- TWTheo Watt
Probably thought, "Right, make a bit of money on it." But-
- CWChris Williamson
The problem is-
- TWTheo Watt
... we were like-
- CWChris Williamson
... the features wouldn't have stayed if they weren't effective.
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
It's natural evolution-
- TWTheo Watt
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... for the features that exist on the technology.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, uh, the same thing for the reason that the next episode Countdown happens on Netflix is that it improves retention. So more people watch-
- TWTheo Watt
Good thing he's on point.
- EYEve Young
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the rest of the series if the countdown occurs than if it doesn't.
- EYEve Young
I can totally believe that.
- CWChris Williamson
If it was the other way around, if it was the other way around, they wouldn't put it on.
- TWTheo Watt
Mm, mm.
- CWChris Williamson
So your own choices determine the root of the technology. I think the criticism is we didn't choose our own cognitive biases and you are triggering something that's there in the back of the brain-
- TWTheo Watt
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... when I want to be able-
- TWTheo Watt
Perfectly.
- CWChris Williamson
... to be thinking about it-
- EYEve Young
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... with this bit. And you're like, okay. So, but guys, it's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on.
- EYEve Young
Yeah, no-
- TWTheo Watt
Thank you.
- EYEve Young
... it's been-
Episode duration: 1:06:40
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