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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Are we evolving at such a high rate of

change that generational schemata

become irrelevant?

Anne M. Schüller and Alex T. Steffen just released their with smartphones, tablet computers, Facebook & Co.,
book “Fit for die Next Economy: Sustainable with the and there are 30-year-olds who almost completely re-
Digital Natives”, which is currently only available in Ger- fuse the web. Some 50-year-olds are more skilled in
man, but got my whole attention, since it made me un- dealing with digital tools than a 20-year-old. So, let’s
derstand the so-called “digital natives” a bit better. put it this way: "There is no digital native", rather a con-
tinuum of being digitally fit and unfit.
The demographics gave the Millennials the names Y
and Z, although they do not call themselves so, and Y and Z follows Alpha?
such names are of course only auxiliary constructs,
because not all people born in an arbitrarily selected If you ask, who are the generations Y and Z, here are
period can be pigeonholed. Nevertheless, lived events the essential characteristics in a nutshell:
in early life are formative and generate a common so-
cial character, together with group conformism.  Generation Y (GenY) includes all age groups be-

tween plus / minus 1980 and plus / minus 1999,
What the authors highlight is the fact that Millennials do and has grown up with the World Wide Web that
not rebel against the old, and makes them so ‘different” exists since the 90s - so this age cohort is very fa-
compared to the transformation generation of the 68s.
miliar with digital applications.
Laid-back they simply make new, hence, wonder about
digital transformation, since they live long ago in a digi-
 Generation Z (GenZ) includes all age groups be-
tally transformed cosmos and adapt to working worlds
when they create them. tween plus / minus 2000 and plus / minus 2019,
depending on the source. They were born into the
age of social networks that have existed since the
I myself, don’t really believe in the distinction between
digital natives and digital immigrants – probably, since beginning of the new millennium and are often
called Internet natives, as digital applications reveal
there are many among the old folks who are very active
themselves usually intuitive.
12 October 2017 - Programmatic & Native Advertising