Futurist Mike Walsh argues that kids born after 2007 are fundamentally different because they grew up with smartphones and algorithms. They expect personalized, data-driven experiences like Spotify and Netflix, and will demand the same from products and workplaces as they enter the economy.
What are you seeing that's really profound in terms of the real change that's underway? I think the first thing to realize is that this is not about millennials. I don't know about you, I'm so sick of hearing about millennials. You know, in truth, the millennials have had a great run. If any of you are watching, you know, I'm not going to rain on your parade because you've got the whole business world trying to make you happy. They're trying to figure out how to give you a fun office, an Xbox to reassure you that you can't be the boss in 12 months. But actually, the generation we have to really worry about are not this new generation coming into the workforce. It's the kids, especially the ones under 10. Essentially, anyone that's been born after 2007 have in some ways had their brains rewired by these unique experiences that they've had in their childhood. What changed in 2007 that changed the world for them? You've probably been guilty of this as well. I know most adults have. And that's things. Think about it. When you've. When you've encountered, sometime in the last five years, a child that was screaming and demanding your attention, what did you give them? You mean my iPad, right? You did, and we all did. Right. So we've all given a kid a phone or an iPad, and it was like magic. Because the minute you give them one of these things, they stop crying. In fact, they only start crying if you try and pull it back. But the strange thing is the minute, you know, you think about the brain of a two year old, it's the ultimate supercomputer. And this is the world's most, you know, addictive interactive device. So of course, it's kind of remapped the entire structure of their minds. In what way? Well, in the way that they would expect to entertain themselves. The way they frame reality, the way they get information. To the extent that, you know, we've assumed that this new generation is just going to be mobile. But that really is just the tip of the iceberg. This is a generation who've grown up having a layer of machine intelligence between them and every experience in the world. So think about it. The way they decide what photos to look at, the way they summon transportation, or they choose what to listen to on Spotify or what TV show on Netflix, every one of those experiences now is shaped by data and shaped by deep machine learning. So it's reasonable to assume that as this generation grows up, they're going to expect very different things as customers and clients.
