See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: [Link]

net/publication/342347030

Understanding Generation Alpha

Preprint · June 2020

DOI: 10.31219/[Link]/d2e8g

CITATIONS READS

44 42,843

1 author:

Amrit Kumar Jha

Lalit Narayan Mithila University, India
13 PUBLICATIONS 393 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Amrit Kumar Jha on 15 August 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Understanding Generation Alpha

Amrit Kumar Jha1,2

amrit@[Link]

1C. M. College, Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga, Bihar, 846004, India
2Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India

Abstract

Much has been studied and known about the twentieth-century generations with emphasis on

the Millennials and Generation Z related to their personality traits, value systems, aspirations,

and cultural fit at organization and societal level. Their successor, the first true generation of

the twenty-first century, namely the Generation Alpha, had already made their mark in the

consumerism and technology-driven world. Born in and after 2010, the eldest Generation

Alpha is still in their school-years and has already influenced decisions related to marketing,

technology, traveling, and priorities of their millennial parents. There is a dearth of study

exploring the different facets of Generation Alpha and to this end, the present paper attempts

to unravel, contextualize, and understand Generation Alpha within the ecology of the twenty-

first-century world. In spite of being the wealthiest, diverse, and tech-savvy generation, it was

revealed that the growing preference toward hedonism and small family; changing nature of

their parents’ jobs and workplace; and overarching and decisive influence of technologies in

nearly all the developmental aspects of their life, make them vulnerable to psychosocial and

developmental concerns. The paper envisages a promising future for Generation Alpha, but

with caveats, requiring timely interventions from the caregivers and school authorities.

Keywords: Generation; generation Alpha; technology; millennials; generation Z.

GENERATION ALPHA 1

Understanding Generation Alpha

1. Introduction

Life in the present 21st-century world reflect the years of combined hardships,

patience, vision, and labor of relentless human endeavors to achieve what they are comforting

themselves today with. Traveling and remembering the years of dark age to renaissance to the

era of enlightenment of modern age and now the post-modernistic world, if one could live

through them, they would underscore the saliency and value of the present day scientific and

technological advancements; standard and comfort of life and information abundance;

dedicated to the service of mankind. Referred to as the age of Internet and Communication

Technology (ICT) driven knowledge, the 21st-century has presented world an unprecedented

reality that was a distant dream in the past. The rapid advancements and use of ICT devices

(smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, play stations), 24*7*365 electricity, evolution from an

agrarian society to the service-driven economy, borderless world, dual-career families, desk-

jobs, and over-involvement in social media, among others characterizes the present advanced

world.

In this backdrop, with the evolving devices and machines, mankind seems to catch up

by evolving from generation to generation. They are the ones responsible for being creators,

consumers, and decomposers of these machines. Generational studies have documented

human beings of the modern twentieth-century era from their anchoring point as GIs

generation (abbreviated as either General Issue or Government Issue). The latest entry in the

list and the focal point of the paper is the first generation of 21st century referred as

Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) (Howe & Strauss, 1990; McCrindle & Wolfinger, 2009).

1.1 Generation

Ryder (1965) posits generation as demographic metabolism, representing generation

as active social change which describe a recurrent and steady pattern of coming and going in
GENERATION ALPHA 2

a given historical and social events (Table 1). Manheim (1952) and Ryder (1965) observed

that a generation reflects a cohort of individuals who have experienced and responded to the

same historical events inherent within the same time period and location.

Table 1: Timeline of twentieth century generations

Sl. No Generations Timeline

1 GIs 1901 -1924
2 Silents 1925 - 1945
3 Baby Boomers 1946 - 1964
4 Generation X 1965 - 1980
5 Generation Y/Millennials 1981 - 1996
6 Generation Z/iGens 1997 - 2010
7 Generation Alpha* 2010 - 2025
Note: Based on works of Strauss and Howe (1991); Howe and Strauss (2000); McCrindle,
(2008); Pew Research Centre (2019). *Generation Alpha = Twenty-first century

2. Generation Alpha

Coined by a generational researcher, Mark McCrindle (2008), Gen Alpha is named

after first letter of Greek alphabet, Alpha. Their immediate predecessors, Generation Z mark

the end of Latin alphabets in the series of naming generations, paving way for the Gen Alpha

to mark the dawn of the new generation.

Born to their millennials parents, Gen Alpha are considered to be born between 2010

and 2025. Nearly 250 children are born every minute, amounting to 2.1 million Gen Alpha

born every week and more than 130 million around the globe (Lamble, 2018). It is estimated

that if all the members have been born by 2025, the number will reach to two billion,

signaling their humongous presence in future (Carter, 2016; McCrindle, 2008). Their birth

year (2010) coincides with the year where “app” was the word of the year and witness the

launch of iPad and Instagram – presently world’s most preferred brand and social media

application, respectively. They are born in an era of rapid advanced technologies operating

24*7*365 globally. Technology means world to them. From entertainment, gaming,

GENERATION ALPHA 3

connecting to peers, and even education in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, their life

revolves around technology. Recently, it was found that by the age of two, Gen Alpha master

touchscreen and easily navigate through various apps on smartphones, which their

predecessors took years (Turk, 2017), earning them the labels of generation glass,

screenagers, digital natives, and connected or wired generation (Tootell et al., 2014;

Williams, 2015).

2.1 The Ecology of Generation Alpha

For understanding the psychological traits of Gen Alpha, it is imperative to

understand their ecology of birth which will give a holistic sense of their generation locality.

Gen Alpha is in a real sense the first millennium generation compared to their elders Life in

the millennium world is quite different to that of pre-millennium age. From lifestyle; pattern

of relationships; nature of jobs; gender roles; both the personal and professional life have

changed drastically. Tele-work, flexi-time, work from home or remote working, working in

shifts, and rise in dual-career families have blurred the boundaries separating personal and

professional life for millennials, impacting Gen Alpha. Compared to their elders, Gen Alpha

are living in a different technology driven-reality, which may wreak havoc for their future

life. Psychoanalysts and developmental psychologists with the likes of Bowlby, Freud, and

Piaget have underscore the prominence of early days of life for a secure attachment, cognitive

and social development leading to a strong, stable, and adaptive personality in future. Freud

(1923) stresses upon the indispensable role of childhood and parenting for a stronger ego to

emerge, free from anxieties, vulnerabilities, and conflicts, encapsulated in ‘child is the father

of man’, axiom.

To understand the ecology of Gen Alpha, observing cultural factors will provide a

better understanding of their immediate context. In Australia, primarily an individualistic

nation, McCrinddle and Wolfinger (2009) observed an unparalleled reality before Gen Alpha
GENERATION ALPHA 4

in terms of—(a) numbers of women and mothers being employed, (b) number of babies in

paid or foster care, (c) parents being older, (d) families being smaller, and (e) lower

household population. Given their parents, the millennial, have spent more or less similar

lives in this globalized tech-world, such observations may also encompass this new

generation in collectivistic countries too like India, where preferences toward individualism

is growing. In India, traditionally, family ethos, cultural norms, high parental power distance,

and interpersonal-self dominates. Over the years, introduction of Liberalization, Privatization,

and Globalization during the early nineties and later the IT revolution has transformed India

socially, culturally, and financially. Gradually, millennials move toward cosmopolitan cities

in search of better job opportunities and standard of life. From this disequilibrium, emerged

fragmented societies, paving way for nuclear families; dual-career jobs; proportionate rise in

the standard of living; need for materialistic pleasures, furthered by the advent of

consumerism and ICT.

In this backdrop, came the Gen Alpha, whose birth years nearly coincide with the

global financial crisis of 2008. The worst economic disaster post the Great Depression of

1929, put their millennial parents into a zone of economic despair. Arriving as a ray of hope

and shine, Gen Alpha ensured the continuity and stability in their parents’ life. They are a gift

to their stressed-out millennial parents, who prefer a small family with growing preference

toward one baby family (Rampell, 2015). Subsequently, they are the most pampered and

wealthiest in terms of materialistic possessions and gadgets, making them an instant

gratification seeker, selfish and overindulged cohort (Carter, 2016).

2.2 Generation Alpha and Vulnerabilities

Mannheim (1952) suggested the term ‘generational location’ for the problem

subjective to every generation and unique to every cohort belonging to a specific historical

period of time. Gen Alpha bears no exception. Compared to their predecessors, they are born
GENERATION ALPHA 5

in a time when the world was recovering from the global financial crisis, new avenues of

digital technologies and social media were up to penetrate the whole world, change in family

structures, never-ending climate change debate, among others with the recent COVID-19

pandemic in the list.

For Gen Alpha, vulnerabilities emerging out of digital technologies are second to

none. From psychological and physiological impact including cognition (Wilmer et al.,

2017), sleep (Jha et al., 2019), and impaired social and emotional well-being (Augner &

Hacker, 2012) to cyber threats and addiction, the list is ever growing. Gen Alpha life started

connecting more with Alexa or Siri (voice box assistant of Amazon and Apple) than with

their parents or friends. More than enjoying the outdoor activities or real life play, they hop

upon mobile games like PUBG, Xbox, and Pokemon, within their comfort zone inside home.

Such has been the widespread use of online gaming that American Psychiatric Association

and World Health Organization have classified them as disorders, namely Internet Gaming

Disorder and Gaming Disorder, in DSM-5 and ICD-11, respectively (APA, 2013; WHO,

2016). In one of our study, we found that an adolescent spent an average two hours on mobile

gaming with sheer consequences on anger management and socialization, leading to

loneliness and aggressiveness upon withdrawal (Arora & Jha, 2020).

Physiologically and psychologically, changes in brain plasticity (or neural wirings),

cognition, sleep disturbances, and obesity, constitutes the future problematic trend for Gen

Alpha. Neuronal changes due to games and internet use in children are uniquely sensitive to

neural plasticity. It delays the development of microstructures in the cortical brain regions

and reduction in brain tissue density, leading to deficits in cognition (Takeuchi, 2016). Sleep

carries a major survival value for mankind, but, marred with casual attitude toward sleep

followed by technology use at night. The time meant for sleep is being trade-off with

technology use at night-time by texting, chatting, playing games, and watching movies.
GENERATION ALPHA 6

Using such sleep eroding-devices leads to more screen time, further elongating the exposure

to blue-light emitting diodes, leading to less production of melatonin hormone (or sleep

producing hormone) and disrupting sleep-wake cycle (Figueiro & Overington, 2016).

In the opening line of a UNICEF report on Children in Digital World, Keeley (2017)

alarmingly observed the growing access and easiness of bullies, sex offenders, and traffickers

in targeting their prey, here children, while staying anonymous. With the growing

technology, crimes have become digital in nature too. The report categorizes three types of

digital risks — (i) content, when a child sees any unwelcome and inappropriate content like

pornographic and violent images or any hate-speech or racist material; (ii) contact, when a

child comes in contact with someone seeking inappropriate behavior; and (iii) conduct, when

a child does something risky.

Cyberbullying, a willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers,

cell phones, and other electronic devices (Hinduja & Patchin, 2014), online child sexual

abuse, and self-generated sexually explicit material has become quite common in the young

generation. Nearly 53% of the sexual content and conduct victims are children less than ten

years old (Internet Watch Foundation, 2018). Globally, one out of six parents admit their

children experienced cyberbullying and one in six knowing a cyberbullied child (Ipsos,

2018).

In a recent survey, it was found that on average a child spent approximately 7-8 hours

on mobile with the maximum time devoted to the internet, social media, gaming, and texting

(Twenge, 2017). They have been lured to believe that every problem has solution courtesy

technology and is available round the clock, much more than the availability of their

caregivers. Technology has overpowered humans, impairing social and emotional skills,

affecting relationships, which will become fatal as Gen Alpha grows up. Their immediate

predecessors, Generation Z, was found to be the most vulnerable age group for suicide in the
GENERATION ALPHA 7

most youthful nation of the world, India (Patel et al., 2012; UNFPA, 2014). WHO (2014)

further cautioned that suicide accounts for the second most leading cause in youths. Such

worrying trend of their elders, who were either unknown to or partially exposed to the

technology in their initial years of life, set a wrong precedent for Gen Alpha.

The change in family structure, child-rearing practices, and nature of the job in terms

of helicopter parenting, small and nuclear family, dual-career family, and work from home

put an excessive toll on the parents too. Theories by Bowlby (1973) and Freud (1923) had

explicitly emphasized the importance of healthy parenting in the first two years deemed

crucial for the development of a healthy attachment and relationship(s) for child in later part

of life. However, the present pattern of parenting appears to be polarized with excessive love,

affection, and continuous monitoring of the child on one hand and taking the help of

babysitters/maids/foster caregivers during the time when they are out on the other.

3. Nurturing the Future: The Road Ahead

The future holds bright for Gen Alpha but with alarming and persistent caveats in

future. With the exploding population, rising mental health crisis (Pitchford et al., 2019),

rapid advancements in technology, viz. Artificial Intelligence, robotics, including humanoids,

leading to job automation and employment crisis, the crisis might get mightier in the same

proportion, COVID-19 being the fresh example.

Turkle (2011) while referring the obsession with technology, observed that mankind

has reached ‘the robotic moment’ in their history when they are friendlier and caring to their

devices more than their fellow beings. Gen Alpha, who is already battling many

technological-borne issues, should be trained in the same league to detach themselves from

their slavery. Jha et al. (2019) while observing the deep human-technology unification in day-

to-day life, calls for a healthy and integrated approach, where both can be assimilated, for

technology to stay and play the role of a powerful redeemer and not a nemesis to mankind.
GENERATION ALPHA 8

For a robust future of Gen Alpha, millennials parents have to play a pivotal role in their

subjective, psychological, and digital well-being through timely presence and interventions.

The American Association of Pediatrics (2016) has recommended amount of adequate

screen-hours age wise for parents to ensure that screen time doesn’t consume time slated for

academic and health activities.

4. Suggestions for Future Research

Future research on Gen Alpha should cater to their well-being (subjective,

psychological, and digital), academic, social and emotional skills and promoting

responsibility towards the society. Given their increasing affluence and intelligence, studies

must include technology, value, ethicality, relationships, culture and aspirations as their

underlying themes. The need is to understand them from their subjective perspective of life.

Besides, studies shall also cover the family structure, both joint and nuclear family, work

from home and work-life balance in conjunction with their implications on Gen Alpha.

5. Conclusion

Born in a rapid technological era, as compared to their parents, Gen Alpha presents

exciting combination of opportunities, adventure, and explorations for the future. Driven

socially, Gen Alpha share their life and thoughts publicly and knows no boundaries. They

will presumably grow up being creative and unconventional. Given the zeitgeist in prospect,

probably, the need for achievement, autonomy, and recognition, along with competitiveness,

narcissism, ambiguity intolerance, impulsivity, attention-seeking, and risk-taking behavior

will probably predominate and become salient in Gen Alpha with the passage of time. With

proper parenting and guidance, the prerequisite is to install in them the right virtues and

values, which are in line with the societal and traditional ethos. It is essential to inculcate in

them the essence of being human, managing emotions, forming stable relationships, and a

healthy-assimilation with technology in daily life. With the right mix of outdoor activities
GENERATION ALPHA 9

including play and forest bathing, regulated use of technology, authoritative parenting,

education and instilling the 21st-century skills namely adaptability, curiosity, critical thinking,

persistence, teaming, social, and cultural awareness (World Economic Forum, 2016) will go

long in shaping them to be an asset for family, society, country, and the world in future.

6. References

AAP (2016), American Academy of Pediatrics Announces New Recommendations for

Children’s Media Use, [Link]

room/Pages/American- Academy-of-Pediatrics-Announces-New-Recommendations-

[Link]

Arora., A. & Jha., A., K. (2020). Understanding pattern of online gaming addiction among

Indian teenagers. Our Heritage, 68(1), 13190-13100.

Augner, C., & Hacker, G. W. (2012). Associations between problematic mobile phone use

and psychological parameters in young adults. International Journal of Public

Health, 57(2), 437-441.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and Loss (Vol. 2). New York: Basic Books.

Caplan, S., Williams, D., & Yee, N. (2009). Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-

being among MMO players. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(6), 1312-1319.

Carter, C. M. (2016, December 21). The Complete Guide To Generation Alpha, The Children

Of Millennials. Forbes. Retrieved from

[Link]

generation-alpha-the-children-of-millennials/#49b12e303623

Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. WW Norton & Company.

Gottschalk, F. (2019). Impacts of technology use on children: Exploring literature on the

brain, cognition and well-being. OECD Education Working Paper No. 195.
GENERATION ALPHA 10

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2014). Bullying beyond the schoolyard: Preventing and

responding to cyberbullying. Corwin Press.

Internet Watch Foundation. (2008). Annual and charity report.

Ipsos (2018). Global Views on Cyberbullying. Retrieved from

[Link]

Jha, A. K., Pandey V., & Kumari, V. (2019). What’s eating up Adolescent Sleep? Evidence

from Bihar. Gujarat Research Society, 21(9).

Keeley, B., & Little, C. (2017). The State of the World Children 2017: Children in a Digital

World. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Lamble, L. (2018, April 23). With 250 babies born each minute, how many people can the

Earth sustain? The Guardian. Retrieved from [Link]

development/2018/apr/23/population-how-many-people-can-the-earth-sustain-lucy-

lamble

Mannheim, K. (1952). Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul Ltd.

McCrindle, M., & Wolfinger, E. (2009). The ABC of XYZ: Understanding the global

generations.

Patel, V., Ramasundarahettige, C., Vijayakumar, L., Thakur, J. S., Gajalakshmi, V., Gururaj,

G., Suraweera, W., Jha, P., & Million Death Study Collaborators. (2012). Suicide

mortality in India: A nationally representative survey. The Lancet, 379(9834), 2343-

2351.

Pitchforth, J., Fahy, K., Ford, T., Wolpert, M., Viner, R. M., & Hargreaves, D. S. (2019).

Mental health and well-being trends among children and young people in the UK,

1995–2014: Analysis of repeated cross-sectional national health

surveys. Psychological Medicine, 49(8), 1275-1285.

GENERATION ALPHA 11

Rampell, C. (2015, May 4). Bad news for older folks: Millennials are having fewer babies.

The Washington Post. Retrieved from

[Link]

bust/2015/05/04/c98d5a08-f295-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html

Ryder, N. B. (1965). The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American

Sociological Review, 30, 843–861.

Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., Hashizume, H., Asano, K., Asano, M., Sassa, Y., Yokota, S.,

Kotozaki, Y., Nouchi, R. & Kawashima, R. (2016). Impact of videogame play on the

brain’s microstructural properties: Cross-sectional and longitudinal

analyses. Molecular Psychiatry, 21(12), 1781-1789.

Tang, S., & Patrick, M. E. (2018). Technology and interactive social media use among 8th

and 10th graders in the US and associations with homework and school

grades. Computers in Human Behavior, 86, 34-44.

Tootell, H., Freeman, M., & Freeman, A. (2014). Generation alpha at the intersection of

technology, play and motivation. In 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on

System Sciences (pp. 82-90). IEEE.

Turk, V. (2017). Understanding Generation Alpha. Hotwire Consulting: UK. Retrieved from

[Link]

Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each

other. New York: Basic Books.

Twenge, J. M. (2017). iGen: Why today's super-connected kids are growing up less

rebellious, more tolerant, less happy--and completely unprepared for adulthood--and

what that means for the rest of us. Simon and Schuster.

UNFPA (2014). The power of 1.8 billion adolescents, youth and the transformation of the

future. The state of world population. Retrieved from

 GENERATION ALPHA 12

[Link]

[Link]

Williams, A. (2015, September 19). Meet Alpha: The Next ‘Next Generation’. The New York

Times. Retrieved from [Link]

[Link]?_r=0

Wilmer, H. H., Sherman, L. E., & Chein, J. M. (2017). Smartphones and cognition: A review

of research exploring the links between mobile technology habits and cognitive

functioning. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 605.

World Health Organization (2016). ICD 11 Beta Draft. Geneva: World Health Organization.

Retrieved from

[Link]

World Economic Forum (2016). New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional

Learning through Technology. Retrieved from

[Link]

View publication stats