Getting ready for Gen Alpha
The American Road is designed primarily to engage secondary students. if demographers are right, the first students to experience the American Road will be different from the every generation before them.
Gen Alpha is the name given to this cohort of students. Born between 2010 and 2024,. they will be the first to experience The American Road when this cohort reaches grade 7. What will they be like and how will they learn and participate in their own unique ways?
In a recent article, Caroline Bologna opens a window on this coming generation. Demographers and other experts studying generational shifts think this is how Gen Alpha will be different from Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z.
- This is the first generation fully born in the 21stcentury and many will live into the 22nd Century.
- They will live their formative years in the most complex and flexible parenting arrangements in modern history.
- They will be shaped by households where parents and guardians change careers more often, move more frequently, and concentrate in even higher numbers in urban settings.
- They will face increasing income inequality and at the same time greater cultural and racial diversity.
- They will likely stay in education longer, start earning years later, and live at home longer and later than previous generations.
- They will be more tech-savvy and demanding than any other generation before them, more digitally “literate”
- Gen Alpha will be more reliant on gamification of learning, thus likely to have shorter attention spans and more social challenges. The COVID years may exacerbate this.
- They may get another name – Gen Glass– because of the way they will interact with screen-based devices at every level of their daily lives, from wrists to visors, from interactive school desks to driverless car interfaces, and many more ways we cannot yet imagine.
In other words, Gen Alpha will learn and live in ways new to history. They will learn through largely digital and increasingly gamified content delivery. Flexibility will be the by-word of participation in school and in community. Diversity will be the norm. And they will be and expect the unconventional. Get ready! We are.
