And the post-millennials, Generation Z, have turned either 26 or 17 depending on how you like to classify them. As a futurist I started this blog when I sensed that my children’s generation and their future would look very different from generations before them. I knew they would deal with the effects of a multitude…
It’s 2030. You’re managing a company that produces artificially intelligent internet connected consumer products. As you glance over your co-working hub you see people on their laptops, some in their virtual reality haptic gears. They are meeting with their teams 5000 miles away. Some are chatting with their robotic assistants which have become trained enough to…
Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing a talk by Dr. Devorah Heitner, the author of Screenwise and site Raising Digital Natives. Dr. Heitner has the unusual disposition that she doesn’t believe digital technology and social media will lead our species into an apocalyptic downfall. Nor does she jump on the technophile bandwagon so often…
One of the most important generationally relevant must-reads from last week is this piece from Dr. Profeta . It was republished at slowfamilyliving, a website that goes against the grain of our era’s current tendency to hyperparent. In his Your Kid And My Kid Are Not Playing In The Pros Dr. Profeta weights in on the…
The only other generational topic receiving as much attention as the young Generation Z or Homeland generation is the Millennial parenting cohort raising them. Still held back in life by economic setbacks and lengthy educations, Millennials are nonetheless a family-loving generation and will eventually go for the parenting life phase with full steam. In fact, they like…
When I worked with forecasting infant and family trends back in the 2000s there was a noticeably growing interest for nutrition among parents. Food was no longer only food, it had to be healthy, fresh, local organic, tasty and sometimes even “nutraceutical”. Mothers started breastfeeding their babies again, and for longer intervals. Busy parents turned even busier carefully…
In America there is a sweeping shift in values towards more family diversity and we are starting to see this reflected in commercials for consumer goods. The shift reflects cohort changes (effects isolated to single generations) as well as period effects (change over time in an entire population). This means that variables that indicate tolerance of diversity is…
During most of the years that I have covered parenting trends there has been a growing tendency to overprotect children. This phenomenon has in the United States and some other countries been dubbed helicopter parenting. Other places the tendency to micromanage ones progeny is known as curling parenting and the term hyper parenting has also…
Did you know parents’ internet behaviors have gone through an evolution over the last 10 years? With Web 2.0 parents have become far more willing to share sensitive and potentially life-changing content about their children. But are all types of sharing so bad in an age when our every purchase, every phone call and every…
Last week I spoke to two market and media classes at Texas State University. The topic I presented to the students was how social media habits differ among generations and how I believe it might be linked to changes in the entertainment industry. The narratives of family comedies have shifted from reflecting adults’ views to…
