It’s high time you upgrade your mental image if all you see when you think of young adults is a group of Gen Ys battering between FOMO and YOLO.
Young adults today are part of the generation coming up behind Millennials — Gen Z. Hence, other than the YOLO group, they have dissimilar behaviors, attitudes and demands for brands.
And if digital marketers want to efficiently get and hold back this crucial class of customers, they must change their thoughts around today’s young adults.
At the same age, there’s a difference between today’s Gen Z juveniles and the Millennials in three important ways :
- It demands much from brands.
- Gen Z’s social media time and attention is shared across several and more platforms.
- It is more diverse.
Gen Z demands much from brands
Clearly, it’s more likely for Gen Z than older categories to require brands to take stands and discuss problems. And they are more interested in investing their money where their ideals are. In accordance with Gartner study, present-day young adults are about as likely as older consumers to assume brands participate in activism to market their products and services. Anyway, Gen Z demands brands to do so. And it is more surely for Gen Zs than older consumers to demand brands to be involved in finding solutions to crucial societal issues now.
-
Current Young Adults are Smart Consumers
Gen Z values beneficial support when it comes to brand activism. Garner discovered that, while US consumers in general are about as likely to “buycott” (spend with a brand to reinforce its activism) as they are to “boycott” (stop spending with a brand to protest its activism). Approximately one-quarter of Gen Z reported buycotting (with a fifth of all U.S. consumers). Versus 19%of all U.S. consumers, only 15% of Gen Z said they’d boycotted.
-
What does this connote for digital marketers?
Social media content should concentrate on the problems and ideals that are mostly important to Gen Z. Your brand’s social activism story is a great way to get them engaged.
Gen Z’s attention is shared across several and more platforms
According to Pew Research, when Millennials were young adults a decade ago, 57% of 18 to 29 year-olds had accounts on multiple social media network. Presently, according to the latest Gartner study, 96% of Millennials are on more than one platform. That same Gartner research discovered that many of today’s 18- to 29-year-olds are on four or more social media network. On the contrary, many of the present 30- to 49-year-olds are on four or lesser social media network.
As reported by Gartner study, the top social media platform for Gen Ys was Facebook, but it’s a third-tier platform for Gen Z, getting about as much engagement as Snapchat and TikTok, yet far from their YouTube engagement.
Gen Z social media systems differ, and they also communicate in a different manner with brands on social media. Gen Z users on mainstream social networks are about as likely as Gen Y users to follow brands. But Gen Z users are unlikely than Gen Y users to say they like viewing branded content on those social media networks.
When it comes to Facebook, it’s not shocking, popularly viewed as “old-fashioned” by juveniles. But that’s also factual for Gen Z users on Instagram and YouTube. In fact, it’s only on recent platforms like TikTok — which coerces brands to become expressive in platform-specific functionality — where Gen Z leaves Millennial behind in following brands and liking seeing branded content.
-
What does this connote for digital marketers?
Engaging Gen Z young adults online needs a multi-platform approach that embodies platform-specific tone and themes and also platform-specific functionality.
Gen Z is more diverse
It is generally known that the U.S. is becoming more ethnically diverse. How much more diverse Gen Z young adults are relative to Gen Ys is what is not properly understood.
Gen Z is more diverse in these ways:
- To begin with, they are unlikely to identify as white.
- To define themselves, 15% percent of Gen Z which is approximately twice as many as older gens, make use of multiple racial or ethnic class. So, at the individual level, there’s a high probability to embody diversity than former generations of juveniles.
- Gen Z young adults are more gender-diverse than former gens. They are also more likely to embrace gender fluidity in their peers.
As stated by Pew Research, over half of 18 to 29 year-olds know a transgender (with only 44% of 30 to 49 year-olds). And then 56% of 18 to 29 year-olds say that sex assigned at birth can differ from whether or not someone is a man or a woman (with just 32% of 30 to 49 year-olds).
-
Diversity Breakout of U.S. Consumers: Gen Z vs. Millennials
-
What does this connote for digital marketers?
Vital ways to demonstrate your brand’s core values to a wide audience are through diverse and inclusive imagery and themes. But with today’s young adults who are much more likely to see themselves in such representation, they are even more critical as tools for resonating.
Even though Gen Z juveniles are exceptional in several ways, they are still young adults. As their age peers 10, 20 or even 30 years ago, Gen Z young adults are making the change into independence from having been answerable to the control and care of parents and other adults. But they are not yet parents. This means that Gen Z is not exceptional on these experiences.
Nonetheless, the cultural, societal and technological conditions of the present-day greatly differ than those of even a few years ago. That means digital marketers will have to upgrade their thoughts about young adults if they expect to remain significant.
