Being a 10 year old in 2017 is very different from being a 10 year old in 2024. From Victorious, plastic princess high heels, Hot Wheels, playing outside and Friday by Rebecca Black to Cocomelon, Drunk Elephant, Iphone 15’s, Sephora and Flowers by Miley Cyrus. Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha are very different generations when it comes to music, shows, movies and what we found fun. It’s really a whole new world.

Gen-Z is the generation born between 1997-2012 and the last of us should be in 6th grade by now. Gen-Z has very different things we grew up with compared to Gen-Alpha and honestly any other generation, for example, our shows. Most of us didn’t have a phone when we were kids, so we watched tv in the mornings- cue the Spongebob Square Pants theme song- how our nostalgia sounds compared to how Gen-Alphas sounds drastically different. The shows we watched would be considered old to a 10-year-old now because our shows came out before they were born, but Gen-Z had to wait for a new episode to come out. “I miss everything, I miss my plastic princess heels and tiara, playing tag and telling your parents you wouldn’t go too far but then going as far as you can” said Baileigh Curtis, a SHS Junior. Stepping out the house and being told “come inside when the street lights go on” is something that Gen-Zers  resonate with, but Gen-Alpha only got to play outside for so long before Covid happened. 

Gen-z has very different experiences from Gen-Alpha because of the difference in commercials. Gen-Alpha commercials on youtube and TV consists of makeup brands, skincare brands and different adult-world concerns.Gen-z had commercials about cups that could hold snacks and wouldn’t spill, new dolls that talk, and gigantic, unpoppable bubbles. This impacts generations’ interests and what they find fun. Kids now would walk into a Target store, and instead of going straight for the toy aisle, they go straight to the makeup and cram as much as they can into the cart.

The generational difference is so drastic, yet the two, different generations grew up with technology, so there is no concrete reason for the chasm . Gen-z’s first phone was a flip phone…. 

This only makes you wonder what the generation after Alpha will be like and what their interests will be.