What invention will mark the course of Generation Z? Our great grandparents had radio, our parents had TV and we have the Internet. These devices have marked the course of their lives and of our lives and have created big generation gaps. As these devices evolved, the generation gap deepened. So what will Generation Z have? All of the above and an awesome combination of everything at the touch of a button! We could say that Generation Z is the generation of the tablet and of the smartphone, but even better, they are the generation of the second screen platform.
Generation Z is the generation of children born starting with the year 2000. Unlike their parents, they take the Internet as a given and they find it hard to conceive of a world where information had to be sought in specific places such as books and newspapers. They see TV as a dinosaur in the field of entertainment, especially when compared to the technical equipment whose launch and evolutions they have experienced themselves. They are the ones more likely to understand second screen apps and to see it as a must, as the next obvious step.
No matter how much we may keep trying to fool ourselves, unless things change drastically and adapt so much as to properly fit a new and modern shape, there is no future for TV in its current form. Even as adults, we can go without TV but we cannot go without Internet. Second screen marketing specialists know that there is no comparison between the quality of information and of entertainment we find for ourselves and the quality of information and entertainment provided by TV.
It is difficult to predict how deep the generation gap be between Generation Z and parents will be in the following years, given the fact that they are digital to the core and have never known their world to be different. What some of us are still struggling to understand or see as interesting and as a novelty, they will come to see as normal. We might not fully grasp the importance of second screen apps, but we may hear them saying that they could not live without them.
All of the addictive technologies to which we have surrendered all of our memories of a disconnected life style are the ones that make up their reality: the education, the leisure moments, the single source of information, the voice and the virtual identity of today’s children. The second screen platform is their technological totem, their addiction, their reality. It will be very difficult to keep someone who is digital to the core, like these children already are, from trying to control what is happening on the screen in front of them. If we, as adults, have already embraced this attitude, imagine how it could be like for those born into this situation.
