just wondering if any new parents are having thoughts about raising the next generation!
we’ve seen gen z grow up with varying levels of internet access - from use of the home desktop to having personal phones and tablets in later childhood and teen years (i am older gen z - 99 - and expecting my first child in the next 6 weeks! i had quite unrestricted internet access from maybe 10/11 years old and it has certainly shaped who i am. but as a toddler and young child i mostly just had TV, books and offline PS2 games) my sister is younger gen z - she had a personal tablet, albeit a cheap one, by the time she was about 8 y/o. she had minecraft teddies and watched five nights at freddy’s videos on youtube)
then of course we have had gen alpha - the tiktok, ipad baby, fortnite generation. these kids are supposedly a nightmare to teach in school, and struggle with attention span. but can you blame the parents, really? we weren’t to know the impact of unlimited screen time until it started to make itself known. i’m sure if we’d given any of our parents in the 90s a magic wireless pocket computer, the first thing they’d use it for is entertaining their screaming toddlers
i see loads of stuff online these days about limiting or removing screentime, and people are so impressed when they do because its like they’ve got a whole new kid (or got their kid back)
in my experience, there is a much bigger focus on the internet mumsphere now, to be at least a little bit crunchy. we all want to use less screens, cook better food, get more exercise, breathe more fresh air, spend more quality time with the ones we love and its only natural that this is going to be part of how we’re raising our kids. my baby isn’t here yet and i spend lots of time researching stuff about brain development & montessori parenting. in comparison to early millenials raising ‘gen alpha’ - this was the start of influencerism. most internet mum content wasn’t about being a good parent, it was about making sure they were only seen in a gorgeously instagrammable home, in the right matching outfits. this still prevails a bit in FB mum groups - i feel the aesthetic just went from grey to beige - but i still feel like people embrace real life (and mess in motherhood) a lot more on social media in recent years.
i also feel way more parents are actively refusing to post their kids online these days - i’ll be one of them. i’ll be using the internet to teach me and help me be an active, present parent. but i’m not going to spend any time trying to prove that to anyone with staged photos or one-upping. my kid has all secondhand clothes, because we’re poor and sustainable. but they’re cute and we love them. my home will be a mess sometimes, because my mental health has to come first.
but i bet there’s going to be so many new unexpected challenges too. i saw a video of a young girl doing a tiktok makeup storytime the other day, and it made me think about how many kids only spaces there are in society now. not many. so kids want to have phones and act like adults because there’s nowhere else for them to go. they don’t have play areas in mcdonalds anymore. i don’t even know where the nearest park with a swing and slide would be. so, how might we foster spaces like these for our children of the next generation? and how are you parenting differently, to try and raise a good human? how might things like AI tools affect our kids?
nothing i say is absolute fact of course, just my echochamber experience of the world. i also know silly labelled generations are just a marketing term and aren’t to be taken too seriously - more just thinking about what might affect kids born in the late 2020s.
i’m not even going to TOUCH on politics bc i don’t feel qualified enough to make those predictions but that’s going to be a massive part of it, too.
tl;dr unnecessary wall of text waffle in regards to the challenges of raising gen z and gen alpha, and what we might have to expect with gen ‘beta’
not certain i chose the right flair either!!!
we’ve seen gen z grow up with varying levels of internet access - from use of the home desktop to having personal phones and tablets in later childhood and teen years (i am older gen z - 99 - and expecting my first child in the next 6 weeks! i had quite unrestricted internet access from maybe 10/11 years old and it has certainly shaped who i am. but as a toddler and young child i mostly just had TV, books and offline PS2 games) my sister is younger gen z - she had a personal tablet, albeit a cheap one, by the time she was about 8 y/o. she had minecraft teddies and watched five nights at freddy’s videos on youtube)
then of course we have had gen alpha - the tiktok, ipad baby, fortnite generation. these kids are supposedly a nightmare to teach in school, and struggle with attention span. but can you blame the parents, really? we weren’t to know the impact of unlimited screen time until it started to make itself known. i’m sure if we’d given any of our parents in the 90s a magic wireless pocket computer, the first thing they’d use it for is entertaining their screaming toddlers
i see loads of stuff online these days about limiting or removing screentime, and people are so impressed when they do because its like they’ve got a whole new kid (or got their kid back)
in my experience, there is a much bigger focus on the internet mumsphere now, to be at least a little bit crunchy. we all want to use less screens, cook better food, get more exercise, breathe more fresh air, spend more quality time with the ones we love and its only natural that this is going to be part of how we’re raising our kids. my baby isn’t here yet and i spend lots of time researching stuff about brain development & montessori parenting. in comparison to early millenials raising ‘gen alpha’ - this was the start of influencerism. most internet mum content wasn’t about being a good parent, it was about making sure they were only seen in a gorgeously instagrammable home, in the right matching outfits. this still prevails a bit in FB mum groups - i feel the aesthetic just went from grey to beige - but i still feel like people embrace real life (and mess in motherhood) a lot more on social media in recent years.
i also feel way more parents are actively refusing to post their kids online these days - i’ll be one of them. i’ll be using the internet to teach me and help me be an active, present parent. but i’m not going to spend any time trying to prove that to anyone with staged photos or one-upping. my kid has all secondhand clothes, because we’re poor and sustainable. but they’re cute and we love them. my home will be a mess sometimes, because my mental health has to come first.
but i bet there’s going to be so many new unexpected challenges too. i saw a video of a young girl doing a tiktok makeup storytime the other day, and it made me think about how many kids only spaces there are in society now. not many. so kids want to have phones and act like adults because there’s nowhere else for them to go. they don’t have play areas in mcdonalds anymore. i don’t even know where the nearest park with a swing and slide would be. so, how might we foster spaces like these for our children of the next generation? and how are you parenting differently, to try and raise a good human? how might things like AI tools affect our kids?
nothing i say is absolute fact of course, just my echochamber experience of the world. i also know silly labelled generations are just a marketing term and aren’t to be taken too seriously - more just thinking about what might affect kids born in the late 2020s.
i’m not even going to TOUCH on politics bc i don’t feel qualified enough to make those predictions but that’s going to be a massive part of it, too.
tl;dr unnecessary wall of text waffle in regards to the challenges of raising gen z and gen alpha, and what we might have to expect with gen ‘beta’
not certain i chose the right flair either!!!
