Neil Howe's view of Zoomers

What do you think?

(Looking at Zoomers, Millennials, GenXers, and Boomers in four posts, starting with the Zoomers.)

What are your perceptions of America’s children and youth? In his July book The Fourth Turning Is Here, Neil Howe, arguably the world’s leading generational expert, makes a set of fascinating statements about them. What do you think?

Howe calls this generation the Homeland Generation, but that’s a name more appropriate to their post-911 infancies and unlikely to catch on.  GenZ or Zoomers have caught on for now — until they do something historical together out there in 2030s and get a more fitting name.

Howe’s best guess at the moment is that this is the generation being born from about 2006 to about 2029. Let’s assume for the moment that these birthyears bear out over time. In 2023, there are 75 million Americans are Zoomers up to age 17. In 2033, there will be 99 million age 4 to 27. And in 2056, there will be 107 million age 27 to 50.

What does Howe see?  They are a bit self-conscious and even awkward, but Zoomer youth are well-rounded, earnest, respectful of achievers, agreeable, and “super-nice”.  They are “super-coached” and “super-focused” on meeting high standards.

They never knew the years 1983 to 2007 – the quarter-century (except for the one-generational Xer depression from 1989 to 1993) of the soaring Dow.  That kind of prosperous flourishing is almost beyond their imaginations. 

“They understood the adult mood perfectly,” Howe observes: “It’s a dangerous world out there, beset by sudden poverty, homelessness, armed violence, and rage in high places.  The lessons?  Stay close to home, follow the rules, and don’t upset older people who are doing their best to take care of you.”

While most Zoomers will be raised by Millennial parents, in 2023 the parents of America’s teens are mostly GenXers.  Xer parents, feeling neglected in our own youth, are spending every hour with their kids that they can, and making sure there is never a moment when a trusted adult doesn’t know where they are. 

Howe spells out what’s happening in America’s homes:  “Xers today view child-rearing as . . . a practical means of making your child totally safe, never afraid, decently behaved, and sensitive to the needs of others.”  Quality time was Boomer hypocrisy.  You gotta be there.  And when you’re not, you keep up 24/7 oversight and control. 

Zoomers have thus grown up with baby monitors, bedroom videocams, GPS trackers in their backpacks, ID screening at school, text check-ins throughout their day, and wristbands at public events.  Schools even ban “rough-and-tumble” recess activities.

Zoomer kids, Howe informs us, “encounter a veritable floodtide of rules as soon as they set foot on school property: rules on talking, on touching, on playing, on running; rules on what you may and may not say; jot-and-tittle rules about how assignments must be completed; draconian regulations on scanning for personal possessions (omg, don’t get caught with an aspirin or a butter knife!).”  And, with dress codes and school uniforms, rules about how to dress themselves.

They also get “social and emotional learning” (SEL), which sounds warm and fuzzy but actually teaches them to regulate their emotions, resist their impulses, and exercise self-control.  All to keep adults and their peers happy.  (Even their blockbuster films – Frozen, Inside Out, and Encanto – are about managing feelings.)

Zoomers study for multiple-choice tests in kindergarten and abide by complex “expectations matrices” of do’s and don’ts in third grade.  By high school, they are doing everything they can to avoid “youthful indiscretions” and develop perfect qualifications for the best college and career opportunities.

Almost all the social indicators are positive.  (Fentanyl is much more of a problem for older generations than for Zoomers.)  They are well-behaved, support their peers, ostracize bullies, and rebel only on TikTok videos from the safety of their bedrooms. 

Zoomers are surprisingly responsible, sensitive, ethical, and kind, but the Zoomer world is not quite a paradise.  The main downside of all this is that they are highly stressed.  They are flocking to therapists, dropping into anxiety and depression, and going on psych meds.  Just as problematic is that they may be so over-sheltered that they end up docile and disabled by neurosis. 

Howe gives us a warning: “Their parents’ snowplow parenting style may have been excessive . . . robbing kids of their need to experience agency, risk, and failure.  All those ‘unboxing’ videos, nonstop crib monitors, scheduled play-dates, overcoached ball games, homework tutors, and deluxe fidget toys (even “fidgeting” now needs a dedicated device) come at a psychic cost . . . Among friends or in the classroom, they worry a lot about being judged or saying something ‘wrong.’  An athletic few train in club sports so compliantly that repetitive stress injuries are now epidemic.”    

Despite it all, Howe tells us, the role of Zoomers, ultimately, may be to give back a heart to what is, in the 2020s, far too heartless a world. 

Zoomers and the Future

Zoomers, Howe tells us, will continue to be screened, monitored, tracked, and sheltered from danger 24/7, to be subjected to do-and-don’t rules for almost all their behavior, and to live in homes that are, basically, claustrophobic bunkers.  But they’ll continue to prefer life with rules than without. 

We’ll keep finding Zoomers self-conscious, awkward, anxious, and a bit neurotic – focused on avoiding mistakes and scandalous behavior.  But this is the flipside of their impressive traits of resisting their impulses, exercising self-control and responsibility, satisfying other people’s expectations, and meeting high standards. 

Howe notes that on one matter Zoomers will take a firm stand.  They’ll continue to speak against people who are selfish, rude, aggressive, and contentious – all of whom, for some reason, they’ve dubbed “Karens”.

We will begin to notice, more and more, the upside.  The oldest Zoomers are about to step forward to acquire diplomas and other credentials.  Many will develop well-informed and well-rounded professional expertise.  Many will emerge as model spouses, employees, neighbors, and citizens.

In the 2030s and 2040s, Zoomers will be polite, super-nice, earnest, well-behaved, and sensitive rising adults.  Will they be too conventional, docile, and complacent?  Yes, says Howe, but they will also “excel at communicating with other people (including other age groups) who hold different points of view”.

In the next crisis or two, Zoomers will probably be bystanders.  They’ll be helpmates to their elders, Howe predicts, who take on many of the early crises’ smaller tasks.

In the good times, rising-adult Zoomers will help midlife Millennials carry out their grand plans.  Zoomers will serve as the experts, specialists, and technicians of Millennials’ grand collective efforts.

Robbed of their agency as youth, Zoomers can be expected to emerge in midlife in the 2050s into lives of autonomy, empowerment, personal exploration, and, at last, risk-taking.  They will probably also doubt and question the gigantism of the Millennials-built world.

Along the way, Zoomers will add conscience, feelings, and authenticity to a period that will be somewhat lacking in them.  More than any other generation, from the 2030s to the 2050s and well beyond, Zoomers will give America and the world its heart.

That, in essence, is Neil Howe’s view of Zoomers. What have you observed? What’s your view?