The Alphas

ANANTYA ANAND DOES NOT RECALL the time when she first came online. But she remembers the moment when she, just a child of four who occasionally appeared in the YouTube videos of her fashion blogger aunt, told her parents she thought she was ready to have her own YouTube channel. “She was a complete natural (on camera and online), right from day one,” Anand’s mother Nisha says. She was like a seasoned vlogger, her family recounts, someone who could go on talking on about any topic, without ever being dull. “So we helped set it (YouTube channel) up,” Nisha says.

Anand belongs to a generation of chil­dren who did not grow up to inherit the in­ternet at some point. They were born into it. They have been influenced and shaped by the web, by its online culture and social me­dia discourse and, as a result, are beginning to exhibit personalities and characteristics that, as their families say, are markedly dif­ferent from any generation before them.

Anand began vlogging about her daily routine on her YouTube channel MyMissAnand. She would do videos of her handbag collection, her hairstyles, toys, on­line challenges and dares, travel stories, and more. Nearly nine years later, she is today, with over 13.6 million subscribers, among the most popular Indian YouTubers in this age group. She has an equally impressive Instagram presence with over 5.76 lakh followers, making shorter posts about her life. “I like being myself online. I think that’s what people like most,” Anand says.

Very few of us have been taking note, but there is a new generational cohort that has been quietly on the rise. Born 2010 onwards, the oldest among them is now stepping into teenage. They have a name—Generation Alpha. And if you go by the accounts of their parents and professional trend forecasters, they have a distinct personality and voice.

Some technological and social mile­stones set them apart from previous gen­erations. They are the first, for instance, born entirely in the 21st century. They have grown up wholly with screens in front of them (in 2010, the iPad had just been intro­duced, the iPhone was at least three years old, and the world of apps had only recently started taking over our digital lives). They have also always had social media. Insta­gram, for instance, was launched in 2010.

The children of mostly millennials, they are expected to be the most formally educat­ed and technologically empowered gener­ation of all time and, perhaps as a result of how globally connected they are, they are being seen as a group that despite its young age is already exhibiting a very politically engaged and socially conscious personality, with strong views on the environment and sustainability, and conversant in online dis­course on issues like inclusivity, privilege, body positivity and gender dynamics. Gen­eration Alpha is also a very large group. In fact, it is expected to become the biggest gen­erational cohort, over two billion in size, by 2025, the cut-off date for those born under this nomenclature, with the largest num­ber of them coming from India. Some have also begun calling this group Screenagers, for its deep immersion in devices and online culture, and even “millennials on steroids”.

Generational labels are a vague nod to a type of new lifestyle or ideology espoused by a group of similarly aged people. But since a vast number of this group is still in the adolescent stage, and some still in their onesies, do they really have a language or vocabulary of their own?

“Very much. Generation Alpha is grow­ing up to be very different from the previ­ous lot,” says Mansi Zaveri, a parent and the Mumbai-based founder of Kidsstoppress. com, a discovery platform for all parenting needs. “I interact with a lot of parents with children in this age group. And it’s some­thing a lot of us parents are discovering.”

Although this age category is still very young, perhaps because of their exposure to the internet, Zaveri says, the speed at which they are maturing has been really accelerated. Zaveri is the mother of two daughters, 10-year-old Akshata who is an Alpha kid, and another daughter, belong­ing to the previous generation recognised as Gen Z. “They are just four years apart. And I can already see differences between the two,” she says.

She describes Alphas like her daughter as digital natives. Her daughter Akshata, for instance, navigates the internet with an ease that can startle older generations, whether it is to look up things she wants to learn more about, say the Ukraine war or trivia related to the British monarch, or listening to podcasts, reading blogs, or using online tools like Canva for school projects. Like many of her peers, Akshata also struggles to write by hand. “She is entirely voice-driven,” Zaveri says. “The other day I was trying to set an alarm for something (on my phone). And my 10-year-old daughter just rolled her eyes and was like, ‘Siri, set an alarm…’ I nearly fell off my seat.”

There is no science to the labelling of generations and, being as it is a vast gener­alisation, it is not even very precise, either in terms of attributes or the periods its members are said to be born in. But that is how human beings make sense of the world. It is also a Western construct, espe­cially an American one. For instance, the huge increase in births once World War II ended was observed there and that gener­ation eventually came to be known as the boomers, for those born between 1946 and the mid-1960s. They were followed by Gen­eration X, those born from the mid-1960s to the early-1980s. The name was derived from a novel, Generation X: Tales for an Ac­celerated Culture, by Douglas Coupl and, of young men disillusioned and scepti­cal about traditional values. Then came the ones who are called Millennials, or Generation Y—those who came to the world between the early 1980s and the latter half of the 1990s. Again, the coinage was derived from a book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, which identified archetypes of genera­tions that keep repeating for centuries. The next was Generation Z, the ones born at the turn of the millennium. Psychologist Jean Twenge, author of a book on them, wrote in an article in Pew Research: “Members of this generation were the first to spend their entire adolescence with a smartphone, so I call them iGen in a nod to the iPhones three-fourths of them own… As I document in my recent book, iGen, this generation spends more time online and less time with friends in person. Given the links between screen time and unhappiness, that might also be why members of this group are less self-confident and less optimistic than millennials were as teens. They are also at the forefront of a mental health crisis, with rates of depression and anxiety soaring among teens and young adults.” And now there is Generation Alpha, a construct still very much in the making.

To Zaveri, the unlimited access to information and hyper-connectedness through the internet have led to the cre­ation of individuals who, although still very young, are beginning to show char­acteristics and personalities that set them apart from previous generations. Genera­tion Alpha is much more politically aware and socially engaged, she says, on topics like environment and sustainability than kids of previous generations were. “Akshata will come and tell me why India should support Ukraine (diplomatically in the war) or why the US needs to do more (in the war). Sometime back, I found her looking up ADHD (Attention Deficit Hy­per Disorder) online, and when I asked her, I found that she had learned one of her classmates had been diagnosed with ADHD, and she was looking at ways she could support him,” Zaveri says. Another time, when acquaintances from the US, who are unmarried and have children, came visiting, and Akshata’s grandmoth­er expressed surprise at their choice to re­main unmarried, the 10-year-old shot back with a comment on how marriage isn’t essential. “She was like, ‘You don’t need to be married daadi. It’s okay’,” Zaveri says.

“I find these kids much more accept­ing. They are very confident and assured about themselves,” she goes on. “I think, as they grow older and enter the workforce, they will be looking for more self-fulfil­ment. Not the sorts who will be for fatter pay cheques, but rather better sunsets.”

When the pandemic first struck, forc­ing everyone indoors, many worried the impact it would have on children. But several parents report that it was the chil­dren who adapted most easily to the new socially distant reality. Manish Kanojia, a Delhi-based entrepreneur involved in agri businesses, was among those parents wor­ried about the impact of the lockdown on his then 10-year-old daughter Kyra. His worry turned to anxiety when he lost his father right in the midst of the pandemic in 2021. Kyra was particularly close to her grandfather, and Manish worried about her response. “But she took it very well. She was very understanding about the whole thing, and I was so surprised at her maturity,” he says.

Kyra, now 12, is a YouTuber. She began uploading videos mostly about unbox­ing toys or their reviews when she turned four, and her account, called Kyrascope Toy Reviews, now has over 22,500 subscrib­ers. “I was never into cartoons,” she says. “I liked watching videos on YouTube (of other children) instead.” As her channel’s popularity increased, brands came calling.

The likes of Kyra and Anand may still be very young, but because they hold such large appeal among Alphas in India, and the whole generation spends so much time online, it is resulting in the creation of a new category of child influencers. There are many more beyond these two, those who document their lives, create cooking-based shows, do pranks and challenges, and more. And unsurprising­ly, many brands use child influencers to promote products.

Anand, with over 13.6 million subscrib­ers on YouTube, is nothing less than a star. She has her own team that helps her out, from her mother who comes up with ideas, to others who shoot and edit her videos. She can’t spend more than 15 minutes in a mall, she says, without someone recognising her. She would like to do more interesting vide­os, she says, but invariably has to cave into what her fan base likes watching. “I love doing ‘getting ready with me’ videos for instance, where you vlog about how you get prepared for the day. But in India, most people like watching challenges. So I have to do those more,” she says.

What would she like to do? “It keeps changing all the time,” Anand says. “Last year, I wanted to be an actress. Now I think I definitely want to be a fashion designer.”

Kyra is currently taking a short break from social media to prepare for her on­going school examinations. She is also considering dabbling in other types of content beyond toy reviews, like break­ing down hot topics, such as ChatGPT or Artificial Intelligence (AI), through short videos for young audiences. Her proficien­cy online extends beyond social media. She is frequently online playing games on platforms like Roblox, or communi­cating with friends on Discord. “They say Discord has more features than apps like Whatsapp,” Kanojia says, but he thinks many of them use it so as not to leave digital footprints behind.

But social media comes as a dou­ble-edged sword. While it brings fame and influence, it can also be an unsavoury space for the young. Manish noticed this earlier, he says, when YouTube hadn’t dis­abled the comment section for content featuring children. “She (Kyra) was such a small child but there would be nasty comments ridiculing her accent or pro­nunciation of words, or pointing out some blemish on her clothes or shoes,” he says.

Ayaan Mohan, a 12-year-old based in Gurugram, follows several influencers, from YouTubers like Jimmy Donaldson (also known as MrBeast), who makes vid­eos on stunts, to those like Dhruv Rathee who, Mohan says, breaks down “com­plex issues in simple words”. “Rathee ex­plains very well. I really enjoyed a video he made on the extinction of dinosaurs for instance,” says Mohan. When asked what profession he would like to belong to when he became older, the 12-year-old says he would like to become a YouTuber.

MANY PARENTS, HOWEVER, have noticed that influencers push a very consumerist and brand-fo­cused lifestyle. “These influencers talk a lot about money and brands. It could be detrimental to a child. Suddenly, I see that my son has become brand-conscious and physical appearance has started to matter to him,” says Mohan’s mother Nina Muk­herjee. Anima Gogia, the mother of an 11-year-old son, says she often finds her son talking about branded products with his friends. “As parents, we try to control it by setting milestones for him to achieve before he can demand a branded item,” Gogia says.

Because this generation was born into a digital world, and being online was not something they had to adapt to like pre­vious generations, even their brains are believed to have been shaped by this real­ity. It makes them more adept than earlier generations could ever be at technology but that brings its own dangers. In a paper titled ‘Understanding Generation Alpha’, Amrit Kumar Jha, an assistant professor of psychology at IIT Kharagpur, wrote: “From psychological and physiological impact including cognition, sleep, and impaired social and emotional well-being to cyber threats and addiction, the list is ever growing. Gen Alpha life started con­necting more with Alexa or Siri (voice box assistant of Amazon and Apple) than with their parents or friends. More than enjoying the outdoor activities or real life play, they hop upon mobile games like PUBG, Xbox, and Pokemon, within their comfort zone inside home. Such has been the widespread use of online gaming that American Psychi­atric Association and World Health Organ­ization have classified them as disorders…. In one of our study [sic], we found that an adolescent spent an average two hours on mobile gaming with sheer consequences on anger management and socialization, leading to loneliness and aggressiveness upon withdrawal.”

Ranveer, Gogia’s 11-year-old son, would sometimes wake up in the mid­dle of the night as if he had experienced a nightmare. “When asked, he would say it was a dream about some online game,” Gogia recounts. Ranveer’s excessive expo­sure to online games, she believes, is even beginning to have a toll on his speech. “At times, he presents his thoughts as if he were playing a video game,” she says.

Another distinct feature of Alphas is their deficient social skills. “Because they have grown up with social media and having conversations with friends online, many of them don’t even feel the need to meet one another,” says Zaveri. The pandemic appears to have further deteriorated these skills. While 12-year-old Mohan is the most tech-savvy person in the house, and is often roped in to help his parents and grandparents when they struggle with their devices, his mother Nina says, he is also becoming increas­ingly socially inept. “Ayaan does not like to socialise much. I have even noticed that sometimes (when we are having a conver­sation) he is not (mindfully) present in the conversation,” she says. He is instead of­ten on his laptop, playing games like Free Fire or Asphalt 9 for two hours daily, that stretch to four on holidays.

Even children with interests outside the internet invariably come online to either fulfil or expand these interests.

Nine-year-old Abhijatri Sengupta from Gurugram logs on to YouTube to watch videos on art and craft. “She follows a few channels that teach pencil sketching,” her mother Lovely Chowdhury Sengupta explains. Eleven-year-old Aahan Bakshi likes to watch YouTube videos of dogs. “He is passionate about animals and has also signed up as a child volunteer for People for Animals (an NGO),” his father Sumit Bakshi says. Arjun Kakkar, a national-lev­el tennis player who will turn 12 next month, comes online to watch clips of old matches or learn more about the game. “Since he is out practising tennis for long hours after school, Arjun barely has time to be online. It is indeed a blessing in dis­guise,” says his mother Snigdha.

While Alphas may not have their own money to spend, they have enormous in­direct impact as consumers, a reason com­panies are increasingly taking them into consideration in their marketing strategies. US-based Morning Consult, a global data intelligence firm, published a report called ‘A Brand’s Guide to Gen Alpha’ in March this year in which they surveyed “2,000 of their parents, asking them questions about their children’s screen time, brand prefer­ences and purchasing influence, financial future, healthy habits, and travel plans.” They found that the children were already influencing purchasing in numerous sec­tors. The report said: “Gen Alpha already has strong brand affinity, especially when it comes to what they eat and what they watch. Just under half of the generation’s parents report that their kids ask for their favorite brands in these categories, often by age 7. Preferences for electronics, video games and restaurants emerge a bit later, closer to the 8-9 age range. Apparel brands take off around age 10 as kids approach the treacherous preteen years.” In its conclu­sion, the report said the generation will be independent decision-makers very early in life. “That will impact brands that are look­ing to speak to this cohort: Expect Alphas to already have strong brand preferences by the time they become financially inde­pendent,” it said.

Last year, the market research firm Nepa ventured into exploring the Alphas grow­ing up in India. “Understanding new gener­ations, their social and economic attitudes, from a marketing perspective, is always im­portant,” explains Esha Nagar, the Manag­ing Director of Nepa APAC. But as they be­gan to conduct this survey, the firm started realising, she says, just how nuanced and different they are in their views from earlier generations. The firm conducted in-depth interviews with over 60 children across In­dian metros and non-metros aged between eight and 15, and 30 mothers of Alphas in this age group. Although the firm did not survey those belonging to smaller cities and towns, Nagar suspects they would not be very different from their big-city cohorts be­cause of the way the internet has flattened many socio-cultural differences.

One of the big findings, Nagar says, is the kind of influence Alphas wield on the spending habits of parents. “Unlike previ­ous generations, where children have very little say on what parents spend on, this isn’t the case here at all. Alphas exercise a strong influence, especially in navigating product reviews and online information, and synthesising it for their parents. Hence, parents rely heavily on Alphas for the latest and most relevant information,” she says.

According to her, Alphas represent an entirely new category with very different habits and personalities and, as they grow, many companies will find themselves compelled to reshape their businesses around this group. “It’s a very different group of people. We found that the line between their online and offline lives is blurred, that while they prefer and easily engage with a large social community on­line, they tend to avoid in-person offline conversations. Well-informed, anchored by a larger purpose, Alphas are all about doing than diagnosing,” she says, pointing to the case of a 12-year-old YouTuber who was already investing in the stock market via his father to gain experience.

“With a natural inclination to know and use the internet, stronger individual preferences but more cognisance of the larger world, it’s a very different and im­portant generation,” she says. “And I think we will be seeing a lot of changes in social behaviour in the coming years.”

(With Madhavankutty Pillai)

generational changeIndian societyinfluencenew generationnew technologiesteenagersThe Alphas