Speaking at the conference last week in London, Holly Hewlett, vice-president, content development and marketing strategy at the National Research Group (NRG), said that as the first generation to have grown up with social media, the availability of unlimited content was providing both opportunities and challenges for generation alpha (people born between 2010 and 2024 ).

“Kids today have more opportunity to seek out content that truly reflects their passions and their interests; no matter how niche they may be, there will be a video online about it, or several,” said Hewlett.

“At the same time, we have access to so much content so easily, it can be really difficult to find the stuff that truly matters. It is really challenging for gen alpha to create its own shared sense of generational culture, as there is so much content out there at the moment.”

Speaking in the same session, Gisele Roberts, executive director at Young Storytellers, said that children “aren’t scrolling for the sake of just scrolling”, and said that social media and technology use reflected societal changes as much as a generational trend.

“The reliance on technology, for this generation, isn’t something the kids have chosen for themselves. It is due to shifting cultural contexts and changes to the ways, overall, that society is raising our kids,” explained Roberts, adding that “it has become harder for kids to have spaces to socialise with each another”.

“Parents have started becoming more cautious about allowing their kids to spend time in the real world, but they have become more relaxed about them spending time in the digital world,” Roberts added. 

Roberts said that stories submitted by young people to the Young Storytellers platform reflected the changes, with stories about gaming now outnumbering those about sport three to one, a trend that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She added that as well as using technology, children “want to be able to socialise in person as well”, with Young Storytellers and NRG’s research showing that 45% preferred in-person socialising, double that for online spaces.

“[There is a] disconnect between how kids are spending their time, and how they are wanting to spend their time.

“As gen alpha grows, we expect them to reassert the value of face-to-face socialisation, but be able to blend that with their technology use.”

Rachael Turner, research manager at The Nursery Research & Planning, told the conference that younger generations were getting more worried about AI, with 25% concerned about the impact of AI on their life in 2025 compared with 14% in similar research in 2023.

“There’s a concern about what it means for me at work,” she added. “They know it will change the workplace forever.”

Turner also said that social media had caused a “lost permission to experiment”, with younger people “more afraid of what they look like and how people are looking at them when they leave the house”. This means less experimentation with how they look compared with previous generations, she added.