The latest generation of youth has sparked concerns about the future with their excessive use of technology and internet trends coming into the spotlight.
Children born between about 2010 and the end of 2024, dubbed ‘Generation Alpha’, now make up the largest group of children ever to have lived on planet Earth.
But the two billion-plus toddlers and pre-teens are already being cited for their illiteracy and uncontrollable thirst for screens, raising fears of what’s to come.
“Everyone on the internet is really scared of Gen Alpha,” popular Gen Z influencer Rivata Dutta told the LA Times. ‘Gen Alpha is so weird’.
Millennial parents blamed for raising doomed cohort of iPad-obsessed ‘Generation Alpha’ kids
Generation Alpha now makes up over a quarter of the world’s population, but thoughtless millennial parents are to blame.
They are cited for introducing such demoralizing trends as the ‘Sad Beige’ baby aesthetic, with light blues and pastel pinks replaced by a dull neutral palette.
Monochromatic nurseries are also all the rage, fueled in part by the rise of millennial parents trying to raise “theybies” — infants who can apparently decide on their own pronouns “when they’re old enough.”
But while older generations may not question that trend, the next crop of soon-to-be-teenagers is showing far more troubling behavior.
Dozens of teachers continue to leave education as they struggle to control children who are illiterate, with one expert telling the LA Times: ‘Teachers complain they have 14-year-olds who can’t read.’
“We hear people complaining about (alphas) lacking empathy — well, you learn that through literature,” said Shervaughnna Anderson-Byrd, director of the California Reading and Literature Project. ‘There’s a lot of blame put on these babies when it’s the adults who dictate the narrative.’
Across social media, Generation Alpha is being called ‘wild’ and ‘evil’ as they continue to make headlines, not least thanks to the presence of smartphones to capture every moment.
A childhood spent making YouTube videos on iPads has also been blamed for a lack of social skills, evident in the manic rise of the ‘Sephora tweens’.
Young girls go crazy in beauty retailers like Sephora, where they test expensive skin care products for free without caring about what they leave behind.
The youngest faction of Generation Alpha children are being characterized by the ‘sad beige’ trend
Generation Alpha tweens and teenagers go wild at Sephora as they test expensive skin care products and make a big mess
In January, an influencer shared his wild experience going through the ‘Drunk Elephant’ episode
In January, TikToker Cassandra Bankson, 31, investigated the rumor in Los Angeles and found the Drunk Elephant section – a beauty brand loved by Kim Kardashian – to be ‘disgusting’, before sharing footage of the destroyed ward.
The model found ‘a lip balm with a literal hair in it’ and that ‘someone put the brown drops all over one of the moisturisers and couldn’t even be bothered to put them back.’
Claims that Gen Alpha is out of control aren’t helped by the proliferation of cameras in schools, which capture the worst moments and plaster them around the internet.
This week, cameras were out at school when a sixth grade girl was brutally attacked by another student in California.
Her fellow students either stood around watching or took out their phones to film the fight – as her mother said KTLA: ‘No one came to help my daughter; no student came to stop this at all. So she was left alone.’
While school fights may not be new, evidence is permanently stamped online.
Thanks to the rise of such uncomfortable moments and the attention they continue to garner, the downfall of Generation Alpha has become a favorite topic for older influencers.
One of the primary criticisms of Gen Alpha youth is that they are illiterate—a partially unfair trope given that the generation still includes infants.
Nor is it entirely their fault because of the impact the pandemic had on education, forcing children in their prime social learning years to learn alone behind a screen and later still behind a mask.
Anderson-Byrd emphasized that a large number of Gen Alpha Californians — there are over six million already — are behind in school.
Generation Alpha children are particularly cited for their lack of empathy, as one expert explained the inability of many to pass basic reading skills
“(Generation Alpha) are some of the hardest hit kids when it comes to reading,” he said. ‘Only 43 percent of our students are on grade level in California.’
He told the outlet that because today’s fourth graders spent years learning from home and learning to read online, they struggled significantly at a time when they should be reading books.
“That’s why we have so many third graders whose scores look abysmal (on last year’s state assessments),” Anderson-Byrd said.
‘We have created a whole generation of failure for these children.’
But while some are doom and gloom about the situation, Dutta offered a positive spin — bad behavior is normal for young kids, and this generation might just be more online and have more access to knowledge than ever before.
“When I hang out with kids now, they have so much energy and they’re so well-informed,” Dutta said. ‘They have all this information at their fingertips.’
“I definitely see a lot more chaos coming,” Dutta said — though she noted that “Gen Alpha naturally goes against the grain.”