A Journey into the Characteristics of the Beta Generation: Technology, Demographics, and Social Influences That May Shape the Future.
At Beilinson Hospital, history happened last week: The first Israeli baby of 2025 Born shortly after midnight. Along the way, he also broke through the border from the alpha generation to the beta generation, and became the first Israeli of the new generation.
What will his life look like in the next two decades, before the beta generation replaces itself with gamma?
Before we try to answer the question, we need to explain a little about the generations method.
Society researchers - and especially marketing researchers - like to divide all people living today by generations - that is, by the year they were born. The argument is that members of each generation tend to share certain character traits and tendencies. Of course this is a generalization: some children are born 'old', and connect more with the lifestyle of the generation before them. And there are forty-year-olds who find that they have more in common with the twenty-somethings they meet than with their contemporaries. And yet, the generations method works well enough when looking at a broad cross-section of the population of each generation.
according to gin tounge, studies generations, technology is the most influential factor on the worldviews of recent generations. Technology is also one of the easiest ways to understand which generation you belong to. If you grew up in front of large PCs and swapped diskettes between you to run Golden Ax, you belong to the old generation X (born between 1965 and 1979) or the young generation Y (between 1980 and 1994).
If in your youth you rode BMX bikes on the sidewalks and down the stairs, and in your twenties you listened to music on an iPod, you are definitely Generation Y. If, on the other hand, you commute to work on an electric scooter, while receiving your favorite songs directly into your Bluetooth headphones Through Spotify, you are already part of Generation Z (born 1995-2009). And if you consume music through Alexa and other smart assistants at home, while you spin your fidget spinner between your fingers and yell at your friends on the phone to kill the Under Dragon in Minecraft, you are most likely in the Alpha generation (2010 – 2024).
Each of these technologies shaped the way you thought about yourself, your friends and those around you. She helped you decide who was "cool", or "daddy voice", or "rare", or any other generational term that says you appreciate someone or something.
We can continue with more and more technological and social characteristics that characterize the different generations, but perhaps the most interesting fact is that, starting with Generation Z, the generations already literally live in different worlds.
Every generation and their world
The young people of generation Z were only 12 years old when the smartphone first entered their lives, and a few years later they were already connected nonstop to social networks, everywhere and at any time. The adults among them have never known a world without social media through the smartphone. They were born connected by the umbilical cord to the electronic devices through which they communicated with their friends.
The alpha generation, on the other hand, live in a different type of environment. Yes, they can also be found on social networks, and especially on class WhatsApps and Tiktok. But more than that, they are connected through "virtual worlds" in the full sense of the word: they come home from school, throw their shoes aside and connect to Minecraft, Fortnite or Roblox. There they join their groups, which are made up of their school friends, and other young people who come from all over the world, and work together to solve puzzles, kill virtual characters and win pixelated gold coins.
Well, in what world will the children of the beta generation live?
When it comes to social media, it's still hard to know where the future will take us. Today's social networks emphasize geographical distance more than ever. Facebook hesitates to recommend us friends from other countries, and WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal make no attempt to expand our database of acquaintances beyond the country's borders. The network itself splits into "splinternets" - shards of the Internet, each of which is bounded by a certain geography. Even cross-border TikTok, which came to the West from faraway China, is finding it needs to re-naturalize as a US-owned company, or face closure.
Still, one thing can be said with high probability about the beta generation and their activity in the virtual world: they will be the first to have difficulty distinguishing between a human friend and an artificial friend. I don't mean someone pretending to be a friend, but that AIs will be able to imitate humans to a high degree. Profiles on social networks, and avatars and characters in computer games, will talk to the children of the beta generation as if they were human.
Some of these AIs will be 'friends' in quotes. That is, they will mainly try to sell our children products and services of various kinds. Don't worry about the children too much: in the next decade, they and we will learn to understand who is trying to work on us, and we will develop resistance to these sales methods. If you don't believe me, try to think about how much attention you pay to ads that appear on the side of the screen, or even those that appear in the middle of the article and force you to click X to close them. If these advertising methods become too aggressive, the legislator will have to find a way to stop them. As with every generation, the betas will also find the balance in life alongside technology.
The fuller truth is that members of the beta generation will enjoy a wealth of true friends unprecedented in human history. True, some of those friends will be artificial, but they will still strive for the best interests of the child - of the individual himself. Every child of the beta generation will have an artificial friend who will be attentive to him all the time, who will be able to talk to him and advise him. Beta kids will share their fears, their struggles, their loves and their photos with these artificial friends. Our duty as adults, will be to understand which companies provide such artificial friends that work for the benefit of the children, as opposed to malicious artificial 'friends' who will share all this information with every passer-by.
The members of the beta generation will not only receive artificial friends, but also artificial advisors in every field. In fact, they will be the first generation to be enveloped in assistance and help from all sides - to the point of feeling suffocated at times. Each child will have a small army of artificial private tutors, who will do homework with them and explain the material to them in the most suitable way for them. They will have artificial psychologists, medical counselors and artificial career counselors. For some, their first love will also be artificial, and that's okay too. Each generation and its preferences, each generation and its desires. Just as there will be those who will want the security, calm and comfort that comes from knowing that "someone" accepts you as you are, there will also be others who will want the storm of emotions and hormones of falling in love with humans in the physical world.
What will be the consequences of this way of life, in which every child can be surrounded by helpers and artificial friends, on the souls of the members of the beta generation? It's hard to know in advance. In fact, impossible. We can predict the progress of technology relatively well, but it is difficult to know what use people will make of the technology - and how it will affect them in turn. The only thing that can be said for sure is that we will, once again, have to help the children of the beta generation (and the elders of the alpha generation) to understand who among them is human and who is artificial, who strives for their own good and who strives for the good of the society that developed him. I wish we knew it ourselves.
Economy, democracy and outlook on life
If we leave technology aside for a moment, it seems clear that members of the beta generation will also be deeply affected by the wider changes that the world is going through today. Their parents - mainly members of generation Z - have gone through difficult years in the last two decades. In the West especially, they experienced the great economic crisis of 2007, when their parents had to explain to them why they were being evicted from the houses they lived in, or had to tighten their belts when shopping at the supermarket. This is a crisis that we hardly felt in Israel, but in the Western world it left a deep mark of uncertainty and distrust in the government systems and official institutions.
Those Gen Zers have only continued to experience upheavals ever since. They learned to understand that the politicians and parties try to play on their emotions through social networks. They discovered how difficult it is to reach a scientific consensus on issues like the corona virus, and realized the power that the government can exert against them - sometimes on a physical level - if they refuse to take part in actions designed to protect the public, such as wearing masks or staying in isolation at home. Some of them experienced another economic crisis in the first two years when the corona virus spread around the world like a storm.
Even if we neglect the effect of the virus on society, it is clear that generation beta children are born to parents who are beginning to disillusion with the idea that the world is a stable and safe place. The first major war in Europe started already two years ago, and produced images that we all hoped not to see in our lifetime: of children and elderly fleeing in the cold from Ukraine, of soldiers committing terrible war crimes, and of tens of thousands of robotic drones that attack humans and blow them up as if they were sheep for the slaughter.
And yes, October 7th, 2023. Oh, October 7th. It is not over yet, and as long as the abductees in Gaza and the failures of the government and the army are not fully investigated - it will not end either. And even after that, we will all still live with the lessons that were engraved in us that day.
It's hard to find an adult today who hasn't undergone an inner transformation in the last four years. That he did not become a cynic anymore, that his skin and soul did not become thicker and coarser. who has not learned to understand that he needs to take care of himself and his family - or at least the sector and group that supports his particular ideology - more than the country. It is hard to find someone who has not been disappointed with democracy in some way, who does not believe that a dramatic change is needed in the country he lives in, and preferably in the world in general.
All these feelings, the disappointments and upheavals and bitterness, we will instill in the children of the beta generation.
How will they react? no one knows In their youth, they will surely echo our annoyances and worries, angers and hatreds. Maybe they will learn to quietly tap their toes when "Bad Bibi" is talking on TV and dad is yelling at the screen, or get angry together with mom about the "treacherous Kaplanists" blocking the road. Then, when puberty comes, they will start to rebel against us and everything that was important to us. Like the genre of holocaust jokes that was especially popular among Generation X members, they will learn to turn the hardships we experienced into a source of humor. And that's okay too. Humor is a way of dealing with the world. Shame on them. We will continue to fight for them, for now.
And they will populate the world for us.
Matters of demography
The beta generation will quickly fill the world. According to the McCrindle Institute, in a short time - ten years from now - they will number 2.1 billion babies and children. In a quick calculation, this is 16 percent of the population. Nevertheless, if the trends of the last twenty years continue, then the children of the beta generation will grow up into a world with lower fertility rates, and greater life expectancy. The number of children per woman in Europe fell to a low of 1.6 in 2020. In North America and South America it reached an average of two children. In Asia we stand at 2.2 children per woman.
To give an adequate context, the currently accepted assumption is that in order to preserve the existing population size, Every woman should give birth to 2.1 children on average. This means that in large parts of the world, members of the beta generation may find that they no longer have to worry about the "population explosion". Instead, some of the messages that will be conveyed to them will be about their commitment to having children and rebuilding the population in their countries. At the same time, the members of the beta generation in the West will face waves of immigrants: both because of the economic and geopolitical upheavals, and also because of the growing need of the Western countries for a young and energetic workforce.
Or... not. Perhaps Western countries will choose to follow Japan's path, and develop robots that will integrate into the workforce. It didn't work well for the Japanese, but a new generation of robots is entering the market these days, and they might be able to do a better job. The future, as usual, is unknown and unclear.
And one more thing
In closing, there is one thing I can say with high probability: unless a terrible catastrophe occurs, most members of the beta generation will see out the 22nd century in good health. They will be a total of 75 years old when they reach the year 2100.
It is customary to say that - "Today's sixty-year-olds are the forty-year-olds of yesteryear." And if the trend continues, those members of the beta generation who reach the 22nd century will be today's forties and thirties.
True, this is an optimistic forecast, but that does not mean it is detached from reality. If science and technology continue to advance at the rate we expect them to, then many of the members of the beta generation will reach the year 2100 with an easy step and with a smile on their lips, enjoying an impressive mane of hair, a spark of youthful playfulness in their eyes, and when they join hands with a robotic lover or lover.
And we can only hope that we too will be able to stand there by their side.
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