Fan mail for Gen Z and Alpha

Hello young people,

A fan here. I do not use the word fan lightly. In my long career, I have studied many generations. You are distinct, not only because of the gifts you possess, but because of the historical context that has forged you.

I decided to reach out to you because I fear you are about to be wronged and misunderstood. This is not due to any inherent malice. In our hyperactive, post-truth moment, form often overtakes substance, and a single unfortunate trigger can colour the image of an entire generation. People are compelled to judge even before they see. I am loath to be so injudicious.

Let me admit that I am biased in your favour. I have seen my two daughters, one from Gen Z and one a cusper, elegantly grow into smart young women. Long debates on everything under the sun are the highlight of my day. Beyond that, my interactions with you have almost always been exceptionally positive, sometimes even awe-inspiring. In my line of work, I meet people of all ages every day. I do not exaggerate when I say I am yet to meet a member of your generation who has not shown me a level of kindness, generosity or deference I have learned not to expect easily.

Those who insist that age is merely a number and dismiss the reality of generations would do well to revisit Karl Mannheim's essay, 'The Sociological Problem of Generations. Mannheim argues that generations become a political reality when they come into "fresh contact" with the defining crises of their time. In other words, a generation is shaped less by its year of birth than by the experiences it is forced to confront together.

You have already lived through more than your share of crises. Yet the context shaping you most decisively, as I see it, is neither political nor economic, but technological. To update our knowledge, my generation had to run to libraries and leaf through heavy volumes. Thanks to the internet, smart devices and now generative AI, the accumulated knowledge of ages is available to you almost instantly.

But while technology equips you uniquely, history has a habit of casting generations into familiar roles. William Strauss and Neil Howe, in Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, showed how each cohort is assigned a script, rebel, builder, cynic, idealist, each shaped by its crises. The real challenge is learning when to inhabit that role, and when to refuse it.

For your generation, the script oscillates between fragility and volatility. The charge of fragility is often little more than an attempt to corner you for knowing your rights better than earlier generations did. Societal sensibilities have not evolved much since the days of Oliver Twist, and asking for more has always been portrayed as entitlement. There is nothing novel about that.

Volatility, however, is a different matter. Youth has always carried energy, urgency, and a desire for rapid change. When that momentum is allowed to run without direction, it often collapses into one of history's most exhausted figures, the perpetually angry young man. Countercultures have repeatedly mistaken intensity for strategy, only to find themselves carrying forward changes they neither intended nor controlled.

Recent history offers a cautionary tale. The Arab Spring showed how quickly entrenched regimes can be displaced when youth movements supply energy, legitimacy and moral force. What it also showed, more quietly, is how rarely that energy translates into durable control. Governments fell, but power often reassembled itself, sometimes in harder, more disciplined forms.

This was not an aberration. Across regions and decades, youth movements have repeatedly discovered that disruption opens doors they do not get to walk through. The skills required to mobilise are not the same as those required to govern. In the vacuum between the two, seasoned elites rarely miss their cue.

This is not a new insight. Hannah Arendt, in On Violence, warned that force may destroy authority but cannot create legitimacy in its place. Similarly, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, in Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, showed how even successful disruption is often absorbed and redirected by the very systems it seeks to challenge, producing reform without a transfer of power.

There is a deeper cost that history records poorly: the counterfactual. Moments of internal fracture do not unfold in isolation. They invite designs, ambitions and corrections from outside, often framed as rescue or destiny. Manchuria was not shaped by chaos alone, but chaos made conquest easier. Compressed futures tempt generations to gamble; history is littered with cases where the wager produced a tragedy larger than the grievance that inspired it.

So it is imperative not merely to think of today or tomorrow, but to prepare for the day after. Impatience and volatility undermine that preparation. They hollow out the moment when you might actually be ready to assume responsibility, if power is what you seek. Worse, they can saddle you with a negative agency, one shaped by reaction rather than creation, inhibiting the very imagination required for lasting change.

If you want durable and positive outcomes, three ideas matter more than slogans or speed: patience, capacity-building and the deliberate sharpening of your abilities. None of these are glamorous. All of them compound.

To that end, here are six compacts that have served me well, and that I believe will take you farther than you expect, if you honour them consistently.

First compact. Keep learning, especially when certainty feels comfortable. The moment answers begin to feel obvious is usually the moment curiosity is quietly replaced by conviction. Dogma does not announce itself loudly; it settles in when questions stop feeling necessary.

Second compact. Interrogate your own beliefs more ruthlessly than those of your opponents. Self-critique is not self-doubt; it is insulation against being used. Movements that stop questioning themselves soon find others thinking on their behalf.

Third compact. Refuse false binaries. Capitalism versus socialism is a debate for textbooks; lived societies survive on what works under specific conditions. When ideas harden into tribes, solutions become collateral damage.

Fourth compact. Guard your anger. It is renewable energy, and that is precisely why it attracts opportunists. Anger can mobilise quickly, but it is just as easily redirected toward ends you did not choose.

Fifth compact. Do not confuse speed with progress. Moments feel powerful, but institutions endure. What lasts is rarely built at the pace of outrage.

Sixth compact. Dream expansively, but act incrementally. Revolutions tend to age badly, while systems, however imperfect, reward patience, preparation and persistence.

You are more capable than you are credited for, and more vulnerable than you are often told. Treat patience not as restraint but as strategy, and ensure that when change finally comes, it is you who shape it.