1. 6
SundayMagazine
SUNDAY TRIBUNE
MAY 24 2015 Generation K
A
GE 13 to 20 or born 1995 to 2002,
Generation K has grown up alongside
the iPhone and Facebook and cannot
imagine a world without them.
The “K” represents the feisty and fair
heroine Katniss Everdeen of the global
franchise The Hunger Games.
Nicola Cooper, a lifestyle, pop and youth
culture trend analyst of Flux Trends, says
this is an exciting generation.
“They are brought up with technology
and are quite an anxious bunch. Because
nothing has been withheld from them they
tend to worry more, but they are also an
open, thoughtful and pragmatic generation,”
she said.
She said that although Generation K has
grown up with technology, they don’t let it
rule their lives.
“They still want real stuff, they are the
binary opposite, anti-bling and want to
engage in life with real people.”
She says they will also tackle social and
global issues that the current generation
(Millennials and Generation Z) fail to do.
In a recent poll conducted by American
research company Survey Monkey on more
than 1 000 American and British girls, it
showed that unlike the current group,
aged 20 to 30, who believe that the world is
their oyster, for Generation K the world
is less oyster and more Hobbesian
nightmare.
They have seen al-Qaeda piped into their
living rooms and smartphones and seen
their parents and other loved ones lose their
jobs. A generation for whom there are
disturbing echoes of the dystopian landscape
Katniss encounters in The Hunger Games’s
District 12. Unequal, violent, hard.
Their fears stretch way beyond the typical
teenage anxieties of boyfriends, girlfriends,
peer groups and homework. They worry
about terrorism, climate change, Iran
and about how their own futures will pan
out.
Another striking feature about
Generation K is that they are more sober
than previous generations. Teenagers drink
less alcohol and take fewer drugs.
They are harder working and say they
intend to work as hard as it takes to succeed
over the next 10 years, even if they have to
work day and night.
Thirty percent of females in Generation
K either don’t want to get married or are
unsure if they want to get married.
Thirty-five percent are either unsure if
they want to have children or definitely
don’t. This is a seismic difference compared
with older millennials. Ninety percent
consider it important to be successful in a
high-paying profession.
But like their heroine Katniss Everdeen,
Generation K’s capitalist bent sits firmly
alongside a strong sense of what is right and
fair.
People tend to lump anyone born before
the year 2000 together as one group, but the
study shows a fairly clear line of delineation
between this younger generation and
everyone else.
CHRISTINA GIBSON-DAVIS
OVER the past year, Southern Baptist
leaders in the US have been encouraging
churchgoers to marry young. The push
seems to stem primarily from the concern
that many people – especially men – are
having sex before they marry. Shorten the
time between when men reach sexual
maturity and when they marry, the
reasoning goes, and men (and presumably
women, too) will be more likely to be
virgins on their wedding day.
There are many reasons the church
might want to discourage early sexual
activity; including limiting the number of
out-of-wedlock births and reducing rates of
sexually transmitted disease.
However, what if one steps back to
consider how younger marriages might
affect the family more broadly? From that
vantage point, is marrying young a good
goal to promote?
Probably not. Recent research has shown
how a number of factors related to age –
income, education level and whether
couples live together – go a long way in
shaping the health of a marriage.
As someone who studies marriage and
who married in my early 30s, I’m intrigued
by the Southern Baptists’ attempt to swim
against the demographic stream.
For the past half-century, the trend has
been towards later – not earlier – marriage.
The median age at first marriage is now 29
for men and 26 for women, an age that has
risen steadily since the 1950s. According to
the US census, today’s young adults marry a
full six years later than their counterparts
did during the Eisenhower administration.
As marriage ages have risen, marriage
has also become less common and less
stable. In 1960, less than 9 percent of people
over the age of 25 had never married. Today,
that proportion is 20 percent, meaning that
42 million Americans have never walked
down the aisle. Meanwhile, divorce rates
have increased by more than 100 percent
since the mid-20th century and about one in
two marriages now ends in divorce.
Rates of sexual activity outside of
marriage are higher than ever before, and
out-of-wedlock births now represent about
40 percent of all births.
Most Americans would probably agree
that stable marriages are better than
unstable ones. And reams of published
research point to the benefits of having
children during, rather than outside,
marriage. If marrying young would
promote happier, healthier marriages, we as
a society might do well to encourage people
to tie the knot as soon as they can.
But if anything, the data suggests the
opposite. People who get married in their
early 20s are more likely to get divorced
than people who marry older. Age was
recently identified as the “smoking gun” in
one of the enduring mysteries of modern
American marriage: why couples who
cohabit before getting married are more
likely to get divorced.
For years, no one was sure why. However,
couples who cohabit before they get
married do tend to be younger, and recent
research suggests it is the age of the couple
when they began living together – rather
than the fact they cohabited – that most
strongly predicted an eventual divorce.
Nevertheless, the association between
age and divorce is just that – an association,
not a proven cause.
It remains possible that age masks
another underlying causal factor. For
instance, people who get married at
younger ages have less education than those
who get married older, and that lack of
education – not youth – could factor into
why some people divorce.
However, we do know some things that
keep marriages strong: having enough
money is predictive of a stable marriage,
for example. So is having family support
and possessing good communication skills –
especially in conflict resolution.
That’s why most efforts aimed at
promoting marriage (marriage counselling,
for example) target how a couple interacts
with one another. These key ingredients in
determining whether a couple stays
together are intrinsic to the couple; they’re
not a function of some external factor.
If groups such as the Southern Baptist
Convention want to promote stronger
families, they might consider taking their
cues from research, and investing in areas
that have been shown to yield results.
Certainly, there is nothing in the data to
suggest that marrying young will lead to
happier, healthier families. While
encouraging younger marriages may be
an effective way to promote sexual
abstinence, the pursuit of that narrow
goal will do little to promote stronger
marriages – and may even work against
that goal. – The Conversation
Step aside Gen Z and
Millennials. Generation K
has taken over, writes
Alyssia Birjalal
YOUTHFUL VOWS: what it means to marry young
1. YOU’RE PROFICIENT WITH
TECHNOLOGY
For kids in Generation K,
technology is everything. It’s not
just about being able to play Candy
Crush, it’s about connecting with other
people and being able to engage with
the world. So if you can’t imagine
never having the internet again and
the thought of losing your phone
terrifies you, you definitely fit the
Generation K profile.
2. YOU GREW UP WITH
ANXIETY
Generation K feels pretty anxious. In
general, they are very concerned about
the state of the world.
3. YOU’RE CONCERNED WITH SOCIAL
ISSUES
Generation K is concerned about both
economic and social inequality. They
are appalled by the gender pay gap.
They support trans rights.
4. YOU’RE ACTIVIST-MINDED
Generation K not only cares about the
issues of the world, but wants to do
something about them. Maybe it’s
because the internet and social media
makes it feel like it’s possible to reach
out and have an effect on people, no
matter where you are. Maybe it’s just
because human beings can only have
so much evidence of problems in the
world before they feel it is important to
help. Whatever it is, Generation K is
eager to get involved.
5. YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE UNIQUE
They describe themselves as unique.
Whereas other generations have
wanted to cover up differences or
encourage people to fit in, Generation
K, more than any other, embraces
difference, diversity, and
independence.
The
world
is their
dystopia
Are you part of
Generation Katniss?
Here are 5 signs to
look out for