This study is a snapshot of the ways Gen Z sees the world and the culture. Who is Gen Z? What are their assumptions and values? What is shaping them? How can we better equip them, reach them and help them follow Jesus with confidence in this culture?
“Gen Z was born between 1999 and 2015. Most of them are in their teens and childhood years. Gen Z is the second-largest generation alive today. In the U.S. there are 69 million of them, compared to 66 million Millennials, 55 million Gen Xers, and 76 million Boomers. The parents of Gen Z are Gen X and Millennials. They are the most ethnically diverse generation alive today, and they have, for better and worse, grown up with technology at their fingertips. The smartphone was invented before most of them were even born.
These are the basic facts about Gen Z, but we wanted to go deeper. We wanted to know how this new generation thinks, how they perceive the world and themselves. So we went straight to the source. We interviewed 13– to 18-year-olds in a multi-pronged, multi-month survey. First, the qualitative stage. We interviewed individual 13– to 18-year-olds about their lives, beliefs, activities. Then we took the results from those interviews and developed a questionnaire for a nationally representative sample of 1,490 13– to 18-year-olds. We asked them about their faith, home lives, friendships, social activities, media and technology habits, goals for life, political beliefs, even their ideas on gender.