Casey Lewis, social media consultant, author behind the After School newsletter
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 3:44 am
Since then, marketers have been trying to reach a revolving door of youth generations—from Boomers to Gen X to Millennials, and now Zoomers and Gen Alpha. Reaching young people and penetrating trend culture has become a consistent hurdle.
and expert of social trends among younger brazil business email list audiences, sums it up like this: “Any brand not actively trying to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha is doing themselves a disservice. Even if you don’t care to be in the zeitgeist. They are our future consumers, so you need to have them in mind—even if you’re not trying to reach them today.”
After decades of consistently marketing to young people, marketers are again mystified by a new generation. Like Boomers before them, Gen Z represents a new kind of consumer: digital natives who are increasingly cynical, driven by ethical causes and are chronically online (or are they?) They are more discerning than their predecessors, which frustrates marketers trying to obsessively crack the code on how to effectively reach them without seeming indubitably cringe.
In this guide, we explain how Gen Z wants brands to show up on social media and what it takes to market to them the right way.
Gen Z social media usage
Gen Z has never known a world without social media or the internet. It’s enmeshed in their daily lives and serves as their go-to channel for information—even beating out popular search engines. When we asked Lewis how she would describe the way Gen Z uses social, she responded, “A better question is how don’t they use social? They use it for everything and they expect brands to use it for everything, too—from customer service to commerce, discovery to community.”
Data backs this up. Compared to other generations, Gen Z is most likely to use social for discovering new products, keeping up with the news and reaching out to brands with customer care needs, according to the Q1 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey.
and expert of social trends among younger brazil business email list audiences, sums it up like this: “Any brand not actively trying to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha is doing themselves a disservice. Even if you don’t care to be in the zeitgeist. They are our future consumers, so you need to have them in mind—even if you’re not trying to reach them today.”
After decades of consistently marketing to young people, marketers are again mystified by a new generation. Like Boomers before them, Gen Z represents a new kind of consumer: digital natives who are increasingly cynical, driven by ethical causes and are chronically online (or are they?) They are more discerning than their predecessors, which frustrates marketers trying to obsessively crack the code on how to effectively reach them without seeming indubitably cringe.
In this guide, we explain how Gen Z wants brands to show up on social media and what it takes to market to them the right way.
Gen Z social media usage
Gen Z has never known a world without social media or the internet. It’s enmeshed in their daily lives and serves as their go-to channel for information—even beating out popular search engines. When we asked Lewis how she would describe the way Gen Z uses social, she responded, “A better question is how don’t they use social? They use it for everything and they expect brands to use it for everything, too—from customer service to commerce, discovery to community.”
Data backs this up. Compared to other generations, Gen Z is most likely to use social for discovering new products, keeping up with the news and reaching out to brands with customer care needs, according to the Q1 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey.