{"id":5704,"date":"2020-06-26T12:53:40","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T16:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/?p=5704"},"modified":"2020-07-16T15:02:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T19:02:12","slug":"gen-z-nft-ownership-digital-natives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2020\/06\/26\/gen-z-nft-ownership-digital-natives","title":{"rendered":"Gen Z and the NFT: Redefining Ownership for Digital Natives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many of them, at least in the Western world, learned to swipe a screen before they learned to talk.<\/strong> They\u2019ve seen their parents get rekt on the stock market, maybe more than once, and they don\u2019t trust \u2018traditional\u2019 anything much anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By 2026 there will be more of them around than any other cohort \u2014 so it\u2019s time we started paying attention to what Generation Z values, respects, and cares about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Broadly defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z is easy for older generations to categorize as \u2018tech addicted\u2019. But this is about as meaningful as describing a fish as \u2018water addicted\u2019 \u2014 what we need to recognize instead is that this group has grown up fully immersed in an always-on, personally-accessible digital life, over which they have unprecedented control and choice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is simply the way they live, study, and are now moving into the workplace \u2014 taking the digital world along with them in their pocket, as they move through the physical one.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sociologically, there\u2019s already a large body of research telling us what this cohort believes, values, and supports; but if the events of 2020 have taught us anything at all, surely it\u2019s that predicting the future is futile. Their impact on economics, politics and society cannot possibly be foretold, other than to acknowledge that they will move within a fluid and ubiquitous digital environment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The research into Gen Z motivations (all of it pre-Covid) has already spawned a wealth of clich\u00e9s. It tells us that they prize meaning and balance ahead of reward, and that they\u2019re less driven by material acquisition. They\u2019re sensitive and woke, ultra-focused, and yet unreliable \u2014 or at least, whimsical. They care about the environment, they equate wealth and the piling up of physical stuff with greed and with a lack of choice and flexibility (although whether that\u2019s a useful bit of post-rationalization from a cohort less likely than their parents and grandparents to ever own property, is debatable).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Certainly their concept of a valuable asset is very different from what older generations consider to be important.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I spoke to Lola*, 15, about what value meant to her, she told me that her most important asset was her phone \u2014 which she then clarified to mean the photos and messages it contained. It was the content that mattered, not the device (\u201cSo it\u2019s fine if you wanna get me a new phone!\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

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