Parfenova O.A. Generation Z as the Youngest of Current Adults: Hints to the Portrait of Zoomers Through The Lens of Intergenerational Relations. Vestnik Nizhegorodskogo universiteta im. N.I. Lobachevskogo. Seriya: Sotsial'nyye nauki. 2024. No. 2 (74). Pp. 126-133.

Abstract

The study was born out of a desire to know and understand the generation of the youngest of today's adults – Generation Z, their values and ways of living their lives. Using the example of intergenerational relationships with «older adults» – grandparents, we analyze some of the features of zoomers, their values and ways of building relationships, and behavior in conflict situations. The concept of generation is used for analysis. The empirical materials were interviews with students aged 18–21 – the oldest representatives of generation Z. Despite digitalization and the abundance of information (and perhaps thanks to them) – in the eyes of young people, grandparents are an authoritative source of knowledge about the past of both a particular family and the wider country and eras. The grandparents, being “originally from the USSR,” on the one hand, seem in some ways hopelessly far from modernity, but at the same time, they serve as a valuable and living source of knowledge about the country that the young have no longer found. For zoomers, respect for personal boundaries and other people’s opinions is of great value - they demonstrate this themselves and expect the same from their grandparents. In case of conflicts, zoomers prefer to avoid them, not touching on «dangerous topics», or agreeing «in words», but continuing to think and do «in their own way». In Generation Z, «digital natives» are experts and guides in the digital world for their grandparents, thereby earning authority and building relationships from an «adult-to-adult» position. Thus, we can talk about the emergence of a certain unique space of intergenerational exchange, in which the elders are for the younger ones a unique source of knowledge about the country’s past, and the younger ones for the older ones are often the only and therefore very significant guides to the coming digital future.