19 June 2017

Generation Z In the U.S. Are Turning Traditional

Generation Z
High school students attending proms across the United States are doing so in ways that may come as a shock to many, as they indicate that the generation, known as Generation Z, might be more traditional than the millennials who came before.

Those signs, as revealed in Yahoo Style's exclusive 'Prom Across America' survey on the American high school prom experience, included the following: teens indicating that they'll wear dresses that don’t show much skin, that they'll go to the dance with true dates rather than gay or casual friends, and that they harbor extreme reluctance when it comes to accepting transgender prom kings and queens.

"We’re calling them 'the throwback generation,'" Jason Dorsey, of the market research firm Center for Generational Kinetics, tells Yahoo Beauty.

Dorsey’s company recently conducted its own study of Gen Z, and found its collective behavior to be "completely unexpected" by liberal fanatics and in direct response to that of their predecessors. "They’re really pushing back from what millennials were about, and definitely want to see themselves differently," he says.

Yahoo's national prom survey of more than 1,700 addressed a gamut of questions about proms — including those related to expenses, attire and dress code, social pressures, and gender issues — and were primarily organized by age and region.

Among the results that point to Gen Z being more traditional than millennials:
  • Among teens heading to their proms, 70 percent are going with a date; that’s compared with 61 percent of adults who are 18 and over.
  • The rate of teens "going to the prom with friends" is just 9 percent — which is lower than it was, at 13 percent, for adults 18 over.
  • Regarding dress styles for girls, high necklines are proving popular with teens — 27 percent of whom opted for them — while just 20 percent of adults 18 and over chose high necklines.
  • Of the Gen Z teens, only 35 percent say they support a gender non-binary prom court or a transgender prom king or queen. That number jumps to 42 percent for millennial adults age 18 to 34.
"You’d expect younger to equal more liberal, but that's not what we're seeing," explains Dorsey, whose main findings were around Gen Z and financial behaviors, which are indicative of much more, he says.

"Their behavior says, 'We don’t want to end up like millennials — entitled, a trophy generation, with mountains of college debt. ... They are intentionally choosing less expensive colleges."

The pushback against snowflakes has started.