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i don’t think we got the facilities for that
Well hello there! Welcome (back) to your fave Tuesday stack… the common thred newsletter 🥞
Whether you’re interested in finance, politics, or culture, you should know one very important thing: young people are officially done waiting for these global systems to catch up with their needs. As a result, they’re learning to play by their own rules. Let me tell you what I mean by that.
On matters of money, nearly half of all young people have taken the initiative to learn to invest because ‘playing it safe’ genuinely feels like more of a risk. In online spaces, we’re all leaning nostalgically back into the vibe of 2016… and I’m sure you can guess which brands are happy about that. Inside classrooms, Gen Z students want teachers to scrap the dumbed-down content supposedly tailored to their ‘short attention spans’ which may not be so short after all? And all over the world, Gen Z’s influence on politics is becoming impossible to ignore. Bangladesh, like many other countries, is seeing young voters shaping the country’s first competitive election in years.
So whether you’re looking at their approach to finance, world issues, or how best to navigate the professional world, Gen Z can never be labelled as apathetic, even when a million and one obstacles seem stacked against them. This newsletter is about tracing the emerging trends young people are setting as they happen, and taking an educated guess about where they might lead us next.
Let’s get into it!
💰 tech + finance
Students are skipping the hardest part of growing up – new york times
There’s no question that AI is now permanently embedded into our everyday lives, and along with it has come the tremendous worry that young people aren’t only outsourcing critical thinking during crucial developmental stages, but that they’re sidestepping the tricky aspects of human interaction through ‘emotional offloading’. In other words, they’re using chatbots to rehearse conversations or ‘vibe-check’ messages in the hopes of avoiding potentially awkward social exchanges. At school and online, Gen Z is putting AI to werrrk, using it to sound more confident, apologetic, or articulate. AI chatbots are becoming somewhat of a mentor for anxious, self-aware young people who are uncertain about the social norms surrounding emails to a professor or confrontations with loved ones. A little advice may be harmless, but it’s worth asking: is over-reliance on AI tools (which are designed to affirm input rather than challenge it) likely to weaken core social skills or be beneficial in developing young people’s soical know how? Either way, Gen Z wants connection and they’re understandably afraid of screwing up their chances at it. But it’s worth remembering that the most valuable lessons can come from a little blunder every now and then.
Gen Z are leading the way when it comes to investing – news shopper
Moneybox’s Investing Money Mindsets index reveals that younger generations are driving a shift away from cash-only saving and toward long-term investing. In fact, Gen Z are currently the UK’s most active investors, with nearly half (47%) putting money into investments over the past year. That’s more than double the rate of Boomers who are investing right now! Millennials are close behind at 46%, and Gen X is lagging big time at 27%. From a Gen Z perspective, investing is about ensuring their own survival. Growing up with student debt, housing un-affordability, inflation, and a volatile job market has normalised the idea that traditional milestones and pensions can’t be relied on completely. And for digitally native young people, TikTok finance creators and digital investing apps have worked to demystify markets that felt exclusive to Wall Street. Now, 83% of Gen Z to say they feel more confident investing than a year ago compared with just 27% of Boomers. Digital literacy, in this case, is translating into financial literacy, which is super cool. Time are changing. Financial investment is finally becoming a common life skill, not just a privilege only afforded to the wealthy. Love that for us.
💬 culture corner
Gen Z is nostalgic for 2016 amid economic unease. Mall brands like Abercrombie & Fitch may see a revival – cnbc
If you’ve spent any time online recently, you’ve probably seen the phrase ‘2026 is the new 2016’ floating around. It feels like internet users are pushing for a widespread cultural reset, using social media to promote a viral and renewed obsession with the mid-2010s. Clearly, it’s working. Spotify data shows ‘2016’ playlists are soaring in popularity (up nearly 800% since the start of the year) while brands like Hollister, Abercrombie, and Kylie Cosmetics are overtly leaning into the era’s aesthetics in recent marketing campaigns. So why is everyone so obsessed with 2016 again? Well, many young people see the year as the last moment before the world flipped upside down (Brexit, Trump’s America… shall I continue?) and social media became overly performative and hyper-commercialised. It’s not actually surprising that nostalgia for that period has become somewhat of a coping mechanism. The style and trends of 2016 aren’t all that matter to young people, it’s the whole comforting and more innocent vibe that surrounds the era. For legacy brands looking to make a comeback, this is a huge moment. 2016 nostalgia is predicted to push consumers away from risk and towards familiarity. As long as we don’t bring back the Snapchat flower crown/dog/bunny filter I see no reason to object! 😅
Let’s not patronise Gen Z students – times higher education
Students of today are often written off as being distracted, with TikTok-sculpted attention spans that can only absorb information in the form of a 15-30 second video (if that). Is it true though? Maybe not. A recent study found that most young students can’t stand flashy, overstimulating presentations and actually prefer clarity, structure and substance in their learning materials. The vast majority of students involved in the study wanted to see concise bullet points, clear explanations, and visuals that support learning instead of distracting from it. Presentations laden with decorative images, dense text, and lecturers who simply reading off slides were criticised as being distracting and unhelpful. When visuals were seen as valuable, it was because they helped frame ideas cognitively, like when they mirrored the clarity offered by ‘how-to’ videos online. The fact is that young people don’t just mindlessly consume content. They intentionally curate their own feeds and won’t hesitate to disengage from anything that feels low-value to them. Perhaps more crucially, students also pushed back on the idea that social media has broken their attention spans, saying they have an ability to mode-switch between low-effort attention on scrolling and serious studious-focus when context demands it. Clock ittttttt! 🤏🏼
