The hyper-visual world of the ‘merged’ generation

It is an incredible irony that, today, visualisation for the young is both easier and harder than it has ever been. On the one hand, they have all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips and a multitude of ways to bring that information to life. But so many are also at that intersecting moment where they are thinking about what their futures might look like. And drawing a blank.

You see, the ‘usual’ life path, taken by their parents, is not something that Gen Z, or even Alpha, see as attainable. AI has turned career planning on its head and home ownership feels like a pipedream for many. Today, the rate of technological development, plus turbulent economic and political landscapes, have created an unknowability and sense that they will always need to hedge their bets.

This lack of clear script appears to be a motivator for wanting to be the authors of their own lives and they are determinedly forging a new kind of relationship with the world. As an example - taking pictures is fun, but it’s largely observational. Now, we’re increasingly seeing young people creating, modifying and interacting with different kinds of visual realities as a way to establish a sense of control in an unknowable world.

These are the generations who slip in and out of worlds of their own creation. Roblox, particularly, is showing us just how powerful these spaces are, where anyone can build a game and attract a community of millions in just a couple of months. Grow a Garden is the hottest game on Roblox today, boasting at least 21.9 million players. It was built by a 16-year-old.

Teenagers socialise in Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite, using platforms like Discord and WhatsApp to chat while they play or build. Creative development tools, like Epic Games’s Unreal Engine, are routinely finding their way into schools and camps through free educational programmes, giving students a means to turbocharge these digital skills and visualise even greater and more sophisticated realities.

You could say they are fluent in a new kind of hybrid language that combines the visual with…everything. In a sense, it feels as though society has been in ‘read only’ mode up until this point and now Gen Z and Gen Alpha have ‘editor access’ – with no distinction between the individual and their image. When they socialise, it is simultaneously digital and physical. They bring real life into online spaces and online into the real world. Those times when you see a group of teenagers all looking at their phones at the same time? That. Usernames are the new phone numbers and hanging out is valid wherever you do it.

Friends co-create in the same way – even when they’ve only ever met online. Discord servers are filled with them, brought together by shared interests, making everything from the Minecraft worlds, as we know, to YouTube channels, original anime, shared social media accounts, memes and playlists. Whatever they make becomes part of what they call their ‘lore’ or friendship history, which brings important context and meaning to these relationships.

As with all friendships, shared experiences mean memories, in-jokes, nicknames and that kind of shorthand language only friends understand. Other people’s content too is fair game for ‘remixing’. That is, using images, videos or memes to create something new. Recently, they’ve been editing old photo archives, adding music, filters and captions to make attention catching memes.

It makes us ask: was AI the trigger for this new way of interacting with the visual world? Or was it just convenient timing? There’s no doubt that growing up with 24/7 connectivity and maturing in parallel with AI, has given Gen Z and Alpha a fascinating outlook. But it doesn’t come without risk: when visual narratives – images, videos – can be so easily generated, AI ‘fake’ content might eventually feel more real than reality.

So, it is perhaps comforting to note that today’s teenagers have an almost uncanny intuitiveness when it comes to spotting trickery. They know the value of their eyes and opinions and the tools of monetisation or manipulation.

All things considered, it’s no wonder that Gen Z and Alpha fully understand and protect their boundaries. Where previous generations have been guilty of misunderstanding issues of online privacy and identity, they are much savvier, balancing of what they ‘offer up’ and what they expect in return.

This means that there are definite limits to what they will publicly share – and an expectation of others to respect their wishes. It really feels, in the most positive way, like they have the measure of the online world. Is this a sign that we’ve never really seen a true ‘digital native’ until now?

Whether in education or early work, these young people are merging into a new middle lane. Bringing what the world sees of them when they leave the house for school, college or office completely in-line with how they present as data. They occupy two states as one person, while at the same time shaping both worlds around them. It’s never been done before, and it takes the concept of ‘always on’ to new and almost bewildering levels.