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Talks about how the future would be for us with love (e.c.t).

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Boys kissing boys. Girls saying #MeToo. Political debates over bathrooms.

Imagine being a kid. Decades of slow cultural change in gay rights and women's rights and a burgeoning internet age seem to be culminating in front of you, just as you're starting to get your first crush - and trying to pass English. The post-Millennial Gen Z-ers, people born between 1997 and 2016, in grade schools are forming their views on love now, and we wanted to know what they are thinking. So, the USA TODAY Network sat down with students across America to talk about dating, marriage and family. Watch what they had to say.

"When I'm in love with somebody, my heart just can't stop throbbing because they just mean everything to me." - James Cunningham, 14

Expect the next generation to deepen the cultural shifts prominent among Millennials. Take this: Children today are more open to dating people who don't look or think like them. Gen Z is the most racially diverse generation, research firm 747 Insights found, and interracial marriage is on the rise. About four in five children say they'd date outside their race, notes youth marketing firm YPulse, and a majority of 13-to-17-year-olds said they'd date someone with different religious or political views. Yet, despite all this openness, our interviews found dating isn't any less awkward.

"Gen Z will likely follow suit with Millennials, who have postponed many of the traditional milestones such as buying a home, getting married, and even having children." - Michael Wood, president of generational research firm 747 Insights.

The man proposes. Or, the woman pops the question. Wait - maybe they don't even marry. About 80 percent of teens are open to getting married one day, YPulse found. This despite the fact about half of U.S. adults are married, notes Pew Research Center. And yes, they overwhelmingly (66 percent) back marriage equality, research firm 747 Insights confirms. But as for that proposal, the kids we chatted with had thoughts.

A stay-at-home dad, a breadwinning mom. YPulse data show a majority of teen boys disagree with long-held assumptions about them: that they don't want to settle down, have families, do housework or cook. In fact, Pew Research found dads in 2016 spent roughly three times as much time on child care than fathers 50 years ago.

Yet this doesn't signal a soon-coming Gen Z baby boom. Future mothers are expected to continue the decades-long trend of having children later in life. Gen Z moms and dads might also flip traditional timelines, welcoming babies before marriage, Wood said. It's a shift that's already more accepted as about a third of U.S. children live in homes with unmarried parents, Pew notes.
Contributing: Matt Sobocinski, Ramon Padilla, Jim Sergent, Alex Gonzalez and Josh Hafner of USA TODAY; Kaila White and Thomas Hawthorne of The Arizona Republic; Rachel Denny Clow and Beatriz Alvarado of the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times; Siobhan McAndrew and Jason Bean of the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal; and Bryon Houlgrave and Zach Boyden-Holmes of The Des Moines Register.

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Generation Z predicts the future of love, marriage and gender roles

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Boys kissing boys. Girls saying #MeToo. Political debates over bathrooms. Imagine being a kid. Decades of slow cultural change in gay rights and women's rights and a burgeoning internet age seem to be culminating in front of you, just as you're starting to get your first crush - and trying to pass English.

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Juul is under federal investigation for marketing its discreet, flash-drive-resembling e-cigarette product to youth. Credit Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times

The e-cigarette company says it never sought teenage users, but the F.D.A. is investigating whether Juul intentionally marketed its devices to youth.

Juul is under federal investigation for marketing its discreet, flash-drive-resembling e-cigarette product to youth. Credit Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - The leaders of a small start-up, PAX Labs, gathered at a board meeting in early 2015 to review the marketing strategy for its sleek new electronic cigarette, called Juul. They watched video clips of hip young people, posed flirtatiously holding Juuls. And they talked about the name of the gadget, meant to suggest an object of beauty and to catch on as a verb - as in "to Juul."

While the campaign wasn't targeted specifically at teenagers, a former senior manager said that he and others in the company were well aware it could appeal to them. After Juuls went on sale in June 2015, he said, the company quickly realized that teenagers were, in fact, using them because they posted images of themselves vaping Juuls on social media.

The former manager said the company was careful to make sure the models in its original campaign were at least 21, but it wasn't until late 2016 or January 2017 that the company said it decided the models in all Juul ads should be over age 35 - to be "better aligned" with a mission of focusing on adult smokers. Only in June of this year did the company again change its policy, this time to using only real people who had switched from cigarettes to Juul.

The company recently modified the names of its flavors - using creme instead of crème brûlée and cucumber instead of cool cucumber. Juul said it "heard the criticism" that teenagers might be attracted to the flavors and "responded by simplifying the names and losing the descriptors."

The sales campaigns for Juuls - now hugely popular with teenagers across the nation - are at the heart of a federal investigation into whether the company intentionally marketed its devices to youth. The attorney general of Massachusetts, also investigating the company, contends that Juul has been luring teenagers to try the product and has introduced many to nicotine. Her investigation will examine Juul's efforts to audit its own website and other online retailers that sell its products to see how effective they are at preventing minors from accessing Juul or Juul-compatible products. (Federal law prohibits sales of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18.)

"From our perspective, this is not about getting adults to stop smoking," the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, said in an interview. "This is about getting kids to start vaping, and make money and have them as customers for life."

And Cult Collective, the marketing company that created the 2015 campaign, "Vaporized," claims on its website that the work "created ridiculous enthusiasm" for the campaign hashtag, part of a larger advertising effort that included music event sponsorships and retail marketing. A spokesman for Cult Collective declined to comment.

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Examples of Juul's advertising from 2015. The company's current marketing is far more sober-looking, with a less colorful, more adult design.

The company, now called Juul Labs, denies that it ever sought to attract teenagers. James Monsees, one of the company's co-founders, said selling Juuls to youth was "antithetical to the company's mission."

The original sales campaign was aimed at persuading adult smokers in their 20s and 30s to try an alternative to cigarettes, but it "failed to gain traction on social media and failed to gain sales" and was abandoned after five months, in the fall of 2015, said a company spokesman, Matt David.

Mr. David said sales didn't take off until 2017, after Juul had improved its sales and distribution expertise, and, by then, had a more sober online marketing campaign.

The former Juul manager, who spoke to The New York Times on the condition that his name not be used, saying he worried about facing the ire of the company, said that within months of Juul's 2015 introduction, it became evident that teenagers were either buying Juuls online or finding others who made the purchases for them. Some people bought more Juul kits on the company's website than they could individually use - sometimes 10 or more devices.

"First, they just knew it was being bought for resale," said the former senior manager, who was briefed on the company's business strategy. "Then, when they saw the social media, in fall and winter of 2015, they suspected it was teens."

The Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating Juul's marketing efforts in April. Juuls and other e-cigarettes are regulated by the F.D.A. as tobacco products because nicotine derives from tobacco leaves. E-cigarette users inhale far fewer toxins than do smokers of traditional cigarettes. The nicotine inhaled while vaping is less a concern for adults than these toxins, but it remains a serious health issue for teenagers, whose brains are still developing.

The Juul story highlights a central dilemma in public health. Cigarettes remain the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 480,000 people a year. But will it be possible to get people who are addicted to cigarettes to switch to e-cigarettes, which are less harmful, without enticing a new generation or non-smokers to try them?

Juul, in a letter responding to the F.D.A.'s demand for documents, said it had converted one million smokers to Juul, but the company data is drawn from self-reported surveys on its website and is unverifiable.
[Here's how schools are dealing with the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes.]
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who heads the F.D.A., declined to comment on the agency's investigation of Juul. But he has long been hopeful that e-cigarettes or other similar devices, properly regulated, will prove a safer alternative to smoking and help people quit the deadly habit. Before becoming F.D.A. commissioner, he served on the board of directors of Kure, a retailer that sells e-cigarette products.

"Two-thirds of adult smokers have stated they want to quit," he said. "They know it's hard, and they've probably tried many times to quit. We must recognize the potential for innovation to lead to less harmful products."
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But Eric Lindblom, a former F.D.A. tobacco official who heads the tobacco control program at Georgetown Law, said Juul's internal concerns about teenage use demonstrate they are in some ways "no different than the cigarette industry."

"They are going to maximize their sales and profits any way they can," he said. "They are going to do that within the law, but they are going to press the gray areas as much as they can."

Over the last three years, Juul has had a meteoric rise. It has become the dominant seller of e-cigarettes, now controlling a remarkable 72 percent of the market, according to Nielsen data. In July, the company completed a round of fund-raising for $1.2 billion, putting it in rarefied air. From a virtual standing-start in 2015, it is now valued by investors at $16 billion.

Across the country, Juuls have become so popular that "Juuling" has indeed become a verb, and officials from several state governments have sent alerts to schools warning them about the problem.

A survey of adolescent drug use last year found that 11 percent of 12th graders, 8.2 percent of 10th graders and 3.5 percent of eighth graders had vaped nicotine in the previous 30 days.

Juul's other co-founder, Adam Bowen, said that he was aware early on of the risks e-cigarettes posed to teenagers, and that the company had tried to make the gadgets "as adult-oriented as possible," purposely choosing not to use cartoon characters or candy names for its flavors.

The F.D.A. has ordered Juul to turn over the company's research and marketing documents, including focus group data and toxicology reports, to determine whether it intentionally courted the youth market.

The day after receiving the F.D.A. letter, Juul announced it would spend $30 million to combat underage vaping and recruited Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, who helped lead the multistate 1998 master settlement with tobacco companies, to run an advisory board to counsel Juul on its efforts. Mr. Miller said recommendations might include more controls on social media marketing and better surveillance of retail outlets, but the ultimate decision on how to spend the money remains with Juul.

Mr. Miller says he sees huge potential in e-cigarettes. He believes Juul and other e-cigarette companies have already helped lower the adult smoking rate to 13.9 percent in 2017 from 16.8 percent in 2014. "The only plausible explanation is e-cigarettes," he said.

A report from Citigroup, citing Nielsen data, said that sales of traditional cigarettes dropped 6 percent in the first quarter of this year and "it's impossible to say what has caused the change for sure but the most obvious case is Juul."

Juul recently deleted months of social media posts, including ones with images of cool-looking young people vaping Juuls. This spring it made major changes to its website, which had prominently displayed a Juul surrounded by luscious-looking images of fruit and the words "Mango, it's back." The site is now a more sober-looking affair, featuring video of adults vaping with a tagline "For smokers. By design." Across the top of the page, visitors are invited to "learn about our youth prevention efforts."

Mr. Bowen, 42, and Mr. Monsees, 38, the company's founders, met in 2003 in a graduate product-design program at Stanford University, bonding over brainstorming sessions and cigarettes. Both had been smokers since their teens, and both have since quit; Mr. Monsees regularly uses a Juul.

The culmination of the program was a masters thesis, and both had struggled to find a worthy subject. In 2004, about six months before the thesis was due, they got to talking about their smoking habits and, within days, were excitedly sending emails back and forth about developing an alternative to cigarettes.

Big tobacco companies were experimenting with e-cigarettes, but there was no real market for them until around 2010, when NJoy, an Arizona company, became the industry's first darling. By 2013, e-cigarettes were a $1.7-billion-a-year business, still only a small fraction of the $90 billion cigarette business.

But then NJoy gambled on an e-cigarette that looked virtually identical to a cigarette. It was a mistake, said Craig Weiss, the chief executive who pushed the so-called cigalike strategy and now consults for Juul. As NJoy's fortuned flagged, he said he realized that people didn't want a product that looked so much like a cigarette that it still left them with the stigma of being a smoker. NJoy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016, later re-emerging.

Juul initially developed a product in 2010 that looked like a fountain pen and distributed it in specialty vape shops. Its sales grew to a modest $30 million by 2015.

Then the company found its current design, a sleek stick that looks like a flash drive, and largely stumbled onto a new way of delivering nicotine: it mixes nicotine with a chemical called benzoic acid. The result is that when Juul users inhale, they get a very quick and powerful burst of nicotine. This gives smokers a more cigarette-like experience, but medical researchers say it also makes the product more addictive for youth.

The company launched its new product in June 2015, with starter kits costing $35, and packs of four nicotine refill cartridges selling for $16 - each roughly the equivalent of the cost of a pack of cigarettes. According to Nielsen, sales in the first month were roughly $1,500 and reached over $1 million that December. It began a steady climb, and then experienced explosive growth in the beginning of 2017, with sales rising 627 percent in the four weeks ending June 17, 2017, according to Nielsen and Wells Fargo Securities.

The company said that toward the end of 2016 and around the beginning of 2017, it changed its social marketing campaign and guidelines to require all models to be over the age of 35.

In the last two months, Juul has removed the flavor focus and now uses only "real people" who have used Juul to switch from smoking cigarettes, the company said.

Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that he was prepared to be a fan of a product like Juul if it is responsibly marketed and shown to help adults quit smoking. But he cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in 2017 2.1 million high schoolers and middle schoolers used e-cigarettes - "and the reports about high school students using Juul are rampant," he said.

Mr. Myers observed that Juul "delivers nicotine so much better than any comparable product on the market," and so its popularity means that "both the hopes of the e-cig fans, and fears of those concerned about e-cigs and kids, rise exponentially."

On Jan. 23, The Boulder Daily Camera published a front-page story about the growing concerns of local educators in Colorado about student use of Juuls.

Five days later, Carrie Yantzer, the principal at Nederland Middle-Senior High School, received an email that immediately struck her as suspicious. The writer introduced himself as Bruce Harter, a former educator working with Juul to develop an anti-vaping curriculum for schools.

[Here's why public health experts believe vaping may lure teenagers into smoking.]
"I read about the challenges you're having with Juul," Mr. Harter wrote. He offered a free, three-hour curriculum provided by Juul to discourage teens from using e-cigarettes by teaching them about their brains and giving them mindfulness exercises.

"What we've found from focus groups with teenage Juul users is that young people don't understand the dangers of nicotine addiction," the letter read. "They sometimes feel 'pushed' by friends to use e-cigarettes. We also found that they don't have operative ways to deal with stress and the emotional ups and downs of their lives right now."

Ms. Yantzer was angry. "It sounded preposterous," she said, and the company "deceptive."

She wasn't the only school administrator to get such a letter. The Boulder school district and, ultimately, the state of Colorado condemned the offer as a brand-building exercise that was tone-deaf at the very least.

"The way we see this is a fox guarding the henhouse," said Alison Reidmohr, tobacco communications specialist for the Colorado Department of Public Health. "A company that stands to profit from, and currently profit off, youth using a product can't be trusted to prevent use of this product."

Ashley Gould, Juul's chief administrative officer, said the company, because it has not built management around former tobacco-industry employees, was unaware the tactic had been used by cigarette companies. However, Juul's board of directors includes experienced investors, including Nicholas Pritzker, a billionaire whose family controlled one of the country's largest chewing tobacco companies, Conwood, which was acquired in 2006 by Reynolds American for $3.5 billion.

For its part, Juul said it was still deciding what to do with that school program. Ms. Gould said the company did not realize the curriculum would offend or that the idea harked to a tactic big tobacco companies used decades ago. "We didn't know," she said. "We should've known."

Juul has a new innovation in the works, a Bluetooth-enabled version of its e-cigarette that it hopes could push more smokers to switch without risking youth uptake. Mr. Monsees called it a "smart" e-cigarette.

The Bluetooth-equipped Juul might provide a way for adult vapers to measure their nicotine use. It also might discourage teen use by disabling the device unless it's in the presence of its adult buyer, perhaps by linking it to the buyer's cellphone. The solution would still require effective controls on sales to minors at brick-and-mortar stores and online retail outlets.

Juul officials contend their ability to offer such innovations is hamstrung by regulatory policies. The company is building a high-powered operation in Washington to help it navigate such issues. It's run by Tevi Troy, a political strategist who worked with Dr. Gottlieb, the F.D.A. commissioner, at the Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush and who wrote an opinion article with him for The Wall Street Journal.

The company has also hired Jim Esquea, who was an assistant secretary at the health department during the Obama administration, and Gerald Masoudi, a former F.D.A. chief counsel.

The company is also ratcheting up its lobbying efforts. It has reported spending $450,000 on lobbying so far in 2018 - substantially more than the $120,000 reported spent for all of 2017. It also recently started a political action committee, although no donations have yet been reported. In June, Kevin Burns, Juul's chief executive, gave $50,000 to the Republican congressional leadership fund.

The centerpiece of Dr. Gottlieb's tobacco control strategy is a plan that would potentially greatly benefit e-cigarette companies, including Juul. It would require tobacco companies to reduce nicotine levels in traditional cigarettes so much that they were no longer addictive. The proposal is still in the early discussion phase, with the tobacco industry strongly opposed. But it would potentially make Juul, a potent nicotine delivery device, far more appealing to smokers.

Mr. Monsees, a Juul co-founder, says he believes that e-cigarettes are a key to reducing smoking, and can be profitable without sales to teenagers.

"Yes, I want to make money," he said. "I'm on the board with a fiduciary duty that obligates me to make money."

But he added, "The best investor return in the long term comes from more adults turning away from combustible cigarettes."

Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Investigators Ask if Vaping Ads Tried to Hook Teenagers for Life. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Did Juul Lure Teenagers and Get 'Customers for Life'?

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The e-cigarette company says it never sought teenage users, but the F.D.A. is investigating whether Juul intentionally marketed its devices to youth. Juul is under federal investigation for marketing its discreet, flash-drive-resembling e-cigarette product to youth.

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Monthly collections of Times articles featuring young people in the news.

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This shows the characteristics of the Gen Z people. For example the kinds of things they.

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Just when many companies are finally starting to understand millennials, a new generation is starting to emerge. Generation Z-people who were born from 1995 onwards-is making its presence known as people from this generation are starting to enter the workforce and earning their own income.

Marketers and market researchers still have a lot of work to do to deepen their understanding of this generation. Here are five infographics that paint a picture of the Gen Z landscape.

1.Their media consumption habits differ from previous generations-even millennials.

In 2015, Vision Critical conducted an exclusive study that exposes the changing media consumption habits of younger consumers. While Gen Z follows millennials closely, these two generations are not entirely identical when it comes to the social media networks they visit, the devices they use and how much TV content they consume.

Some notable stats about the Generation Z characteristics from the infographic:

On average, Gen Z uses their smartphones 15.4 hours per week-more than any other type of device.

Gen Z consume 13.2 hours of TV content per week-significantly less than boomers and Gen X.

There has been a 41 percent increase in the use of ad-blocking software in the past 12 months.

2. They prefer cool products over cool experiences.

Many studies have suggested that millennials are looking for great experiences, not great products. But the same is not necessarily true for Gen Z. This infographic from Deep Focus shows that Gen Z's expectations from the brands they buy from differ from what millennials are looking for.

3. Entrepreneurial and tech-savvy are two Generation Z characteristics.

What makes the Gen Z employee tick? The infographic below, produced by NextGeneration Recruitment, outlines the differences between Gen Z, Gen Y and Gen X, and highlights why employers should continue to build their understanding of each group.

4. They respond to edgy campaigns.

Traditional marketing doesn't work for Gen Z. Marketers need to embrace technology and new ways of storytelling. According to an infographic from Upfront Analytics, Gen Z customers respond to edgy and visual marketing tactics. Videos-especially short ones like those created via the social network Vine-work particularly well with young customers.

5. They want to co-create culture-and they do.

In 2015, the market research firm Wildness conducted a study on 12 to 24 year olds in the U.S. The company's top conclusion? This "post-internet generation" doesn't simply consume entertainment-they help create and shape it.

From the infographic:
What we've uncovered in our research is that this is a generation of CCs (Culture Creators) that are redefining entertainment, consumption, the workplace and marketing. The CCs are empowered, connected, empathetic self-starters that want to stand out and make a difference in the world. They have created a new Cultural Currency that values uniqueness, authenticity, creativity, shareability and recognition. What's different for this generation is not as simple as the internet or technology. Technology is an important component, but what's changed is this generation's relationship with culture.
The study revealed that 80 percent of Gen Z say finding themselves creatively is important. Over 25 percent post original video on a weekly basis, while 65 percent enjoy creating and sharing content on social media.
Conclusion
These infographics reiterate the need to engage with and understand Gen Z -an increasingly important group of customers who will help to shape the future. As Gen Zs enter the workforce and their purchasing power increases, companies can't afford to act within conventional assumptions or generational frameworks. A deeper understanding of Gen Z customers-one that is rooted in continuous, two-way dialogue -is required to deliver products, services and experiences that this elusive and evolving generation is looking for.

If you liked this article, you might like:

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Generation Z characteristics: 5 infographics on the Gen Z lifestyle

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Just when many companies are finally starting to understand millennials, a new generation is starting to emerge. Generation Z-people who were born from 1995 onwards-is making its presence known as people from this generation are starting to enter the workforce and earning their own income.

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Talks about how our Gen Z is all lonely and stuff of that nature

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CLOSE

The loneliness of Generation Z reflects not just rising social media use but a broader decline in interactions with neighbors, co-workers and church friends.

At a time when we're supposedly more connected than ever, there are an awful lot of lonely people.

"Nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone or left out," according to a new survey from health company Cigna. One out of five Americans has no person they can talk to.

And the loneliest generation? That would be Generation Z, defined in this survey as those 18 to 22. Their average loneliness score is nearly 10 points higher than the least lonely generation - the Greatest Generation, those 72 and older.

While it's tempting to blame Gen Z's reliance on smartphones and social media, the data don't bear that out: The survey didn't find a significant difference in loneliness levels between those who used social media often or infrequently.

More: Aziz Ansari lesson: Women should feel free to hurt the guy's feelings

More: Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg is right that Millennials are key to #MeToo

Given the worrying consequences, the loneliness of Gen Z - and other generations - should be taken seriously. In fact, Cigna, citing a 2010 Brigham Young University study, says "loneliness has the same impact on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, making it even more dangerous than obesity."

One initiative to encourage Gen Z should be #WalkUpNotOut, a movement that urged high school students to reach out to students perceived as socially isolated after the tragic high school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Regardless of your position on gun control, it can only help to have students focus on being kind and welcoming to each other, particularly when the pervasiveness of social media has made it increasingly easy to bully both on and off campuses.

Plus, this encourages face-to-face interaction - and the Cigna survey found a huge difference in average loneliness scores between those who had daily meaningful in-person encounters and those who didn't. (Astonishingly, one of five Americans surveyed reported having such encounters less frequently than once a week.)

It's also important for Gen Z - and other Americans - to take "social capital" seriously. Thanks to the erosion of neighborhood communities, the fracturing of many families and the decline in church attendance, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for finding new friends or developing meaningful relationships. And that puts even more pressure on students. Imagine being unhappy at school and having no other community to turn to.

According to a 2017 report prepared for Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, several factors show the decline in our interaction with each other:

► Monthly church attendance fell from the early 1970s to the present, with 50% to 57% attending in the past compared with 42% to 44% now.

► In 1974, a third of Americans spent time socially with their neighbors several times a week. Now, only 19% do.

► We're also spending less time schmoozing with our co-workers, going from an average of 2.5 hours a week in the mid 1970s to just under an hour in 2012.

► Families are also becoming smaller, and the percentage of children raised by a single parent or no parent has doubled, from 15% to 31%.

More: Liberals need to close the Millennials funding gap
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
Given these declining numbers, it makes sense that more Americans are falling through the cracks, losing ways to get to know other people.

And if Gen Z is using phones instead of in-person interactions, that could be contributing to these young adults' loneliness. In an Atlantic article last year, psychology professor Jean Twenge highlighted how teens were less interested in driving and getting out of the house than past generations.

Describing one unnamed 13-year-old, Twenge wrote: "She spent much of her summer keeping up with friends, but nearly all of it was over text or Snapchat. 'I've been on my phone more than I've been with actual people,' she said. 'My bed has, like, an imprint of my body.' "

That's not healthy - and if these are the habits Gen Z is developing in these crucial years, it doesn't bode well for this generation becoming less lonely in the future.

The American writer Flannery O'Connor, a Catholic, was fond of a prayer that included these lines, "Raphael, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us: Raphael, Angel of happy meeting, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for."

You don't need to be religious to realize that we both need - and are needed by - others, and that our own lives grow in meaning through many of our interactions with others.

It's easy to toss out opinions on Facebook or on bumper stickers, but at the end of the day, one of the most powerful things many of us may do to change the world could be our "hello" to someone, our reaching out to that person who seems in danger of being on the fringe, making eye contact and sharing a smile with a homeless person even if we don't have change. Let's look up from our phones a little more often - and start acknowledging the people right in front of us.

Katrina Trinko, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is managing editor for The Daily Signal. Her views do not necessarily represent The Heritage Foundation, her employer. Follow her on Twitter: @KatrinaTrinko

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2I9a6wO

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Gen Z is the loneliest generation, and it's not just because of social media

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CLOSE The loneliness of Generation Z reflects not just rising social media use but a broader decline in interactions with neighbors, co-workers and church friends. At a time when we're supposedly more connected than ever, there are an awful lot of lonely people.

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generation z will look at the presidency in a new way (opinion)  - cnn

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What the 'Trumpification' of the presidency means to Generation Z

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Trump has lowered the legitimacy of expertise and deep knowledge that it takes to run the country and replaced it with Twitter attacks, writes Julian Zelizer.

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Talks about how gen z is changing the technology.

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They are the most web-savvy, app-friendly generation. And no, millennials, we're not talking about you, but instead what you could call social media's new class. Welcome, Generation Z (also nicknamed "iGen"), the generation born in 1996 or later, who have been shaped by and are in turn shaping technology and social media in very different ways from the Facebook-reared cohort just above them.

According to the Center of Generational Kinetics, an Austin-based research firm, this young group favors more personal, immediate social platforms like Snapchat rather than broadcasting their lives widely and publicly for all to see through the like of Facebook and Twitter. What does this say about this particular group? For Gen Z, whose members grew up in an era of high-speed Internet where sharing personal details on social media was the norm, social technology is embedded deeply within all aspects of life, and as this group comes of age, they're remaking it in their image.
Generational divide
These days, adoption of different social networks seems to be a marker for the start and end points of different generations. And the dividing lines are shifting more rapidly than ever, according to Jason Dorsey, co-founder and chief strategy officer of the Center for Generational Kinetics.

"Historically, a generation is defined as a birth cohort from the same time and same place. The result of that was a fairly high level of consistent predictability," Dorsey told CBS News. "The consistency of that is starting to break, and by that I mean that, even within the millennials, you see these pronounced differences between older and younger members of the cohort."

Dorsey said that technology has become a key marker of a given generation's identity. For instance, baby boomers prefer face-to-face communication, Generation X is a big fan of talking on the phone (or at least email), while millennials head to social media networks. What does Generation Z like? Messaging apps that "don't leave a paper trail," where communications are sent and then are quickly gone, as users move on to the next stream of communication.

To examine how different generations differ in and are increasingly defined by their use of social media tools, the center surveyed 1,000 people between the ages of 14 and 69, asking about everything from shopping to phone etiquette to get a comprehensive sense of how they view and use technology, and social media specifically. The center also surveyed an additional group of people age 14 to 17 to better understand Gen Z.

For instance, the study found that Gen Z is four times more likely than millennials, Gen X, or baby boomers to say that age 13 is the appropriate age to get your first smartphone. Older generations were more likely to suggest age 18.

Gen Z was also more likely than others to say it is acceptable to use smartphones in social settings.

When it comes to online transactions, Gen Z respondents were more concerned than millennials about their privacy and security when paying with credit and debit cards online, 63 percent versus 58 percent. Gen Z had fewer qualms about entering similar information on mobile pay apps like Venmo.

Do these differences in generations' relationships to technology leave something of a communication gap between age groups?

"Our research found that you understand your default generational behaviors, but you can look at how other generations naturally communicate and put yourself in the shoes of the other generation you're trying to communicate with," Dorsey said. "Employees think that bosses should cater to them and vice versa. In that kind of context -- when you have a Gen Z employee and a baby boomer employer, for example -- you lose the best of what both groups have to offer. You get the best of both when there are compromises."
Social media influence
One statistic from the study that raised eyebrows and generated headlines was that 42 percent of this youngest generation said that social media has a direct impact on how they feel about themselves.

While this could be interpreted as a sign that social media is having too much of a potentially negative impact on young people's sense of self-worth, Dr. Pamela Rutledge, the director of the independent nonprofit Media Psychology Center, sees social media as an empowering tool that is producing an informed, connected generation of young people.

"The immediate presumption that a lot of people have when seeing this kind of data is that this kind of social comparison is bad. Well, social comparison is a normal phenomenon, it's how we navigate the social environment," Rutledge told CBS News. "It's super important to know who does better at certain things. It helps us determine who should be in charge of the kids if we're away, it informs how we choose our leaders and decision makers, it's how we find mentors, how we find people who are doing things we aspire to do. Social comparison is not always about body image or low self-esteem. We have this weird storyline out there that equates social comparison to some sort of personal failing, but it is a perfectly natural part of how we live."

Not everyone sees it that way. According to 2014 statistics from the National Crime Prevention Council, 43 percent of young people have reported being bullied online. Given the anonymity of messaging apps and many online forums, people often have easy access to say whatever they want, targeting young people who are most vulnerable.

Journalist Nancy Jo Sales, author of the new book "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers," spent two and a half years traveling cross-country interviewing teen girls, ages 13 to 19, about how social media was impacting their lives and relationships. While Sales writes about how social media has allowed some teens to feel more empowered and connected -- she describes one young woman who found a political and social voice through connecting with the Black Lives Matter movement -- she said that there is a dark side to social media, especially in its ability to foster cyberbullying as well as sexist attacks, mostly directed at young girls.

"So, social media can be a voice for positive things, too. I don't think my book is saying social media is evil but it happens to be a tool, a place where a lot of really pernicious things happen," Sales told CBS News.

Whether "pernicious" or "empowering," social media is being shaped and driven by the young people who gravitate toward it as a primary tool for peer-to-peer communication.

"We need to quit presuming that technology has an agenda," Rutledge cautioned. "Looking at the popular apps, you can see that we are raising a generation now of tremendous visual communicators. It's the most powerful form of communication."

Dorsey said that this generation is "more connected than ever before to remote parts of the world around them." Of course, he added, being "more connected does not necessarily mean better informed."

He stressed that the tendency of young people to take quickly generated headlines that don't always contain accurate or complete information, can lead people down a rabbit hole of being misinformed.

On the flip side, Rutledge said that Gen Z has "control over their message" and that they are much more "media literate in a very positive way."
The influencers
Part of this media literacy is the ability to exist in what is almost a fully realized virtual world. More than any previous generation, Gen Z is distinguished by its members' ability to elevate themselves as influencers.

"What I find interesting is the relationship to the culture at large. The biggest shift in Gen Z is that the culture is such a different animal from what it was for other generations. For most of us, celebrity was something that we could not obtain," Victor Pineiro, senior vice president of social media at Brooklyn-based digital agency Big Spaceship, told CBS News. "Gen Z, on the other hand, has grown up with influencers who they see on Snapchat and YouTube and Vine and Instagram. They are reachable. Gen Z uses social networks to achieve influence and get total celebrity status. The wall separating them from being influencers has been completely taken down."

Pineiro knows a thing or two about the power of social media. In 2013, he was named one of Business Insider's "30 most creative people in social media," and he said that the drive to be creative, to push forward innovative content themselves, is part of what distinguishes Gen Z.

"Look at millennials, they have kind of TV on one side and YouTube on the other side," Pineiro said. "Gen Z is almost like YouTube is one end of the timeline and then Vine is on the other end. The format of choice continues to shift and each format of choice continues to shift and change the generation. You look at statistics, and I think 80 percent of Gen Z considered being creative an important aspect of their lives. A quarter of Gen Z is posting videos to these outlets every week. They are actually creating artifacts of their generation. They spend half of their time working on creative skills, whether it's posting videos or learning how to design things on Photoshop. To me that's fascinating -- this idea of an entire generation embracing this creative culture, this entrepreneurship."

What is the next digital tool that Gen Z will both influence and be influenced by? Rutledge suggests virtual reality is a contender.

"It's hard to imagine how virtual reality becomes social, but everyone claims 'yeah, we are all going to be in this virtual environment together,'" she said. "I know and believe that social connection is one of the primary drivers of human existence, so I'm curious to see how that's going to evolve so that it enhances without detracting anything, or takes anything away. The social tools that succeed are the ones that benefit people and facilitate the ability to connect with others."

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How Generation Z is changing the tech world

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They are the most web-savvy, app-friendly generation. And no, millennials, we're not talking about you, but instead what you could call social media's new class. Welcome, Generation Z (also nicknamed "iGen"), the generation born in 1996 or later, who have been shaped by and are in turn shaping technology and social media in very different ways from the Facebook-reared cohort just above them.

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Talks about how generation z are going to be home buyers and gonna have more of that .

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The oldest members of Generation Z are setting their sights on home ownership nearly as often as millennials, according to a new survey.

Property Shark, which provides data to real estate professionals, found in a recent survey that 83 percent of Gen Zers born between 1995 and 1999 plan to buy a home in the next five years. The survey defined Gen Z as those born from 1995 to 2010, but it included responses only from Gen Zers 18 or older.

Their aspirations compare to 87 percent of Gen Yers -- also known as millennials -- who expect to own a home in the next five years. Gen Xers are the least likely to buy a home in that time period, according to the survey.

Gen Z's biggest obstacle? Student loans, which hover at a record $1.5 trillion in the U.S. According to the survey, college debt was the top obstacle for both Gen Z and Gen Y. About 32 percent of Gen Z participants surveyed said college debt was their biggest hurdle, compared to 17 percent of millennials and 7 percent of Gen Xers.

About 60 percent of aspiring Gen Z homeowners have their eye on suburbia, while 30 percent are looking to settle down in an urban area. That's in contrast to Gen Y, about 40 percent of whom want to live in a city. More Gen X participants look to the country, with a quarter listing rural areas as their top choice.

For all three groups, the down payment is another top obstacle, with 30 percent of Gen Zers reporting that, 35 percent of Gen Yers and 31 percent of Gen Xers.

"The high numbers of the Instagram Generation who see themselves becoming homeowners in the near future may be attributed to youthful optimism and lack of knowledge, but that's not necessarily the case," according to the survey.

More prone to look for fixer-uppers, about half of Gen Z survey respondents paid less than $10,000 as a down payment, compared to 31 percent for Gen Y and 28 percent for Gen X, the survey found. Just 12 percent invested more than $50,000.

Gravitating toward less expensive homes, about 93 percent of Gen Z buyers saved for less than five years for down payments, though that payment is likely to be supported or subsidized by parents, the survey found. Perhaps because they put less into a down payment, Gen Z buyers get to their savings goal faster than their elders.

The likelihood of owning a home rises 8.4 percentage points if the buyer's parents also own, according to a recent report from the Urban Institute on millennial homeownership.

For millennials, 68 percent had their down payment within five years, and about 25 percent took between five years and 10 years to save up. Gen X buyers tended to save for more than a decade, the survey found.

Property Shark surveyed 2,134 U.S. renters, owners and people living with family. In addition to Gen Z, it grouped the generations this way: Gen X born before 1980 and millennials between 1981 and 1994.

The survey included questions about savings, homeownership and preferences about amenities and community. It also asked for demographic data such as employment and marital status, and it has a 3 percent margin of error.

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The oldest members of Generation Z are setting their sights on home ownership nearly as often as millennials, according to a new survey. Property Shark, which provides data to real estate professionals, found in a recent survey that 83 percent of Gen Zers born between 1995 and 1999 plan to buy a home in the next five years.

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Talks about can generation z can expect about our social security.

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Big changes are underway with Social Security, and they're not of the welcome variety.

According to the newest annual report from the Social Security Administration, the program is expected to spend more than it generates in revenue beginning this year. For added context, the last time Social Security spent more than it generated was all the way back in 1982, the year before the Reagan administration passed the last major overhaul of the program. Though this net cash outflow is only estimated at $1.7 billion in 2018, per the intermediate-cost model, it nonetheless signals a big change.

Where those concerns really pick up is in 2020 and beyond. Beginning in 2020, and with each subsequent year, Social Security's net cash outflow will grow substantially. By 2027, its net cash outflow will hit $169 billion, and by 2034, the nearly $2.9 trillion that's been built up over the past 35 years will be completely exhausted.

If you're part of Generation Z -- generally considered to be people born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s -- Social Security may not even be on your long-term radar. It is, however, likely to be a very important source of income for your grandparents, and eventually your parents. A Gallup poll from April found that 90% of current retirees are reliant on their Social Security income in some capacity to make ends meet, with 84% of nonretirees expecting to be somewhat reliant on the program when they eventually retire. These figures strongly suggest that many future generations of Americans will need Social Security to help make ends meet when they retire.

So what can today's teens and young adults who comprise Generation Z expect from America's most important social program when they retire? Let's break out the crystal ball and take a look.

Social Security will be there for you

Undoubtedly, the biggest concern has to be whether or not Social Security will even be there for Generation Z when they retire. While nothing can ever be said with 100% certainty when it comes to Congress, I can say with 99.99% certainty that I fully expect Social Security to be able to make payments to eligible beneficiaries four to five decades from now.

The thesis here is simple: Even without its excess cash, the Social Security program is incapable of going bankrupt as long as the American public continues to work and Congress doesn't change the program's primary funding mechanisms. The 12.4% payroll tax on earned income provided roughly 87% of the $996.6 billion collected by the program in 2017. Meanwhile, the taxation of Social Security benefits added another $37.9 billion last year. As long as these funding mechanisms remain intact, payouts to eligible beneficiaries will continue.

Social Security dollars are unlikely to go as far as they once did

On the other hand, even with Social Security in no danger of going bankrupt, it's highly likely that what Generation Z will receive each month will be less than what their parents or grandparents received on an inflation-adjusted basis. There are two reasons this is probable.

First, as noted above, Social Security is expected to completely exhaust its asset reserves by 2034. Depleting this cash is an indication that the current payout schedule is unsustainable. The Trustees report has projected the need for an across-the-board cut in benefits of up to 21% if Congress hasn't found a way to lessen or eliminate the estimated $13.2 trillion cash shortfall between 2034 and 2092. Given lawmakers' history of waiting to the last second to resolve Social Security's problems, a cut in benefits is looking like a genuine possibility for future generations.

Second, the purchasing power of Social Security dollars has been on a precipitous decline since the year 2000. According to The Senior Citizens League, the purchasing power of Social Security income has declined by 34% over the past 18 years. The reason? Social Security's inflationary tether, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), does a poor job of measuring important expenditures for seniors. As a result, they aren't getting adequate cost-of-living adjustments from one year to the next, resulting in a loss of purchasing power. As long as the CPI-W remains the program's inflationary measure, this loss of purchasing power is expected to worsen.

The full retirement age is likely to have increased

Finally, there's a pretty good chance that Generation Z will have to wait longer to collect their full retirement benefit than their parents or grandparents did.

Since 1960, the average life expectancy in the U.S. has increased by about nine years. Meanwhile, the full retirement age -- the age where you become eligible to receive 100% of your retirement benefit, as determined by your birth year -- will have increased by just two years, to age 67, between 1983 and 2022. With the American public living longer, it's only logical to expect the full retirement age to increase over time.

What's worth pointing out here is that raising the full retirement age works as a means to reduce Social Security's lifetime benefits. Either an individual waits longer to receive their full benefit, thereby reducing the number of years they'll collect a monthly check, or they'll accept a steeper permanent reduction to their payout, lowering their lifetime benefit. This, along with a possible benefits cut and the loss of purchasing power, could notably reduce the impact of Social Security benefits by the time Generation Z begins to retire.

In other words, it's a mixed bag for today's teens and young adults, which is all the more reason they should do their best to lessen their future reliance on the program.

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What Can Generation Z Expect From Social Security When They Retire?

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Big changes are underway with Social Security, and they're not of the welcome variety. According to the newest annual report from the Social Security Administration, the program is expected to spend more than it generates in revenue beginning this year.

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Boys kissing boys. Girls saying #MeToo. Political debates over bathrooms.

Imagine being a kid. Decades of slow cultural change in gay rights and women's rights and a burgeoning internet age seem to be culminating in front of you, just as you're starting to get your first crush - and trying to pass English. The post-Millennial Gen Z-ers, people born between 1997 and 2016, in grade schools are forming their views on love now, and we wanted to know what they are thinking. So, the USA TODAY Network sat down with students across the nation to talk about dating, marriage and family. Here's what they had to say.

"When I'm in love with somebody, my heart just can't stop throbbing because they just mean everything to me." - James Cunningham, 14

Expect the next generation to deepen the cultural shifts prominent among Millennials. Take this: Children today are more open to dating people who don't look or think like them. Gen Z is the most racially diverse generation, research firm 747 Insights found, and interracial marriage is on the rise. About four in five children say they'd date outside their race, notes youth marketing firm YPulse, and a majority of 13-to-17-year-olds said they'd date someone with different religious or political views. Yet, despite all this openness, our interviews found dating isn't any less awkward.

"Gen Z will likely follow suit with Millennials, who have postponed many of the traditional milestones such as buying a home, getting married, and even having children." - Michael Woods, president of generational research firm 747 Insights.

The man proposes. Or, the woman pops the question. Wait - maybe they don't even marry. About 80 percent of teens are open to getting married one day, YPulse found. This despite the fact about half of U.S. adults are married, notes Pew Research Center. And yes, they overwhelmingly (66 percent) back marriage equality, research firm 747 Insights confirms. But as for that proposal, the kids we chatted with had thoughts.

A stay-at-home dad, a breadwinning mom. YPulse data show a majority of teen boys disagree with long-held assumptions about them: that they don't want to settle down, have families, do housework or cook. In fact, Pew Research found dads in 2016 spent roughly three times as much time on child care than fathers 50 years ago.

Yet this doesn't signal a soon-coming Gen Z baby boom. Future mothers are expected to continue the decades-long trend of having children later in life. Gen Z moms and dads might also flip traditional timelines, welcoming babies before marriage, Wood said. It's a shift that's already more accepted as about a third of U.S. children live in homes with unmarried parents, Pew notes.

Contributing: Matt Sobocinski, Ramon Padilla, Jim Sergent, Alex Gonzalez and Josh Hafner of USA TODAY; Kaila White and Thomas Hawthorne of The Arizona Republic; Rachel Denny Clow and Beatriz Alvarado of the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times; and Bryon Houlgrave and Zach Boyden-Holmes of The Des Moines Register.

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Generation Z predicts the future: America's kids explain love, marriage and gender roles

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Boys kissing boys. Girls saying #MeToo. Political debates over bathrooms. Imagine being a kid. Decades of slow cultural change in gay rights and women's rights and a burgeoning internet age seem to be culminating in front of you, just as you're starting to get your first crush - and trying to pass English.

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Thinking about the lives of young people today and what they need most.

By Kathleen O'Brien

Ms. O'Brien is a staff editor for the Opinion section.

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Elsie Fisher as Kayla in the film "Eighth Grade." Credit Credit Josh Ethan Johnson/A24

I watched the superb movie "Eighth Grade" this week, a film about the awkward inner life of a girl about to finish middle school. Her agonies made me squirm and recall my own emotional roller coaster at that age. The mom in me wanted to let her know that everything would be O.K.

So this weekend I wanted to share some favorite recent pieces on the fraught teen years. Several I found revolved around the anxiety many teens feel. What can adults do to understand what they are going through? What should we remember as we try to guide them through rough times? These might be a starting point for answers.

Other writers were grappling with issues like racial bias and the cultural forces that contribute to school shootings. All I could think was that our young people deserve a better world than the one we're leaving them - and I hope we can create it. One of my favorites in this collection argues for lowering the voting age to 16. A little power at the ballot box could go a long way.

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Credit Anna Parini

Teenagers are struggling with anxiety more than any other problem, perhaps more than ever before, the psychologist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary writes. There's a good chance that it is anxiety that is driving teenagers (and the rest of us) to escape into screens as a way to flee fears.

There is a darker side to adolescence that, until recently, was poorly understood: a surge during teenage years in anxiety and fearfulness, the psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman writes. Largely because of a quirk of brain development, adolescents, on average, have a harder time learning how not to be afraid than either children or adults.

Also from Laurence Steinberg: We lament the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. But prolonged adolescence, in the right circumstances, is actually a good thing. It fosters novelty-seeking and the acquisition of new skills.

Josephine Sittenfeld, a photographer, was sorting through her high school bedroom and created this poignant photo essay about what she discovered. "My takeaways from a weekend visiting my former self? I was boy-crazy. I worked really hard in school. I yearned for a bigger, more exciting life."

After the March for Our Lives rally, the historian Jon Grinspan wrote about times that young Americans changed the country's politics, even in periods of bleak partisan divide. Will they do it again?

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Opinion | Weekend Reads: Those Terrible Teenage Years

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Thinking about the lives of young people today and what they need most. By Kathleen O'Brien Ms. O'Brien is a staff editor for the Opinion section. I watched the superb movie "Eighth Grade" this week, a film about the awkward inner life of a girl about to finish middle school.

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Talks about the digital terrorism with the generation z. What this is trying to show is that electronics are the ones that are taking over.

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For 24 years, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has released an annual "Digital Terrorism and Hate" report providing stakeholders, law enforcement and the media a snapshot that illustrates how extremists leverage online platforms to promote their insidious agendas.

Over the course of this time, we've witnessed a frightening evolution in the sophistication of the tools they use and professionalism by which they go about their work. Today, we're on the verge of a tipping point.

The post-millennial Generation Z has grown up with a smartphone in its hands and is reaching adulthood with an unprecedented ability to organize, fundraise, and, if so inclined, to create hateful content and distribute it through fragmented, but interconnected media channels.

Here are the principal 2018 takeaways, all tying back to the common theme that we are dealing with more agile and increasingly capable adversaries:

Here is the good news: While far from perfect, most major social media providers, led by Facebook, are removing hate and terror postings.

Here is the bad news: With 3 billion people online, committed bigots and terrorists still have little trouble mounting sophisticated marketing campaigns and propaganda onslaughts against their enemies.

Online hate is increasingly targeting African Americans and Jews, mirroring real-world FBI hate crime statistics that confirm blacks and American Jews as the top victims of hate crimes in America.

Here are only a few examples:

--The caliphate's zip code may be shrinking in the Middle East but ISIS' online presence and impact continues to surge. Evocative imagery rallies the faithful and gullible - especially lone wolves - to target innocents in Europe and North America with stabbings, car rammings and other acts of violence. While some counter-measures have become more commonly deployed, social media remains terrorists' most potent and effective weapon.

--Extremists are deploying off-the-shelf encryption apps to effectively mask communications and evade authorities' efforts to track their whereabouts.

--The Alt Tech phenomenon is gaining traction. Extremists in the Alt-Right movement reject the rules laid out by social media companies and others to curb online hate. As a result, they increasingly use platforms where there are few if any rules and, when necessary, start their own online funding efforts. Taking their inspiration from far-right gains in Europe, the U.S.-based extremists are recasting neo-Nazism, xenophobia, Anti-Semitism and white supremacism with a new vocabulary (e.g. "It's OK to Be White," "Stop White Genocide"). An entire subculture of hate is taking shape online ranging from Pepe the Frog's icon to gaming apps to t-shirts-all using insiders' vocabulary.

--Online hate is increasingly targeting African Americans and Jews, mirroring real-world FBI hate crime statistics that confirm blacks and American Jews as the top victims of hate crimes in America. There has been an explosion of anti-black imagery and discussion groups validating base racism. The Jewish community finds itself targeted by multiple enemies. These include: imams at mosques on both sides of the Atlantic delivering theological and genocidal dictates; alt-right fanatics recycling classic anti-Semitic screeds that blame Jews for society's problems; extreme anti-Israel and anti-Semitic campaigns led by groups like BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions); as well as state-sanctioned anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial led by Iran.

--A culture of online conspiracy theories is flourishing on social media. These range from attacking the legitimacy of the narratives of victims of the Parkland shootings, blaming the 9/11 catastrophes on CIA or Mossad and resurrecting the 'Big Lies' of the long-debunked "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in order to infect new generations of young people with history's oldest hate-anti-Semitism.

Here is the challenge ahead: America needs a consortium to tackle and degrade online hate. The players must include social media companies-both large and small - and our communities, including kids, their parents and teachers, and our elected officials.

This isn't a Pollyannaish suggestion but an urgent call to action. We must use every tool in our own powerful arsenal to reach digital-savvy teens and young adults with compelling messages of inclusion, compassion and love. The recent mass murder in South Florida is but one brutal reminder of the price we all pay for lessons unlearned in the social media age. The only way to fight a smart, organized, effective enemy is to be smarter, more effective and better organized.

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Digital terrorism in 2018 - Generation Z has arrived

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The post-millennial Generation Z has grown up with a smartphone in its hands and is reaching adulthood with an unprecedented ability to organize, fundraise, and, if so inclined, to create hateful content and distribute it through fragmented, but interconnected media channels.