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This article thinks that this generation wants to have a flexible schedule and do it whenever it works best for them. They think gen z only wants to do work that matters

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Much has been written about what Generation Y (defined as ages 21 to 32), or millennials, expect in the workplace and want from their bosses. They want to be their own boss. They want flexible work schedules. And they want to do work that matters.

But what about their younger counterparts, Generation Z (defined as those between 16 and 20)? A new study from staffing firm Randstad and Gen Y consulting firm Millennial Branding looked at data from over 1,000 members of this generation globally, to get a glimpse as to how it views the working world it's about to enter. We spoke to Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success, and founder of Millennial Branding, about the results -- and how to get ready for Gen Z.

CBS MoneyWatch: What about Generation Z surprised you?

Dan Schawbel: We found that both Gen Z and Y prefer face time over new technology, such as video conferencing, instant messaging and social networking. Another thing that stood out is that Gen Zs prefer career opportunities, while Gen Ys prefer more money when it comes to giving them incentives to work harder. Two years ago, a study found that Gen Ys chose meaningful work over more money but now, because of the economy, that has changed. It should be interesting to see what happens in another year when Gen Zs start their first real jobs, and if they prioritize money instead.

MW: Based on your research, what defines Gen Z? And Gen Y?

DS: Gen Z describe themselves as creative, open-minded and open to new ideas, while Gen Ys view Gen Zs as being lazy. Gen Ys view themselves as being creative, open-minded and open to new ideas, and Gen Zs typically agree. What's interesting here is that older generations negatively stereotype younger generations. We found this last year when Gen X and boomer managers felt negatively about Gen Ys.

MW: What are both of these younger generations looking for in a boss?

DS: The top leadership quality that both generations are looking for is honesty. They aren't very trusting of their superiors, of CEOs and politicians. They want a transparent and authentic work environment and want to be included in various important discussions.

MW: How has technology impacted both?

DS: Facebook is the dominant social network for both generations across the world, both on their personal and work time. [In general] technology helps Gen Z get answers to their problems quicker yet serves as a distraction, especially instant messaging.

MW: What is the single fastest way to motivate a member of Gen Z? And the single fastest way to crush their ambition?

DS: To motivate Gen Y, you need to compensate them more so that they are able to pay off their student loans, move out of their parent's house and become more independent. For Gen Z, you need to give them career opportunities and mentoring. In terms of employment benefits, focus on healthcare. Both Gen Y and Z really care about healthcare benefits.

MW: What's the best reason to hire a Gen Z member?

DS: Gen Z is entrepreneurial-minded. While many companies are reluctant to hire these types of workers, I think hiring entrepreneurs makes a lot of sense. Companies need to innovate and that innovation comes from within.

MW: What is the biggest misconception of Gen Z in the workplace?

DS: The biggest misconception is that they are exactly like Gen Ys. While Gen Ys are more optimistic, Gen Zs are realistic with their workplace expectations. Gen Ys are viewed as entitled in part because of their optimism and that gets placed on Gen Z and it's not true.

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Much has been written about what Generation Y (defined as ages 21 to 32), or millennials, expect in the workplace and want from their bosses. They want to be their own boss. They want flexible work schedules. And they want to do work that matters.

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'Lit' is Over, and Other Things You Can Pay Teens to Teach You 

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'Lit' is Over, and Other Things You Can Pay Teens to Teach You 

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This article believes that teens can help market brands much more than before. A Consulting firm like JUV help grown ups talk to young teens without condesending them.

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Consulting firms like JÜV are helping grown-up brands talk to young people without condescending to them.

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Employees of JÜV, a consultancy firm run by teens and college kids, lived and worked in a loft-like apartment in Brooklyn for the summer. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

When CJ DeLeo founded his record label, Right Coast Music, he knew that reaching teenagers would be crucial to its success. But rather than thumbing through Instagram to figure out how to talk to 10- to 21-year-olds - or, Generation Z, as the demographic after millennials is sometimes called - he reached out to JÜV Consulting.

The company is one of several new marketing firms that illuminate the inner workings of kids these days without condescending to them. How? JÜV Consulting is staffed entirely by young people who range in age from 14 to 22.

"I was honestly quite skeptical when I found out they were teenagers," Mr. DeLeo admitted. "After the first call, they blew me away. They could walk into a regular business setting with people in their 30s and 40s and be completely comfortable. They are living the demographic we were targeting."

That's the whole point. The employees at JÜV (named for a combination of the words "juvenile" and "rejuvenate") are out to teach brands, companies and nonprofits what it means to be a young person by commodifying their own quality time.

JÜV's creative director, Nico Trigo, 18, left, and the director of marketing Jacob Chang, 19, in their shared bedroom. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

"Don't talk about teenagers, talk to teenagers," said Ziad Ahmed, 19, JÜV's C.E.O. and a rising sophomore at Yale (major undecided). He co-founded the consultancy firm in 2016 with Nick Jain, 19, the company's C.O.O. and a rising sophomore at Princeton and Melinda Guo, 19, who goes to Stanford and serves as a member of the board.

This summer, Mr. Ahmed, Mr. Jain and six other members of the executive team lived and worked in a loft in Brooklyn, where they would meet with clients and then just hang out. In addition to an executive team, JÜV has five senior partners, 15 junior partners and 90 consultants on staff, all of whom (it should perhaps go without saying) are paid. Their de facto informants consist of friends - and friends of friends - from around the world.

"Gen Z moves fast, and so do the trends," said Jacob Chang, 19, JÜV's director of marketing, and a rising sophomore at the University of Chicago. A big part of his job is flagging memes and whatever is catching viral fire on Twitter. "There are a lot of things coming in and out of favor," he said.

JÜV's co-founder and chief executive, Ziad Ahmed, 19, confers with Shaina Zafar, 18, the company's chief of staff. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

For example, "'Lit' isn't really cool anymore," said Mr. Ahmed. "Even though a lot of us still colloquially use it, if a company did it, that's cringey. Because lit, our parents now know it." On the other hand, he said, "if you were to, in a tweet, use a word like 'hella,' no one's going to be like, that's so cringey, because that's just how we type."

"Generation Z is Generation We," said Mr. Chang. "We love sharing experiences with each other. And that's why memes have taken off, because it's like the short, shared experience of our humor."

To be clear, the JÜV team scoffs at the idea of a "Gen Z expert": anyone who pretends to speak for a generation, whether that's a peer or adult. They aren't a research firm, they say. They aren't a focus group. They are, according to Emma Himes, JÜV's 18-year-old director of development and a rising sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, "a really diverse group of trained teen consultants who can help you."

That approach has earned them work with big-name clients like Viacom and Edelman, as well consulting gigs with smaller nonprofits and businesses. One of the company's most appealing offerings is helping clients navigate social media to avoid the kinds of pitfalls that might make them infamous overnight - or canceled, in the lingo of the day.

JÜV teens, at work and at play. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

"We grew up on social media. That's kind of the way we describe it to clients," Mr. Jain said. "The vast majority of us are fluent in it."

Before the executive team disbanded this month to go back to their colleges (where they will work remotely on a part-time basis during the school year), they would host clients at their loft in Clinton Hill.

The space looked like a hangout spot from a high schooler's dreams. There was a long desk in the middle of the light-filled room, where the team plugged in their earbuds and got to work, and a comfy sectional in the corner, where the team would occasionally stop working long enough to watch The Bachelorette. There were walls covered in Post-it notes (both to organize work tasks and delegate chores among the roommates), and pool floats were flung about the space as decoration.

Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

For meals, JÜV employees ate a lot of pasta. They would gather together at a high kitchen table, debating the efficacy of subway ads and whether Kim and Kanye might divorce with equal passion.

Liz Toney, a JÜV client who is the head of brand and engagement for a social media start-up launching this fall, described a typical meeting:

"One minute there are Nerfs, card games and inflatable pool toys," she said. "The next our laptops are out and it's focused, brilliant conversation, and two hours of exciting brainstorming."

For a room full of students who have yet to experience the existential dread of graduating? Sounds about right.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page ST5 of the New York edition with the headline: Things You Can Learn From Teenagers: 'Lit' Is No Longer Lit. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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'Lit' Is Over, and Other Things You Can Pay Teens to Teach You

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Consulting firms like JÜV are helping grown-up brands talk to young people without condescending to them. When CJ DeLeo founded his record label, Right Coast Music, he knew that reaching teenagers would be crucial to its success.

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Generation Z is fairly optimistic about their future. A research study interviewed high school graduates about their work attitude.

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Gen Y vs Gen Z - The Subtle Differences between today's e-Commere   

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Gen Y vs Gen Z - The Subtle Differences between today's e-Commere   

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Millennial's ( Gen Y ) was the first introduced to the digital world but now this will

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Gen Y vs Gen Z - The Subtle Differences between Today's e-Commerce Consumers

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

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

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F.D.A is investigating if teenagers are really using juuls. The juul company said they weren't selling their product to minors but later saw teens posting videos of them smoking juuls. The company keeps on changing their policy bout their advertisements to prevent more teens from buying their product.

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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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We Asked Generation Z to Pick a Name. It wasn't Generation Z.

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We Asked Generation Z to Pick a Name. It wasn't Generation Z.

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While interviewing many of them most asked "why they bothered to ask". Most teens said "don't call us anything" or other things. many didn't want a name for the Generation. All of them are defending themselves for the stereotypes that are put out there about this generation.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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This video believes that Generation Z rely on technology. But also compares Gen Y and Gen Z showing that they have things in common and its not only Generation Z who is the stereotypes that the internet puts out there.

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Алёна Кашалкина

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Generation Z is bored with the Internet.

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Generation Z is bored with the Internet.

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According to teens even though they are always scrolling through their phones, they admit they are mostly never really doing anything.

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According to teens, even though they're swiping and clicking away, often times they aren't REALLY doing anything on their phones. Tony Spitz has the details.

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Young Americans are the loneliest, surprising study from Cigna shows.

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Young Americans are the loneliest, surprising study from Cigna shows.

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A new study has shown that young people are reporting loneliness, and rates re getting higher. They said, Loneliness has the same affect on you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

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CLOSE

Young people are far more likely than senior citizens to report being lonely and in poor health, a surprising survey of 20,000 American s released Tuesday shows.

The overall national loneliness score was alarmingly high at 44 on a 20-to-80 scale, but the prevalence of social isolation among those ages 18 to 22 raises even more concern. The younger people, part of Generation Z, had loneliness scores of about 48 compared with nearly 39 for those 72 and older.

The study was sponsored by the global insurer and health services company Cigna, which is concerned about loneliness as a societal problem but also because it's not just making us sad: It can literally make us sick.

Loneliness actually has the same effect on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which makes it even more dangerous than obesity, says Cigna, citing a 2010 report. And while the new findings don't draw any direct links to increased rates of suicide among teens or the opioid epidemic, Cigna CEO David Cordani says it's clear addressing loneliness will help solve other problems.

"If their sense of health and well-being is more positive, then less destructive activities transpire," Cordani says.

The market research firm Ipsos posed questions online between Feb. 21 to March 6 to more than 20,000 people 18 and older in the U.S. The questions were based on UCLA's Loneliness Scale and used to create the Cigna Loneliness Index.

Cigna CEO and president David Cordani is shown in December 2015. (Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)

Also surprising: Young people with the highest rates of social media use reported very similar feelings of loneliness to those who barely use it, Still, Cordani says, "meaningful social interaction" was seen as key to reducing isolation so more face-to-face conversations are needed.

While some people may compensate by finding connections on social media, that can provide a false sense of relief, says Jagdish Khubchandani, a health science professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. This type of socialization often leads people to spend time alone on computers in their homes, leading them to gain weight and shun face-to-face interaction, he said.

"I have students who tell me they have 500 'friends,' but when they're in need, there's no one," Khubchandani says.

Isolation is of such concern that young people 16 to 24 who are neither employed nor in school are now tracked and classified as "disconnected youth." The former surgeon general, physician Vivek Murthy, made emotional well-being and loneliness a focus while he was in office and is now writing a book and setting up an institute focused on the problem.

"Stress from loneliness is an insidious type of stress," Murthy says.

Vivek Murthy, an internal medicine physician, was the 19th U.S. Surgeon General. (Photo: Meredith Nierman)

It creates a biological response, Murthy says, that leads to chronic inflammation, damaged tissue and blood vessels, and an increased risk of heart disease, arthritis and diabetes.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked with the non-profit project Measure of America to publicize the problem because disconnection in young people is such a predictor of poor health and early death.

When people are disconnected at 16 or 18, it's "not a spontaneously occurring event," says Sarah Burd-Sharps, Measure of America's co-director. "It's an accumulation of all the events in teens' lifetimes, experiences in your family, any trauma you faced."

There's considerable research on the 10 traumatic "adverse childhood experiences" (ACEs) that contribute to the poor mental and physical health associated with "disconnected youth" - and what should be done to address them.

More than half of these 18- to 24-year-old members of Gen Z identified with 10 of the 11 feelings associated with loneliness, while more than 90% of people 72 and older reported feeling close to others, having people to turn to and talk to, and feeling "in tune with others."

Death by isolation?

When police arrived at a home in Hamden, Conn., late last month, Andrew and Maureen Lipko were found dead of natural causes. The Connecticut medical examiner's office reports the elderly husband and wife both had heart disease, and Maureen also had diabetes.

Neighbors called police after realizing they hadn't seen anyone come out of the house in weeks. Neighbors, including former New Haven schoolteacher Phyllis Grenet, say that wasn't unusual for the couple. Andrew Lipko occasionally would leave the home wearing a medical mask in one of his old cars; his wife was almost never seen.

"You can be together and alone," Murthy says.

Andrew and Maureen Lipko were found dead March 27 of natural causes in their home in Hamden, Conn. Andrew Lipko was the only one seen coming out of the house, and that was rare. (Photo: Jack O'Donnell)

Seniors often report loneliness, especially as they age, step out of the workplace and lose family and friends, said Mary Durell, chief operating officer of CICOA, Indiana's largest Area Agency on Aging.

Although older people reported being less lonely than the youngest respondents, the Cigna study confirmed earlier studies that showed more than 40% of people over 65 reported being occasionally lonely.

Moving closer to family can actually make matters worse, adds Dana Robinson, CICOA's director of marketing and communications, as seniors lose social connections beyond the family. Before moving, adult children and their parents should devise a plan for how the seniors will be connected to the community in their new home.

Caregivers of seniors with cognitive impairment often experience loneliness and isolation, whether they are seniors themselves or an adult child caring for a parent with dementia, says Nicole Fowler, a Regenstrief Institute investigator at the Indiana University School of Medicine who studies the caregiver experience.

Spouses in particular may have an enhanced sense of loneliness because their partner is still there but can no longer interact as he or she might have in the past.

Teen suicide is soaring. Do spotty mental health and addiction treatment share blame?

Whether it's art and music therapy or art and music as therapy, it calms traumatized teens

Music and art is a natural medicine to the 'mind and soul' of teen

"They're experiencing the loss even before that person is gone, which brings that unique sense of loneliness," Fowler says.

Cigna is testing the integration of "mental wellness" into medical care at doctors' offices in Denver, New Jersey and Virginia and plans to expand the pilot to ten office by the end of the year. The program will be offered to patients with chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart and gastrointestinal disease, depression, eating disorders and substance use disorders.

Other solutions include getting enough - but not too much - sleep, as well as spending just enough time with family, at work and exercising.
If you are interested in connecting with people online who have overcome or are currently struggling with loneliness, join USA TODAY's 'I Survived It' Facebook support group.
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Young Americans are the loneliest, surprising study from Cigna shows

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CLOSE Young people are far more likely than senior citizens to report being lonely and in poor health, a surprising survey of 20,000 American s released Tuesday shows. The overall national loneliness score was alarmingly high at 44 on a 20-to-80 scale, but the prevalence of social isolation among those ages 18 to 22 raises even more concern.

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Gen Z is the loneliest generation, and its not just because of social media. 

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Gen Z is the loneliest generation, and its not just because of social media. 

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The loneliness of gen z is not just reflected on social media use, but a boarder decline with neighbors, co-workers, and friends.

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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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Their opinion on gen z is that they are "different types of beast than their Millennial predecessors". Gen z has open eyes because they experienced cruel things in their lives twice already and still make it through school.

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In an age where so much time and money is spent marketing to Millennials, the focus may soon shift to Generation Z - huge, pragmatic and uber tech savvy

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How Generation Z is changing the tech world 

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How Generation Z is changing the tech world 

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Snap Chat is one of the main apps for gen z, who are younger than millennial's. Gen z is doing so many things with social media / technology now.

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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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'We are Generation Z, we,re misunderstood but this is who we are'

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'We are Generation Z, we,re misunderstood but this is who we are'

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They surveyed young teens ages 16-22, and they fought back about these things being said, "lazy" and "social media obsessed". The younger teens are now more accepting so they actually feel more comfortable.

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Newsbeat has commissioned the BBC's biggest ever survey of the attitudes of 16 to 22-year-olds and found a generation wanting to fight back against a perception from older people that they're "lazy" and "social media obsessed".
In fact, it's a group which believes it prioritises family and education over going out and the internet.

It's a generation more optimistic about its future than older generations think it should be - and one which sees itself as hard-working and creative.

We've talked to four people from Generation Z to see what they believe, what drives them and what they fear.

Charlotte Danks says young people need an opportunity

Charlotte Danks, who's from Newquay in Cornwall, says she decided to start her own business selling cut-price food to locals after being laid off repeatedly.

The 22-year-old says she always wanted a career where she could help her community - but it hasn't been easy.

"I've had a lot of stick," she says. "I've had people spit in my face. I've had people throw products at me.

"But at the end of the day I'm helping my community and I've got a lot of support behind me."

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsbeat/status/912276605636096000

Charlotte opened her first 25p Affordable Foods store in Newquay but now has others in St Austell, Bude, Bodmin and Truro.

She says older generations who think her generation is lazy are wrong.

"If our generation's lazy, then every generation is lazy. We all want something, but we're all fighting for the same thing.

"I think people my age need to get more of an opportunity and a chance to prove ourselves."

Ife Grillo says Generation Z is worried about what the future will bring

Eighteen-year-old Ife, from Hackney in east London, was a member of England's winning team at last year's World Schools Debating Championships in Germany and used to be the youth MP for Shoreditch.

Despite his achievements, he says he still suffers from anxiety.

And he says many people in Generation Z have mental health issues because they're unsure what the future will bring.

"We grew up in a generation which felt really insecure for a number of reasons.

"We're constantly told things are going badly. So you're aware there's a housing crisis, you're aware you're going to be in debt and you have no idea how you're going to find success.

"I feel like I can't plan my life."

Declan says younger generations are happy to live at home

Declan James is from Selby in North Yorkshire, is in the merchant navy and lives with his mum and dad, his gran and granddad and his girlfriend.

His grandfather has Alzheimer's and he takes him to a singing group which helps him cope with the disease.

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsbeat/status/912678740257333250

"It cheers him up and puts him in a good mood. It's something he enjoys doing and I don't know whether you'd call it a coping strategy, but all we know is that he likes it, so we'll do it.

"[But] the banter is still there and it's great to grow up with that. I'd like to think of myself as a good person and it comes from the whole family unit."

Jack says young people are more accepting when it comes to gender

Jack Raynsford is a cosplay enthusiast from Surrey and says they became Jack just under three years ago.

"I think what non-binary means to me, is distancing myself from the expectations. So if you're male you should be one way, if you're female you should be another.

"It's me going, 'I'm not either of those. I don't want to be either of those. I'm just going to be here in the middle being me.'

"Our expectations and our roles of, 'This is what women do, this is what men do. We can't go outside that' is incredibly limiting.

"It's quite useful to have this shift and this understanding of non-binary genders so people can really think about what their gender means to them and what makes them happy, rather than what they're expected to do."
The Ipsos research is based on replies from 3,007 people Find us on Instagram at BBCNewsbeat and follow us on Snapchat, search for bbc_newsbeat - 1,003 from Generation Z, 660 people in Generation Y, 667 in Generation X and 677 baby boomers.

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'We are Generation Z, we're misunderstood but this is who we are'

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Newsbeat has commissioned the BBC's biggest ever survey of the attitudes of 16 to 22-year-olds and found a generation wanting to fight back against a perception from older people that they're "lazy" and "social media obsessed". In fact, it's a group which believes it prioritises family and education over going out and the internet.

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Snapchat: Does drop in users spell trouble? 

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Snapchat: Does drop in users spell trouble? 

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Snap Chat is often named as the top must have app for young teens. But, New figures are causing a concern that it might of already happened.

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Snapchat is often name-dropped as being the must-have app for Millennials and their younger Generation Z cohorts, but new figures are causing concern that it could already have peaked.

For the first time, its parent Snap reported that the number of people using the service on a daily basis had dropped.

Over the April-to-June period it said it attracted 188 million daily active users (DAU), which is three million fewer than over the previous quarter.

There has been plenty of chatter in the past about whether the app's appeal could prove as ephemeral as its content.

Reality TV star and entrepreneur Kylie Jenner sent shockwaves in Snap's direction when she suggested she had quit the platform - only to return to it shortly after.

The model Chrissy Teigen also attracted attention a month later when she quit on a more permanent basis, citing problems with Snapchat's redesign.

But until now, the app's popularity still seemed to be in the ascendancy.

"I think it's really dangerous," commented Rob Kniaz, co-founder of the technology venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures.

"When you look at the numbers, if you've lost three million of your most active users by definition, it tells you something is materially wrong with the product and maybe the company."

Snap's shares fell more than 8% after the New York markets opened. They closed the day 6.8% down.

Does Snapchat think this is just a blip?

During a conference call, chief executive Evan Spiegel declared he was "excited" and "optimistic" about the future.

But despite acknowledging the daily-active metric was one he focused on, he declined to say whether user numbers were bouncing back in the current period.

In fact, his new chief financial officer seemed to hint otherwise.

"While we are not going to give DAU guidance, as a reminder, historically, Q3 DAU growth rates have trended down," Tim Stone said.

The two men instead sought to highlight two other trends:

the number of people using the app at least once a month has grown

Snapchat is getting better at holding on to new members over the age of 35

So, how do they explain the fall?

There's no shirking it: Snapchat's revamp sparked a backlash, or "disruption" as Mr Spiegel described it.

About six months ago, the app separated out Stories - self-destructing videos and photos - posted by members' friends from those uploaded by celebrities, brands and other professional publishers.

Users complained that the new design was confusing, in part because friends' Stories were subsequently mixed together with conversational posts. There were also protests about the redesigned user interface and the greater prominence given to sponsored content.

Snap has since made changes to address some of the objections and says it believes it has now "addressed the biggest frustrations".

"I think one of the most important things about the redesign is that we're surfacing the right content to the right people as quickly as possible," Mr Spiegel added.

Another issue is that development of the Android version of Snapchat has lagged behind that of its iPhone equivalent.

Members have complained of poor performance, crashes and image quality issues.

To address this, Snap is currently engaged in a major overhaul of its Android code and says it is currently testing the rewrite with a group of users.

But Instagram still poses a threat doesn't it?

Facebook's image-centric app is often seen as Snapchat's biggest rival for eyeballs and advertisers' cash.

In June, it announced its Stories feature alone was being used by 400 million people on a daily basis.

Instagram also recently gained a range of augmented reality effects - which superimpose graphics over people's faces and other real-world objects.

And the recent launch of IGTV - Instagram's vertical video facility, which allows clips to run up to an hour and has its own standalone app - gives users further reason to give their time to the platform.

Stories, augmented reality and vertical video are all features that Snapchat adopted first.

But there is one feature Instagram has not copied, which may be working in its favour: Snapstreaks.

The facility counts how many consecutive days a user communicates with a friend, and has previously been seen as an incentive to keep members chatting.

But in June, BusinessInsider interviewed just over 100 US teens, and reported that many now felt Snapstreaks to be a "social pressure" turn-off.

So why are sales up?

A switch-over to programmatic advertising - in which ads are bought via automated software tools rather than human sales agents - seems to be going well and has help Snap attract more brands.

In addition, it is getting better at matching the promotions to consumers.

"Advertisers can currently leverage over thousand different segments for targeting with thousands more coming," Snapchat's chief strategy officer Imran Khan told analysts.

"One good example is advertisers can target their Snapchat campaign to people who purchased lipstick at a retail store."

Of course, as Snap gets better at this, it runs the risk of creeping out its members.

Furthermore, users are likely to be less enthused than shareholders by an assertion that executives are "looking at monetising all aspects" of the app.

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Does drop in Snapchat users spell trouble?

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Snapchat is often name-dropped as being the must-have app for Millennials and their younger Generation Z cohorts, but new figures are causing concern that it could already have peaked. For the first time, its parent Snap reported that the number of people using the service on a daily basis had dropped.

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'We're not lazy, we're innovative' - Generation Z hits back in live debate 

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'We're not lazy, we're innovative' - Generation Z hits back in live debate 

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!6-22 year old, shared their thoughts about gen z in a debate. Older generations view the newest generation as lazy and selfish, but this debate proves them wrong.

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Eighty 16 to 22-year-olds shared their views on life as Generation Z.

It followed a survey carried out by Ipsos for Newsbeat, which revealed some in older generations view them as lazy and selfish.

But more than 1,000 people from Generation Z told us they care most about family and education, not celebrity and social media.

Newsbeat also asked 2,004 23 to 71-year-olds how they view people younger then them.

Here are some of the main findings and reactions from the debate, hosted by Newsbeat's Tina Daheley and Nick Rotherham.

Generation Z has different attitudes to sexuality

The survey suggests a difference in attitudes to sexuality - with two-thirds of 16 to 22-year-olds saying they're "only attracted to the opposite sex".

That's compared with 88% of baby boomers and 85% of Generation X.

"This is the first time I've ever admitted it in public. I'm bisexual," said 16-year-old Andy, who came out during the debate.

"It's been really difficult for me because there is so much stereotyping."

Like Andy, almost one in 10 in Generation Z say they're "equally attracted to both sexes".

"It's not something I can change," he explains.

"I truly believe it's the way I was born, and I'm sick of people telling me I have to be a different way."

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsbeat/status/912800873482465280

Other generations don't understand what's most important to them

While older people think social media, going out and the internet are the most important things to 16 to 22-year-olds right now, Generation Z has a different set of priorities.

Generation age definitions

Generation Z: 16 to 22 (youngest born in 2001)

Generation Y (Millennial): 23 to 37 (youngest born in 1994)

Generation X: 38 to 51 (youngest born in 1979)

Baby boomers: 52 to 71 (youngest born in 1965)

The Newsbeat research suggests family, partners and education are the most important things to them.

The cost of going to university is a big concern for many.

"It's shocking the amount of money we have to pay to be educated in this country," Chidera Eggerue, who blogs as The Slumflower, said at the debate.

"I studied fashion design and development at uni. It was going great until I got to final year and realised my mental health just wasn't up to par any more.

"I ended up failing the course, but I've got to pay all that money back, and the money accumulated comes to the cost of a brand new shiny Range Rover, that I can't afford."

Generation Z is optimistic about its own future and prospects

Despite older people being pessimistic about the future for Generation Z, the people most positive about their own future are 16 to 22-year-olds.

Among baby boomers, 54% thought their lives will be worse.

But only 41% of people actually in Generation Z agreed.

"I'm super optimistic [because] as soon as I graduated on Friday I was in a job," 22-year-old Michelle said during the debate.

"I work hard. Through uni I did two, three jobs in retail, I did bar work, and then did placements.

"It's so competitive. It's not luck, it's grafting."

But 17-year-old Faye says low wages make it difficult to plan for her future.

"It's so disheartening with the minimum wage being lower for 16 and 17-year-olds. I work at a children's theme park and I get paid £4.60 an hour.

"I'd like to say I'm optimistic, but it's very unclear and we don't get a lot of guidance."

Social issues rank higher than for older generations

The different generations were asked about the most important issues which need to be addressed in Britain.

All ranked improving the NHS, preventing acts of terrorism and making the economy work after Brexit in their top three.

But there were notable issues which under-22s listed as more important - including prejudice towards LGBTQ+ people, gender equality and racism.

Facebook is Generation Z's favourite social media platform

The research suggests three-quarters of Generation Z uses Facebook with Twitter way behind on 44%.

Emily, 17, says it's not just for connecting with friends - but also building your career.

"A lot of people use social media to plug their businesses. We're not just using social media for our own vain reasons."

YouTuber Elias Riadi agrees.

"Social media is a positive. It's shaped my career. I don't have a CV. I use Instagram as a CV."

While most 16 to 22-year-olds use Facebook, they're much more likely than older generations to use Instagram (59% compared to 21%), Snapchat (56% compared to 9%), Tumblr (17% compared to 3%) and Twitch (13% compared to 2%).

"We're making ourselves more creative to find those ways to get into work," says 22-year-old Adrian.

"So if it's not the traditional ways, we're going to get more creative and go to Instagram, Twitter, we're going to go to Facebook.

"I don't think we're lazy, we're innovative."
The Ipsos research is based on replies from 3,007 people Find us on Instagram at BBCNewsbeat and follow us on Snapchat, search for bbc_newsbeat - 1,003 from Generation Z, 660 people in Generation Y, 667 in Generation X and 677 baby boomers.

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'We're not lazy, we're innovative' - Generation Z hits back in live debate

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Eighty 16 to 22-year-olds shared their views on life as Generation Z. It followed a survey carried out by Ipsos for Newsbeat, which revealed some in older generations view them as lazy and selfish. But more than 1,000 people from Generation Z told us they care most about family and education, not celebrity and social media.