Darren Irby, Red Cross' executive director for national partnerships, said, 'What Metallica and their fans have accomplished this year is truly monumental ─ inspiring people to give blood for the first time while also energizing teens and young adults about the donation process.'
The reality is more nuanced. And unfortunately, when it comes to how brands categorize and engage different generations, nuance is not generally welcome. That disconnect has led to some pretty tone-deaf brand moments.
It's something many people do on a daily basis without thinking twice about it. But a new survey has revealed how driving is leaving many Gen Z absolutely petrified. Experts from Tempcover surveyed youngsters about the common motoring tasks they find the most daunting. Changing a flat tyre was the biggest fear, while parallel parking, hill starts, and merging onto a motorway were also found to terrify hundreds of young drivers.
Founded in 2011, Depop generated approximately $1 billion in gross merchandise sales - the total value of goods sold through its platform - in 2025. In the U.S., the company saw nearly 60% year-over-year growth. As of December 31, 2025, the marketplace had seven million active buyers, nearly 90% of whom were under 34, and more than three million active sellers.
Can you remember the last time a bronze medalist became the big story out of an Olympic event? Here's one for you: During his post-race interview, Norway's Sturla Holm Lægreid didn't talk about the run he'd completed, which earned him the bronze medal in men's biathlon. Instead, he chose to tell the world about how he cheated on his ex-girlfriend.
I go to YouTube with Snapchat, or Google something if I just have an idea that I want to know," Tye McOmber said while sitting next to his father at a recent Blackhawks game.
I recently celebrated my 56th birthday, and I'm feeling my age. Not because I'm slowing down (which I am), but because I feel increasingly removed from the passions, peeves, and predilections of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. This matters, as young people shape popular and workplace cultures, and their tastes drive big swaths of consumer and tech spending-all things Inc. and Fast Company cover.
Walk through any coffee shop these days and you'll notice something interesting. The twenty-somethings hunched over their laptops look somehow more weathered than the thirty-somethings chatting nearby. At first, I thought it was just me projecting, maybe feeling defensive about approaching my mid-thirties. But then the research started backing up what many of us have been quietly observing: millennials born between 1985 and 1995 often appear younger than their Gen Z counterparts.
Are people turning away from social media? But that tide might be finally, yet slowly, turning. My Gen Z students have recently been the ones telling me about social media "cleanses", whereby they take a break from it all for a prescribed duration, and "grayscaling" their socials (whereby color images turn to black and white, making them less eye-candy-esque-and all around having better cellphone etiquette such as putting it away during class and turning it off at night.
This text-first preference aligns with how young adults consume content overall. Gen Z spends 58% of their video time on social media rather than streaming services, according to Deloitte, favoring short-form, scrollable formats over lean-back viewing. Young consumers also bring a research-driven mindset to information gathering. Nearly 90% cross-check results across multiple platforms before making decisions, according to Yext, suggesting they're comfortable synthesizing text from multiple sources rather than relying on a single video explainer.
Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, a former teacher-turned-neuroscientist, revealed that the generation born between 1997 and the early 2010s has been cognitively stunted by their over-reliance on digital technology in school. Since records have been kept on cognitive development in the late 1800s, Gen Z is now officially the first group to ever score lower than the generation before them, declining in attention, memory, reading and math skills, problem-solving abilities, and overall IQ.
In the past week, automaker Stellantis and retailer Home Depot became the latest major companies to call employees back to the office five days a week. They join employers like Instagram, Paramount and Amazon in recent return-to-office mandates. About one-third of all U.S. firms (34%) are requiring workers to be in the office full time, according to workforce insight provider Flex Index.
Our stoats are two cheerful and easy-going teenagers, energetic, determined and strong-willed, sometimes charmingly irreverent towards adults and eager to assert their role as protagonists in the world to come,
"It's not that Gen Z has confidence necessarily in the market, but they do have a confidence in their ability to adapt," Kyle M.K., Indeed's senior strategy advisor, tells Axios. "This is a group that - for a majority of their lives - they've seen a lot of disruption." "They just have a lot of confidence in themselves to plan accordingly," he adds, "especially as we go through some of this transformative change that we're seeing with AI and the economy."
Mine, a credit card and financial planning company founded by two Gen Z college dropouts, is attempting to buck the trend. Mine is announcing $14 million in fresh funding in a 359 Capital-led Series A, with participation from existing investor Kleiner Perkins. Cofounders Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith are confident they can convince their generation to stop spending their hard-earned money on betting whether the U.S. will invade Greenland or Eric Adams's latest memecoin.
In fact, their survey results from 2,500 randomly selected U.S. adults shows 80% of Gen Z say they believe they'll find true love, making them the most optimistic generation about finding love. Yet, only 55% of Gen Z feel like they're actually ready for partnership. Therein lies the "readiness paradox," a phenomenon that paralyzes Gen Z from taking that initial step toward a serious relationship, and subsequently toward marriage and having children.
Gen Z loves #RichTok - and they love being rich. Mash them together and you get a generation that overwhelmingly turns to social media for investing advice as they seek the most elusive thing of all for the young: financial independence. Social media ranked the top reason 55% of Gen Z and 44% of millennial investors say they got into investing, according to a survey of 300,000 investors over five years by the Oliver Wyman Forum.
"Ikea wanted to better understand how Gen Z and Gen Alpha think about furnishing and self-expression, recognizing the need to meet them on platforms they already use and learn from how they interact with products and spaces in a digital environment,"
On Monday, Coach launched a collection within The Sims 4, marking the first time a fashion brand has partnered with the video game in five years. All players will be able to access the new collection, which is free and features customizable items from Coach's ready-to-wear line, including its Tabby and Brooklyn bags, as well as decorative objects that can be used to craft Coach-inspired interiors through the game's build mode.
It often starts small. A dab of concealer. A tinted moisturizer. Maybe a brow gel that goes from borrowed to bought. For many men, like Daniel Rankin, makeup has transformed from something taboo into a tool to make them look less tired and more put together. "I remember thinking, 'Am I really doing this?'" Rankin, a 24-year-old advertising agent from New York who likes to shop at Sephora, told CNBC. "But once I tried it, it just became normal."
