5 reasons why under-18s are so square

Steve Jobs' launch of the revolutionary iPhone in 2007 and the $600 billion collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. These are the two key events that shaped Generation Z. And their cataclysmic effects continue to play out.

Generation Z grew up as digital natives yet lived in the shadow of the Great Recession.

Their parents reined in spending as the economic crash collapsed family finances.

The jobs marketceased to offer stable employment, replacing decent salaries with unpaid internships.

Offers of "exposure" were supposed to compensate for a lack of remuneration.

The job-for-life disappeared over the horizon.

Call them the JobBridge generation.

And getting on the housing ladder ceased to be a viable aspiration.

Journalist Carl Kinsella summed the whole situation up in one pithy tweet this month.

It got 40,000 likes and 27,000 retweets.

Some commentators have suggested thatgrowing up through the Great Recession has given Gen Z-ers a feeling of insecurity.

And it's thefirst cohort to have digital technology readily available at its fingertips,for both education and communication.

Now new research from The Gild, a global brand consultancy, finds that Generation Z (those aged 18 and under) is the most financially prudent and socially conservative cohort since before World War Two.

This is a money-savvy generation, showing care and thought for the future.

Reckless? Never.

Boring? Maybe.

So would today's teens really rather stare at a screen than go out in search of a shift?

Here are five reasons why under-18s are so square:

1) They won't spend what they don't have

2) They save for "the future"

3) Unnecessary or frivolous purchases are out

4) Tattoos and piercings are a bit, meh

5) They would rather hang out online than go out socialising

Research figures show lower teen pregnancy rates, less substance abuse, and higher school completion rates in comparison with Millennials.

Statistical comparison between teens from 2008 and 2014 found a 40 per cent drop in teen pregnancy and a 38 per cent drop in drug and alcohol abuse.

Generation Z confounds the common stereotype of young people as liberal, feckless spendthrifts.

Gen Z are savers. They got used to their parents saying no.

One quarter of them say they would rather save for the future than spend money they don’t have.

A further 22 per cent said they never spend on “unnecessary, frivolous things” because saving is so important.

These attitudes are shared with the Silent Generation (43 per cent and 25 per cent respectively) who were born in 1945 or earlier.

Yet Baby Boomers (39 per cent), Gen X (61 per cent) and Millennials (53 per cent) were the most likely to spend what they have “on life in the now” and felt they didn’t save as much as they should.

On same-sex marriage, transgender rights and marijuana legalisation, 59 per cent of Gen Z respondents described their attitudes as being between “conservative” and “moderate".

A full 83 per cent of Millennials and 85 per cent of Gen X respondents were instead "quite" or "very" liberal.

One in seven (14 per cent) of Gen Z took a conservative stance on these issues, higher than Millennials (two per cent), Gen X (one per cent) and Baby Boomers (11 per cent) and surpassed only by the Silent Generation (34 per cent).

And on tattoos, body piercings and other body adornments, Gen Z is more likely to hate them (11 per cent) than Millennials (two per cent) and Gen X (six per cent).

The Generation Study analysed the attitudes of over 2,000 people across Britain to determine which generation people “belong to” on particular issues, versus their actual generation as defined by birth date.

On technology, 27 per cent of digital natives say they “couldn’t live without it” while 29 per cent describe themselves as a “tech enthusiast”.

Respondents repeatedly defy conventional wisdom about their attitudes and behaviours.

The research also highlights commonalities and differences between generations that may have been previously overlooked.

Andrew Mulholland, managing director at The Gild comments: “Within each generation, there are wide divisions in politics, culture and taste.

"And across generations, there are attitudes that bridge young and old together. Treating the attitudes typically associated with terms like ‘Millennial’ or ‘Gen X-er’ as belonging strictly to one age range shows a lack of awareness of who people really are and how they really behave, in all their nuance and variety.

“We need to move past the recent trend of ‘Millennial Fever,’ where the term ‘Millennial’ has become a lazy, if convenient, shorthand for some vague notion of achingly cool, social media-savvy 20-somethings who refuse stable careers and drink smoothies all day.

"And Gen Z may not be quite what you were expecting, as the data shows that they are more conservative and prefer to save more than Millennials, Generation X and even Baby Boomers.”

“Generations sketch out broad, loosely dotted, overlapping circles. If we want to truly understand each other, we need to look more deeply at the attitudes, lifestyles, motivations, and behaviours of the diverse range of people who make up these generations.”

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