Generation Alpha represents the children of millennials, tykes born between 2011 and 2025. The phrase was coined by social researcher Mark McCrindle, founder of marketing and trend forecasting firm, McCrindle. Some people, like researchers Ádám Nagy and Attila Kölcsey, balk at McCrindle’s generation-naming efforts. Nagy, who studies youth and society at Pallasz Athéné University in Hungary, and Kölcsey, a researcher at Excenter Research Center in Hungary, made a sociological investigation of Generation Alpha, and came out unimpressed.

“Generation Alpha is only a fiction. By definition, an age group will become a generation if they have common experiences, concepts, and language or vocabulary that differs from the previous generations,” Nagy says. “We still have no representative data on the characteristics of ‘Alphas,’ only speculations about what their common, cohesive force might be.” As far as Nagy and Kölcsey are concerned, naming Generation Alpha was merely marketing, or, as Kölcsey says, “something akin to an astronomer naming a star after themselves, before even finding said star.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.wired.com