10 things creatives need to know about Gen Alpha

It's 2025, and that can only mean one thing. Just when you'd got used to 'Gen Z' being a synonym for young people, the game has changed again.

Right now, members of Generation Z —the successors to Millennials—are entering maturity. And now the focus is switching to the next generation, Gen Alpha, aka Gen A.

This generation, born between 2010 and 2024, numbers around two billion, with the eldest now entering their mid-teens. And while these seemingly abritrary categories are easy to dismiss as marketing BS, they're also something creatives need to know about.

Firstly, because they'll increasingly be thrown about by clients, stakeholders, employers, collaborators and colleagues over the years to come. And secondly, they're widely used by Gen Z and Gen Alpha themselves, from web chats to conversations in real life.

In this article, I'll share 10 things creatives need to know about Gen Alpha: what makes them tick, why they're different, and some of the weirdest things this generation has thrown up to date.

1. Who they are

As defined by social researcher and futurist Mark McCrindle, Gen Alpha refers to individuals born between 2010 and 2025. This makes them the first generation to be born entirely in the 21st century.

Generation Alpha follow Generation Z (b. 1997–2009), Millennials (b. 1981–1996), Generation X (b. 1965–1980) and Baby Boomers (b. 1946–1964). Most of Generation Alpha are children of Millennials.

2. Why they're called the iPad Kids

While Gen Z are often celebrated as digital natives, Gen Alpha take things a step further. This is the first generation born entirely in the digital era, with no memory of a pre-smartphone world. For them, technology isn't just a tool—it's a way of life.

The first members of Gen Alpha were born in 2010, the year of the first iPad. For this reason, this generation has often been dubbed The iPad Kids, and for good reason.

Over the last decade or so, we've all seen toddlers navigate their parents' screens more adeptly than the adults. (Not to mention swiping on print magazines, and getting confused when nothing happens.) And now these same kids are entering their teens, their profound digital immersion is revealing itself in fascinating ways.

3. The web is their world

Growing up with smart devices hasn't just meant Generation Alpha can Google stuff easily. More fundamentally, they've collectively forged online homes for themselves in the chatrooms of platforms such as Roblox, Minecraft, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

In these spaces, they can chat more freely than at home or school and not just passively consume content but create their own. To get around content moderators, they've become savvy in their use of language, using words like "unalive" for murder or suicide and "pew pews" for guns to avoid their chats getting auto-flagged. This, in turn, has encouraged the growth of Gen A-speak (of which more in a moment), which is often incomprehensible to outsiders and thus more bonding as a community.

That doesn't mean Gen Alpha doesn't engage with legacy media, such as broadcast TV. But it is far less important to them than previous generations, both in terms of cultural impact and total viewing hours.

4. They've spent less time outside

If Generation Alpha kids staring into their screens annoys you, it's probably not them you should blame. Research suggests that in the UK at least, children are held back from play without adult supervision by two years, compared to when their parents had been allowed.

There was also that little matter of the Covid lockdowns, which stopped many members of Gen Alpha from attending school, meeting their friends, or even going outside, for months or years at a time.

There were fears at the time that they'd be psychologically scarred by the experience—leading them to be dubbed 'The Coronials'. And while, thankfully, these fears don't seem to have materialised, it's still too early to tell what lasting effects this enforced isolation may have had.

5. They talk funny

One of the most evident impacts of internet culture on Gen Alpha is the slang they use. Here are a few examples.

• sigma: a cool or popular kid
• gyat: literally, a person's backside, but also an expression of surprise
• skibidi: cool, bad, or sometimes just a filler word
• mewing: making your jawline look sharp by repositioning your tongue
• delulu: deluded
• cap or cap cap: a lie
• no cap: the truth
• rizz: charm and charisma
• Fanum tax: stealing food from someone
• It's giving: something (like a dress) is stylish
• Ohio: weird
• You ate that: you look good or did something well
• bussin': very good

Much of this slang originated in online content. For example, skibidi comes from the YouTube series Skibidi Toilet, which features a storyline about human-headed toilets fighting an army of camera-headed men. Similarly, Fanum tax comes from Twitch streamer Fanum, who'll swipe food from his fellow content creators, such as Kai Cenat, as a "tax".

Two things are important to note here. Firstly, it's useful to know what Gen Alpha slang means, but fairly obviously, anyone older should never use it themselves; that would be Big Yikes (embarrassing or disturbing). And secondly, it's ever-changing, so the moment you learn something, it'll probably soon be out of date.

6. They're more culturally diverse

Gen Alpha is the most culturally diverse generation yet. This is due to a range of complex factors, including both mass migration and a rise in cross-cultural relationships.

We can't generalise too much here: some countries, such as Japan, are still largely monocultural, after all. Yet even where members of Gen Alpha don't meet a diversity of people in real life, they're at least more likely to do so online compared with previous generations.

7. There's an issue with skincare

One of the oddest phenomena associated with Gen Alpha to date has been an explosion of interest in skincare. This has resulted in the rise of Sephora Kids: children and tweens who shop at beauty chains like Sephora and Ulta and post videos of their experiences online.

Gen Alpha beauty influencers and tutorials have flooded platforms like TikTok with this content, and as a result, children have started demanding their parents buy them expensive skincare brands such as Drunk Elephant and Glow Recipe.

Angry Gen Zers, in turn, have taken to YouTube in droves to complain about tweens behaving badly in stores, being rude to store assistants, abusing tester pots and making a mess of display visuals.

The skincare brands themselves have resisted the temptation to cash in on this craze, and instead focused on education, not least because often the products are actually bad for children's skin.

But whether or not the Sephora Kids trend lasts is beside the point. More fundamentally, it points to the power of this social media-savvy generation to create micro-trends from the ground up, without any gatekeeping or even encouragement from older people needed. This could potentially be hugely positive or hugely negative, but it's worth keeping an eye on either way.

8. Some of them are pretty famous

Some members of Generation Alpha are already household names, but mainly because of the families into which they were born. Take, for example, the future King of England, Prince George, along with his siblings Charlotte and Louis, and their cousins, Harry and Meghan's Archie and Lilibet.

Similarly, all of the children of the Kardashian sisters born thus far, except Mason Disick, are also Gen Alpha. As is Blue Ivy Carter, daughter of Beyoncé, whose gurgling was featured in Jay-Z's song Glory, making her the youngest person ever to appear on the Billboard Chart. She's since grown up to be a successful singer and actress, making her movie debut last year in Mufasa: The Lion King.

That's only one half of the story, though. On social media, there are many members of Gen Alpha who've become known to millions as (largely) self-made influencers, with a little help from their parents.

Take Hayley LeBlanc, a 14-year-old actress and model based in LA, who's amassed 4 million followers on Instagram. There's also Ryan Kaji, a 13-year-old YouTuber with 38.5 million followers on his Ryan's World channel. Meanwhile, the Russian-American YouTuber Like Nastya has the 5th most-viewed and 7th most-subscribed channel in the world, with 124 million subscribers. Not bad for a 10-year-old, right?

9. We'll probably be a burden to them

Feeling cross about all the advantages these kids will have compared to your tough childhood? Well, bear in mind that the first wave of Generation Alpha will reach adulthood in the 2030s, by which time the world is predicted to have the highest-ever proportion of people over 60.

If that's the case, then Gen A will bear the burden of an ageing population. Out of pure self-interest, then, it's best not to be too mean to them.

10. They've reached their peak

It may feel like Gen Alpha only just arrived, but in terms of raw numbers, they've already reached their peak. All babies born after the clock struck midnight on 31 Dec 2024 are members of the new and ever-growing Generation Beta. Time waits for no one, right?

Life is short, I guess. The lesson is to make the most of it... whatever generation you belong to.