Episode description

At times it can feel as though we’re in the middle of a generational war, with the baby boomers battling the much maligned post-millennials. But in Generations the Director of The Policy Institute at King’s College London, Bobby Duffy explores just how far when we’re born determines our attitudes to money, sex, politics and much else. He tells Andrew Marr how the data from more than 40 countries unravels many of our preconceptions.

Born since the mid-1990s, Generation Z is the first age group never to know the world without the internet. It is also the generation most often pilloried in the press as replete with woke snowflakes, obsessed by identity. But the linguist Sarah Ogilvie believes that young people have much to teach about how to live in the digital world. She is the co-author of GenZ, Explained which seeks to draw a more optimistic and nuanced portrait of this generation, and delves into their specific cultural language. Olivia Yallop is young enough to be part of the digital generation and in Break the Internet she explores the royalty of the attention economy, influencers (such as Molly-Mae Hague, pictured above). In the new media landscape online celebrities dominate and their value is estimated in billions of pounds. Yallop traces how online personas are built, uncovering what it is really like to live a branded life and trade in a ‘social stock market’.

Producer: Katy Hickman

(Photo image: Molly-Mae Hague, Creative Director at Pretty Little Thing and Influencer)