Feral, illiterate, doomed: Generation Alpha are a quarter of the world’s population, and people are worried about them

Generation Alpha has emerged as TikTok’s newest supervillain thanks to their antics and sheer numbers, and Gen Z influencers ‘see a lot more chaos coming’

There are concerns that Gen A children – those born since 2010 – are not ‘all right’, given their reliance on YouTube and falling levels of literacy

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Generation Alpha kids, born to millennial parents, make up more than quarter of the world’s population – and there are already concerns that these kids are not “all right”. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:15pm, 30 Mar 2024

Zoomers fear them. Boomers want more of them. Millennials will keep making them for the rest of the year.

Born since 2010, “Generation Alpha” is the demographic successor to Gen Z – those born between 1995 and that year. Its oldest members are not quite 15, while its youngest will be conceived in the coming weeks.

When the last of them are born in December 2024, they will close the largest cohort of children ever to exist on Earth. There are already concerns that these kids are not “all right”.

The overwhelming majority have yet to graduate from primary school, and one in five are still in nappies, yet they are widely being called feral, illiterate and doomed on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok – where alphas themselves make up a large and growing share of users. Blame bad parenting by millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996), or tech companies, or both

In recent months, the alphas have emerged as TikTok’s newest supervillain. Photo: Shutterstock

Many of those responsible for setting the discourse online agree we should be worried for them.

“Everyone on the internet is really scared of Gen Alpha,” says Gen Z influencer Rivata Dutta, aka Riv, whose content is popular with alphas on TikTok. “They’re like, oh my God, Gen Alpha is so weird.”