As Gen Z continues to find their place in the world, the world is also learning to find their place within Gen Z. From prominent brands straying from more traditional marketing and embracing social media trends (see: Duolingo’s official TikTok page) to many workplaces seeing the effects of the Great Resignation, Gen Z’s influence is significant. LinkedIn captured many of Gen-Z’s motivations in a study of its roughly 78 million Gen Z users, which SocialMediaToday turned into a handy visual (below).
Some interesting highlights include:
- 80% of users consider LinkedIn trustworthy with 70% agreeing that the content posted is relevant to them.
- 72% of users value financial security while 48% consider themselves effective money-managers.
- 67% of users vye for equal rights, and 61% say they express interest in other countries/cultures.
- Large tech brands and business publishers are the most popular company types for Gen-Z to follow on LinkedIn.
- While millennials, Gen X, AND Baby Boomers often seek support on LinkedIn with soft skills (e.g., management skills), Gen Z are more likely to hone their hard skills on the site (e.g., data languages).
- They account for 13x more groups and jobs views than their predecessors.
Of course, while global Gen-Zers share roughly the same birthyears, LinkedIn has found slight differences in their top three regional priorities. For example, compared to overall LinkedIn users,
- North American Gen-Zers engage with more content on employee well-being, future job outlook, and social causes;
- European, Middle Eastern, and African Gen-Zers consume more media on the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, career development, and business;
- Latin American Gen-Zers want more mental health, technical training, and social causes content; and
- Asian-Pacific Gen-Zers seek out workplace trends and supplemental learning.
While some of these seem just closely enough related (e.g., future job outlook and workplace trends) that they could potentially be the same category, it’s interesting to see just how these regions and their respective users understand and interact with similar topics.
While it’s not new that businesses need to understand their audiences, Gen Z is keeping businesses on their toes by switching up traditional approaches to their careers and content engagement. They are the most diverse generation and the first one to truly grow up with the Internet and thus more readily embrace current technologies and trends (as partially seen by seeking the best smartphone while simultaneously being responsible for a good chunk of the rise in vinyl sales, according to MRC data reports). And now, we get to see how the world learns and adapts to a generation that is truly nothing like it’s ever seen before.
See the full infographic here: LinkedIn Shares New Insights into the Gen Z Audience on the Platform
Angelica Hernandez has a BA in Writing from Texas Christian University, where she strengthened her adoration of rhetoric and using the Oxford comma. In her off-time, she enjoys going to the gym and baking; she says it's all about balance.
