Meet Generation Beta: The country’s best crystal ball gazers reveal the challenges facing the next gen

As champagne corks popped in the dying seconds of 2024 and babies welcomed 2025 with a scream, a new generation was ushered into the world. That part is not up for debate. What remains to be seen is whether generation beta, as they have been dubbed, is being born into a dystopian landscape of climate collapse and AI-induced existential angst or whether they could become the first humans to live forever and co-exist with technology in a way that would seem like science fiction to the rest of us. “This generation is being born into two of the biggest existential risks in human history: climate collapse and artificial general intelligence … there is absolutely no way that’s not going to shape them,” futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson tells STM. “They’re going to have to be one of the most resilient generations ever to get through some of the existential crises that we’re going to deal with.” The arrival of generation beta marks the first time that seven generations have co-existed: the silent generation (born 1928-1945), the baby boomers (1946-1964), generation X (1965-1980), millennials (1981-1996), generation Z (1997-2009), generation alpha (2010-2024) and, now, generation beta (2025-2039). STM spoke to some of the country’s best crystal ball gazers about the challenges facing the world’s newest generation and the forces that will shape them. WHO ARE THEY? Social demographer Mark McCrindle, the man who coined the term “generation beta”, said they will mostly be the children of generation Z or “zoomers”. “It’s the 2030s and the 2040s that will be the formative years for them,” he says. “They’ll largely be the children of generation Z: what we’ve often thought of as the children (that) are moving through that next stage and becoming parents.” Generation Beta may be just five days old but Sorman-Nillsson said their lives are already being shaped. “When I look at demographics I look a little differently from a more futurist perspective … I actually look at what’s happening in the womb epigenetically,” he says. “Prenatal stress on a baby can have later impacts on mental health and neurodevelopment, so these are very real things beyond just culturally what they experience in later life. “The stress on parents at the moment, whether it’s economically, whether it’s hybrid work-life whether it’s the unaffordability of housing, whether it’s people delaying birth, the pre-traumatic stress disorder of climate collapse … worries about AI stealing our jobs, there’s a lot going on for parents and potentially first-time parents who, by the way, have never been older in Australia’s history. “This is a generation that’s emerging now who are going to have to deal with things like a 1.5 centigrade increase in temperatures globally by 2040. They’re going to deal with sea level rises of 10cm by the same year. “So all of this stress is going on in their parents’ lives and there is zero doubt in my mind that that stress will affect the mental health but also resilience of this generation.” TECHNOLOGY Like their parents before them, generation beta will be digital natives, who have never known a world without smartphones and social media. But, with parents who have seen the dark side of technology, these “digi-sapiens” may have a very different relationship with their phones, social media and big tech. McCrindle says Australia’s looming ban on social media for under 16s would also help to shape a world where big tech was talked about “in the same way that big tobacco was talked about”. “Their parents are the first generation who grew up digital,” McCrindle says. “The parents of generation beta have had it their whole life and they’re not enamoured with it. They have seen the downside. “And so generation beta is growing up at a time when technology will grow, where AI will be mainstream, but their parents will put some guardrails or restrictions on that.” ThinkerTank futurist Ben Hamer says generation beta would accept AI and wearable tech as normal. “Gen beta will grow up in a world where technology isn’t something they have to adapt to and ride the wave of, like it was for many of us,” he says. “These digi-sapiens won’t know life any other way. They’ll grow up with quantum computing too — a super-powerful type of computer that uses the strange rules of physics to work at speeds hundreds of millions of times faster than is possible using standard computers.” This is also the generation that might discover whether science fiction lied to us or if robots and cyborgs truly will become part of day-to-day life. Sorman-Nillsson says this could be the generation raised by robot nannies and educated by AI. “As a single dad, I love this idea because currently I’ve got a few different nannies to help me with my kids when my kids are with me and humans call in sick, they change their schedules, sometimes they get full-time employment elsewhere and give you very little notice,” he says. “I would love a humanoid robot who would be able to both tidy up the house while also being a very, very tailored tutor to my kids’ developmental needs. “This poses a lot of questions even around the question of school for this generation. We’ve got private schools charging $40,000 a year (for parents) to send their kids to very traditional institutions where everyone sits and listens to that teacher. “That teacher is already inferior, in terms of the personalisation they’re able to give, (compared to) an AI teacher, who’s able to gamify learning for every individual child. We’ll see a massive redesign of our education systems … they (generation beta) are going to feel very very comfortable being tutored and taught by robots.” He says generation beta could be “the last biological generation to live”. “They’re going to be very comfortable with the idea of singularity, which is the fusion of technology and biology,” he says. “We’re already seeing early signs of this, whether it’s pacemakers or cochlea implants, Airpods — we’ll all be cyborgs in the next 10 to 20 years. “This is the first generation that might actually live forever. “Quite equally you’ll see people who have disabilities in the real physical world being fully functional in virtual reality.” WORK Just as the blacksmiths of the 19th century could not have imagined jobs like social media manager, so too will generation beta work in roles that older generations have never heard of. But McCrindle thinks we are already seeing some of the workplace trends that generation beta will embrace, including changing jobs more often and the rise of the four-day work week. “We expect generation beta will have 18 different employers and six careers across their lifetime,” he says. The realities of climate change will also change the way generation beta works. Hamer says by 2030, 2.2 per cent of working hours globally will be lost to “extreme heat”. “By the time gen beta enters the workforce, we might no longer be working a 9am to 5pm workday,” he says. “Instead, we might be working something like 6am to 2pm to escape the hottest part of the day. And we might be doing that over just four days, with the potential for the four-day work week to become the new normal by then. “Research from the World Economic Forum says that, of children entering primary school today, 65 per cent of them will work in jobs that don’t currently exist yet. For those only being born from next year, we can expect that number to be even higher.” He says he expected industries around green energy and sustainability, quantum computing and robotics and biotechnology to boom, while bust sectors could include traditional manufacturing, fossil fuel and basic administrative roles, which could be replaced by increased automation, renewables and AI respectively. Sorman-Nillsson’s prediction for a hot new job for generation beta? Existential crisis manager. Also, more optimistically, universal basic income accountant. “Rather than listening to our parents’ advice to become a banker or lawyer or doctor, AI will be all of that stuff, so there’ll be new professions emerging and I think one of them will be figuring out how to distribute the universal basic income,” he says. “With all of this technology comes a lot of wealth opportunities and that wealth is going to be needed to be redistributed from the likes of Elon Musk and Bill Gates.” LIFESTYLE The realities of climate change will be part of daily life, not a source of debate, for generation beta. As Sorman-Nillsson puts it: “Climate change doesn’t care if you believe in it.” He says Australia’s changing climate, with rising sea levels and higher temperatures, will affect where the next generation works and lives. “We’ll see a different kind of Australia emerging where the dominant regions and cities may not be what they are today,” he says. Densification, renting rather than owning and moving suburbs, states and countries are all trends that seem likely to continue, McCrindle says. “Generation beta will be coming of age when our population is greater than now,” he says. “The trends we’re seeing now will be more so: increasing densification, growth, not just in cities but in regional centres … more likely to rent than to own.” The downside to that is that generation beta may be less connected to its community. “People won’t be putting down such roots in a community … that Australia that we know is fast changing and the fact that’s driving that is cost of living and cost of housing,” he says. “The other fact of that is … people are not as invested in place and not as invested in Australia.” RELATIONSHIPS When it comes to relationships — romantic and otherwise — there is good news and bad news for generation beta. The good news is that they will likely be high in EQ or emotional intelligence, because their generation Z parents feel comfortable discussing their feelings and mental health in a way past generations did not. Sorman-Nillsson said the parents of generation beta were already “very comfortable” talking about emotions and accepting of things like neurodiversity and disability. “What you’ll see is they are going to be very very comfortable talking about their feelings with their parents,” he says. “For them this is going to be second nature. “Every generation of parents transmits stress and trauma to their kids. Millennials and generation Z are probably the most emotionally intelligent generations ever and they’ve invested in their psychology from a young age … EQ levels of the next generation are going to be sky high.” He says generation beta could also be more comfortable with relationships that did not resemble the conventional nuclear family. “It will be a generation that will redefine relationships and be more comfortable with the idea of polyamory … having different partners over the stages of your life,” he says. “Imagine living for forever – you might not just want to pick one partner. They’re going to be very comfortable with a diverse range of people.” Hamer takes a similar view on the likelihood that generation beta will enjoy an “emotionally supportive upbringing compared to older generations”. “They will likely have more aligned values with their parents when it comes to things like climate change and economic inequality,” he says. However, the future may not be all kumbaya for generation beta. Hamer says political divisions and a trend towards polarisation, already an issue, could worsen. “Unlike generation alpha, gen beta will grow up with more entrenched geopolitical divides, potentially shaping their worldview,” he says.