Gen Alpha Arrives With Very Grown Up Spending Power | Bloomberg Businessweek

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. — Stacy Vanick Smith is a columnist for Bloomberg Business Week. She's the co-host of the Everybody's Business Podcast. She writes about the very grown-up spending power of Jen Alpha. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. So, Carol mentioned the criticisms of this generation,

But — And and we'll talk about this is as you point out in your piece, they came of age during the pandemic. There's this strange relationship with technology, right? About the criticisms, — But but wait. — Okay. — There's also strengths — And they have a lot of strengths. So, talk about those before we talk about the criticism. I'm a glassful type of person.

Well, it's interesting because I feel like the strengths and the weaknesses go hand in hand a little bit. So, you're exactly right. A lot of these kids came of age and experienced big life milestones during the pandemic inside through screens.

So as a result of that there are issues with socialization. Also learning was much more difficult and we were all kind of trying to find our footing. But at the same time, uh there's a lot the this generation shows itself to be very good at teamwork.

Also very entrepreneurial because a lot of games like Minecraft and Roblox like they have worlds inside of worlds where businesses can be built and things like that. And because social media can give people such a huge platform so fast, a lot of these very young I mean I almost even hesitate to call them kids uh but a lot of these kids have huge audiences. they can develop products and and and put them out on a world stage.