Today, we’re launching Alpha Impact, a new piece of research from SuperAwesome on the technological, economic, and cultural trends shaping Gen Alpha (kids born between 2010 and 2024) and their impact on the world.

Understanding the Next Generation with Less BS

For this piece, we drew on multiple data sources to create a complete and robust picture of what is actually going on with Gen Alpha. We wanted to draw on more than just the survey-based research that often dominates youth insights. There’s nothing wrong with doing surveys when done well, and we invest heavily in our own proprietary research data. To create a thorough view though, we supplement our research with many more sources and data sets. But not all research is totally reliable – many widely reported research surveys aren’t particularly high quality, with just a few hundred respondents, or non-representative recruitment for example.

Quality longitudinal data that tells us how things have changed over long time periods can be incredibly hard to get.  (“92% of Gen Alphas feel that being their authentic self is important!” is pretty much a meaningless stat unless you have some consistent way of measuring change over time). And a lot of surveys are produced by researchers with… mixed incentives (Gen Alpha are “Generation Save”, announces a financial institution whose business is selling savings).

As a result, Gen Alpha insight often dissolves into dubious received wisdom.

For Alpha Impact, we took a different approach. We sourced high-quality studies from large polling organizations with robust and rigorous methodologies  and combined this with government datasets, disclosures from listed companies, and actual traffic and usage data from digital services. And recognising that there is value in high quality survey work, we drew on SuperAwesome’s recent Fandoms research to help us map the emerging drivers of youth identity.

For the first time, we also dove into the machine learning databases powering SuperAwesome’s AwesomeAds for Social solution, which includes 140K+ constantly evolving YouTube channels and over 170bn monthly views. It was, in part, this data which helped us quantify the hyper-fragmentation of Gen Alpha’s attentional landscape. We also spoke on and off the record to industry insiders across tech, academia, and media.

Through this fusion of our proprietary platform data, real-world usage data, and quality surveys, we sought to build one of the more robust reviews of what’s really relevant to the next generation.

Let’s get into one of the trends that emerged clearly:

Gen Alpha’s Attention Is More Fragmented than Ever, with Profound Consequences for IP Development and Brand Loyalty

One of the most powerful drivers of modern life is communities of shared interest. I’m a Manchester City fan. You’re a Disney family. My uncle’s a Harley fanatic. Those interests shape the content we consume (and, therefore, the services we pay for), the things we buy, and the time we spend. Another term for them is “fandoms”.

Historically, fandoms were forged by an ecosystem of concentrated attention. Everyone watched TV. TV had a limited number of channels (maybe 200 in a pay-TV EPG, with most people watching only a small number) and very limited shelf space on those channels (Nickelodeon in 2010 carried just 11 shows in a typical week).

So kids in your school were watching the same things. And because they were watching the same things, they were also talking about the same things. That’s key because it’s the fandoms you fall in love with as a teenager that tend to shape your preferences for the long term. When did you first get into your favorite band? Your favorite sports team?

Fall in love with a movie franchise? Likely as a teen.

But Gen A Aren’t All Watching the Same Things

Linear TV is dead, dead, dead. Reading is in decline. Cinema audiences are falling. And in their place to fill that void is A LOT of social video – teens currently watch over twice as much YouTube as Netflix, for example.

And YouTube is more fragmented than a crystal glass hit by a bullet train. Sure, the biggest creators are still BIG. However, SuperAwesome’s data showed that 75% of kids’ viewing was spread over more than 3,500 channels. The same fragmentation is evident across other huge creator platforms like TikTok and Roblox.

The result? A massive decline in widely shared fandoms. We found that nearly three-quarters of Gen A were into unique fandoms – fandoms not named by a single other person in our survey. That’s a finding that echoes similar results from YouTube’s own recent research into Gen Z – but even more dramatic.

This doesn’t mean there are NO mass fandoms anymore of course. Swifties are still huge, Marvel’s not going anywhere. But the consequences are plain to see. Toy companies – who once relied on kid fans – are having to age up as their fans get older. It’s getting harder to break new IP – the average Netflix kids show is based on IP that’s been around for 17 years. The equivalent number for Nickelodeon in 2010 was 4 years.

And what new IP is emerging from the primordial soup of fragmented Gen A attention is looking very different from the past. It’s iteratively developed, lore-based, and meme-y. Don’t believe me? Go check out Skibidi Toilet. It’s… well… there’s these human-headed… just Google it.

And sports franchises, once built on concentrated long-form attention, are racing to reinvent themselves for a short-form and UGC-dominated world. No surprise to see Kendrick Lamar dominate coverage of the Super Bowl.

The message from our work is clear: if you built your brand or business for a world of concentrated attention, prepare to re-imagine yourself or be disrupted.

Learn More About Alpha Impact

The importance of fragmented fandoms isn’t the only trend we’ve mapped in Alpha Impact. We’ve also traced the rise of Gen Alpha as consumers and hustlers, their new and very different social media norms, and why the first one-man unicorn will likely be founded by a member of Gen A. Go check out the full report.