Financial Times Europe - 09.11.2019 - 10.11.2019

2 ★ FT Weekend 9 November/10 November 2019

Who are the

NextGen?

Portrait of a generation in flux

ohn Burn-MurdochJ offers a snapshot of the changing mores of the post-millennials

NextGen want to stand out

Share of each generation who feel the need to be unique in various aspects of their life ()

    

Opinions held

Content created

(art, photography,

videos)

Style/fashion

Hobbies and

interests

    

Source: OC&C Strategy consultants (US)

NextGen

Millennials

Boomers

Gen X

NextGen

The Next Generation is going to be a dominant force in Africa

Relative size of US NextGen (ages -) v preceding generations in ,

by region ( of all adults)

Source: FT calculations based on UN Population Division

    

East Asia and Pacific

West and Central Africa

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Europe and Central Asia

Middle East and North Africa

Latin America and Caribbean

North America

South Asia

SubSaharan Africa

Eastern and Southern Africa

Western Europe

NextGen Millennials Gen X

Oldest

Boomers generation

Source: Pew Research (US)

NextGen are more likely to use social media than their elders,

especially visual social media

Share of each age group that uses various social media platforms ()

Most of NextGen use Facebook,

but so does everyone else...

    

Snapchat

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook

    

-

-



-

All adults

NextGen

...whereas NextGen are more than twice as likely as

the average to use Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok

Source: American Psychological Association

NextGen’s heightened concern over climate change

and sexual harassment is also stressing them out

the national news, compared to the same statistic for all US adults

NextGen All adults NextGen All adults

The median age in Africa is 19 — and the lives of the continent’s young adults are being

transformed by technology. To read more, turn to page 5

They feel more anxious than their elders — so how do the NextGen relax? Find out about the

new trends in travel on page 8 and London’s resurgent club scene on page 16

This is a generation that wants to create. Meet the designers and developers disrupting the

fashion industry on page 7, and music’s teen producers on page 14

The NextGen’s addiction to social media is giving rise to new ways of writing — and offering

fresh perspectives on the dizzying pace of modern life. See page 10 to find out more

There has been a

takeover... I have given

over this edition to our

younger writers and

editors to focus on the

ideas and aspirations of

the post-millennial “Gen

Z”. They are already

making their mark

— and businesses and

politicians are taking

note, not least in Hong

Kong, as is clear in our

Lunch with the FT with

23-year-old protester

Joshua Wong. We

introduce you to New

York’s star sign super-

fans, Uganda’s ambitious

19-year-olds, China’s

LGBTQ youth, and the

new forces in tech, books,

style, film and art — oh,

and the millennial Janan

Ganesh has some tart

advice for his juniors.

Alec Russell,

FTWeekend editor

Gen-Z media ecosystem to which they

don’t belong. Online personality Jack

Wagner told the Atlantic last year that

“a grown adult doing a cute karaoke

video on an app and trying to make it go

viral is odd behaviour.”

But this obscurity is part of the allure,

says Melhuish. “If you’re 15, [TikTok]

makes complete sense. But for grown-

ups who use Instagram, we’re like:

‘WTF is this?’ ” he says. “But there’s a

purity to that... the audience feel like

it’s their space.”

While companies, celebrities and

brands are getting in on the action, most

TikTok videos are still made by normal

kids. Scrolling through the app, one is

a boy throwing processed cheese slices

out the window of his car at people on

the street, to the soundtrack of “Woah”

by rapper Krypto9095. Next in the

queue was a fundraiser for a high-school

janitor to get a new car, with close-ups of

his rusty vehicle in the school parking

lot. Then a group of firefighters at their

station, sliding down the pole and sing-

ing a cappella to US country group Lady

Antebellum’s “Need You Now” (cap-

tion: “firemenshenanigans”). A mother

opened and shut her oven door to mimic

the beat of “Yeah” by Usher. A group of

Mennonite sisters thanked Jesus.

I dutifully kept swiping but will admit

that I felt deeply confused by what the

hype was all about.After a few days,

though, TikTok had sifted through my

preferences and the videos became

soothing — and yes, addictive. Nearly an

hour passed by as I watched videos of

cute dogs, a girl painting butterflies on

her keyboard, DIY cleaning tips, an old

man dancing jovially at a Lizzo concert,

someone opening and closing their win-

dow blinds to mimic the familiar sound

of 20th Century Fox’s heme music.t

Every so often mainstream celebrities

such as Reese Witherspoon or Will

Smith would pop up, jolting me out of

my TikTok reverie. There is also a small

amount of Instagram-type bragging:

Mykonos vacation videos, an elaborate

hotel breakfast in Paris. But this type of

post, seen often on other social net-

works, was the exception. For the most

part, TikTok was a soothing cocoon of

anonymous videos designed to pique

my interest and keep me scrolling.

TikTok’s mass appeal comes from

offering an scape from the commerciale

machinations of its predecessors. But

sceptics say that this authenticity can’t

be preserved if ByteDance wants to

make TikTok a viable business.

Many such previous buzzy apps — the

likes of DubSmash, Flipagram or Musi-

cal.ly — burnt bright for months before

losing their allure. “The natural shelf

life for TikTok is another six to nine

months before things move on,” pre-

dicts Mark Mulligan, managing director

at Midia Research.

TikTok will inevitably start doing

what other longstanding media apps do

— either inundating people with adverts

or urging them to sign up to a subscrip-

tion — because “they have to make

money at some point”, says a senior

executive at a major record label.

This transition has already begun.

TikTok is in the midst of licensing nego-

tiations to launch its own subscription

service, according to three people

briefed on the matter, which would see

TikTok go up against Spotify and others

for consumer dollars.

“This is the streaming service Spotify

and Apple really need to worry about,”

said the label executive. “They are going

to integrate [user-generated videos]

and [professional music]. So if you want

to see both Ed Sheeran and dancing cats,

you can personalise your own library.”

It’s also catching on with more and

more celebrities and brands. Reese

Witherspoon last week declared that

she’s “obsessed” with TikTok on Jimmy

Fallon’s late night talk show — a clear

indicator that it’s no longer an

untouched abyss.

But for now, stardom on TikTok

remains more random than the tradi-

tional media hierarchy — which is why

Quiles and his peers are still hoping they

can make a splash. Their sriracha suc-

cess has shown they can reach an audi-

ence in the millions. “We are definitely

considering making a sequel to it,”

Quiles told me.

AnnaNicolaouistheFT’sUSmedia

correspondent

TikTok famous

TikTok’s simmering power this year
broke out into the mainstream via the
music industry, when a clip from Tik-
Tok propelled an unknown song to
heights that are unreachable for even
the most bankable artists. Lil Nas X’s
“Old Town Road”, now the longest run-
ning number one hit song of all time,
had its humble beginnings on TikTok —
and unsurprisingly, executives are des-
perate to use the app to recreate that
success for other nascent artists.
“Two years ago TikTok became the
phenomena that Musical.ly was, on
steroids,” says Paul Sinclair, general
manager of Atlantic Records, the label
behind Ed Sheeran and Cardi B. “Tik-
Tok joined the list of companies that we
talk about for every campaign.” Music
industry executives are now scouring
TikTok for fresh stars, sending every
new release to the app, and paying its
biggestinfluencers to use snippets from
their artists in posts.
Despite these deliberate marketing
efforts, Parlophone Records, the storied
London label behind Coldplay, recently
launched a TikTok star by accident.
The label two years ago had signed an
aqua-haired singer who goes by the
name Ashnikko and seemed to have all
the trappings of the ideal 2019 star. The
23-year-old, who looks like a hybrid of
Billie Eilish and Grimes, is lewd and
loud, peppering electro pop records
with foul-mouthed raps. Paper Maga-
zine described her as a “lascivious hara-
juku-goth manic pixie dream girl”. Jack
Melhuish, Parlophone’s marketing
director, told me Ashnikko (real name:
Ashton Casey) is “formatted very well
to a TikTok and Instagram generation”.
But her EP, i, It’s meH , released in July,
came and went with little fanfare. That
is, until a few months ago, when her
potential as a social-media phenome-
non came to fruition.
On September 20, a girl with the user-
name @Frillysocks posted a video on
TikTok, dancing in her bedroom and
lip-syncing to Ashnikko’s song “Stupid”.
@Frillysocks only had a few thousand
followers and the video was “liked”
1,169 times — a meagre amount by Tik-
Tok standards.
But the next day another TikTok user,
@Kindasmileyriley, who has 23,000 fol-
lowers on the platform, posted her own
take on “Stupid”. A day later @brookie-
barry, a prominent TikToker who
commands 2.8m followers, did the
same. And many others followed suit,

Continuedfrompage 1 launching the song into the stratosphere
of TikTok memes.
Presently thousands of people, mostly
teenage girls, are posting videos of
themselves dancing and singing along to
“Stupid” as part of the #stupidboychal-
lenge, which according to Parlophone
has generated nearly 3m TikToks.
“Stupid” lends itself easily to a place
such asTikTok — a universe designed
for show-offs, karaoke lovers and viral
memes. For the first 12 seconds of “Stu-
pid”, Ashnikko cackles theatrically
while shrieking “oh my god”. Then the
beat drops alongside a catchy chorus
that’s easy to lip synch: “stupid boy
think that I need him; I go cold like
changin’ seasons”, Ashnikko raps. It’s
easy to act out, and vaguely feminist.
Ashnikko hasn’t been on the cover of
Rolling Stone, but like many YouTube
celebrities, she has found her audience
in the bowels of the internet. The
memeability of “Stupid” translated to
popularity in Ashnikko’s music more
widely: people began streaming the
song on Spotify and Apple, while her fol-
lowings across social media such as
Instagram and YouTube quintupled in
the span of a few weeks.
Many adults, including millennials,
dismiss TikTok as a hazy part of the

transported into the daily life of teenag-

ers with backdrops of classrooms or

kitchens, teachers and parents sheep-

ishly looking on in the background.

TikTok is designed to make addicts of

its users; he company uses artificialt

intelligence to predict what videos will

tantalise you, programming an endless

stream to distract people for hours. Par-

ents in China were so concerned by this

that ByteDance last year unveiled “anti-

addiction measures” to the Chinese ver-

sion of TikTok.

“Challenges” drive the world of Tik-

Tok, as people are prompted to recreate

specific dances or routines. TikTok

makes this easy through sophisticated

editing tools and an extensive database

of soundbites and visual effects. There

are reaction videos, and then reactions

to reactions, and the trends mushroom

into goliaths that have the power to

break music records or award self-made

celebrities with big brand sponsorships.

Unlike Instagram, Facebook or the

even-older social-media apps such as

MySpace, TikTok doesn’t ask you to

find your friends or construct a meticu-

lous biography or set of personal facts

to identify you. It just starts serving vid-

eos and waits for you to keep swiping

through until it can determine what

you like.

When I first opened the app, I was

immediately confronted with a video of

‘If you’re 15, TikTok

makes complete sense...

There’s a purity to that —

they feel it’s their space’

Filming for TikTok club —Patrick Driscoll

Ritesh Agarwal

The 25-year-old

founder of Oyo, the

world’s fastest-

growing hotel chain,

came up with the

idea of renovating

budget hotels and

linking them to customers via an app

when he was in his teens.After

developing the concept in Silicon Valley

on a Thiel Fellowship, Agarwal has

steered Oyo to become India’s second-

most valuable start-up, achieving a

$10bn valuation in July. It currently

operates more than 1m rooms across

80 countries, and expanded into the US

earlier this year.

Joy Buolamwini

A Ghanaian-

American computer

scientist who has

held both Fulbright

and Rhodes scholarships, Joy

Buolamwini, 29, founded the

Algorithmic Justice League in 2016 to

draw attention to the bias inherent in

facial recognition technologies. While

working as a researcher at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

she identified gender and racial biases

in artificial intelligence, and her efforts

have prompted technology companies

such as IBM to upgrade their software

accordingly.

Zhang Dayi

One of China’s most

famouswanghong,

or internet

celebrities, Zhang

Dayi, 31, began her

career as a teenage

fashion model before

opening an online

store on the juggernaut Chinese

ecommerce site Taobao. Today she is

one of the country’s most successful

fashion entrepreneurs, with more than

11m followers on the social media

platform Weibo and four retail lines that

collectively generate more than $220m

in annual revenue. Earlier this year she

became the first social media influencer

to ring the Nasdaq bell.

Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf

Sixteen-year-old Kyle Giersdorf, better

known by his streaming name “Bugha”,

became a multimillionaire overnight

when he won the top prize at the

inaugural Fortnite World Cup in New

York earlier this year. Having played the

wildly popular online

survival game —

which has 250m

registered users

around the world —

at home in

Pennsylvania for two

years, practising for

six hours a day, Giersdorf beat 99 other

players in front of a crowd of 20,000 in

July. He told the New York Times that

he plans to invest the $3m prize money

towards his future — but also buy

himself a new desk.

Henrique Dubugras

Brazilian entrepreneur and Stanford

dropout Henrique Dubugras created his

first company — a video gaming outfit

— at age 14. Now 23, he is co-founder

and chief executive of Brex, an

explosive new fintech that provides

interest-free credit

cards to other start-

ups. Dubugras and

his co-founder

Pedro Franceschi

met on Twitter as

teenagers, and the

pair created and

sold payments

company Pagar.me before founding

Brex in 2018. A year later, Brex achieved

“unicorn” status, and is now valued at

$2.6bn.

India Ross

FIVE TO WATCH Tech and web entrepreneurs

NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20198/ - 15:38 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WIN2, Part,Page,Edition:WIN , 2, 1