Understanding Generation Alpha

By David Morse

I have a front row seat to Generation Alpha. They’re my daughters.

Ruby was born in 2010 and Sophia in 2012, placing them at the beginning of the first generation born entirely in the 21st century. The name “Generation Alpha” was coined by Australian social researcher Mark McCrindle. After Gen Z, we ran out of letters in the Latin alphabet, so he moved to the Greek alphabet. Alpha. A beginning. It fits.

They open their phones and see a world being shaped around them. Two kids sitting in the same classroom can scroll through completely different content. And they are not just watching. They are building. They choose avatars in Roblox, stitch and edit clips on TikTok, remix sound, design spaces in Minecraft, and test ideas in group chats before they ever say them out loud.

But what inspires me most is not their digital fluency. It is their instinct toward fairness.

They assume diversity is normal because, in their world, it is. They are the first generation in American history to be majority non-White. Their classrooms and friendships reflect that reality.

And diversity, for them, is not limited to race. It includes sexual orientation, gender identity, neurodiversity, culture, language, and background. It also includes which creators shape your humor, which influencers you follow, which avatars you choose, which fandoms you belong to, who is in your Snap group, and whom you trust in your private chats.

Difference is not theoretical for them. It is everyday life.

Identity is layered. Cultural. Digital. Social. Different parts of them show up in different spaces, and that feels natural.

When you grow up navigating that kind of environment, treating people well is not framed as ideology. It is baseline. You are constantly interacting across visible and invisible differences. You learn to collaborate. You learn that how you show up matters.

Years ago, I wrote Multicultural Intelligence, which focused on understanding cultural differences across race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Watching this new generation grow up, I realized that the framework needed to evolve.

What I see in Ruby and Sophia, and in their peers, goes beyond categories. Their identities overlap and shift. They do not live in silos.

That realization led me to write Polycultural Intelligence: Eight Rules for Connecting with Generation Alpha. It is an attempt to describe a generation that expects fairness, participation, and the chance to be seen in full.
In a world that often feels colder than it should, that expectation feels quietly hopeful.

Here’s a video we did with producer Aaron Zier, featuring Ruby, Sophia, and a cast of Gen Z kids. It captures their voice directly.