Born After the iPad
The oldest members of Gen Alpha were born in 2010, the same year Apple released the first iPad. Mark McCrindle, the researcher who coined the name, puts the cutoff at 2024, which means some of them are still in diapers. For these kids, plenty of what feels new to adults has always been there, as ordinary as the Wi-Fi password taped to the fridge. Watching them move through the world can make a millennial feel about 90 years old, even one still in their thirties. Here's 20 things Gen Alpha is growing up thinking are completely normal.
1. Talking to the House
Some kids learned the word Alexa before they could tie their shoes. Amazon launched the Echo in 2014, and for most of Gen Alpha, asking the kitchen for a song is just how a house works. They also expect it to understand them on the first try and get visibly annoyed when it doesn't.
2. Screens You Can Touch
Hand a toddler a printed magazine and there's a decent chance they'll try to swipe it. A 2011 YouTube video of a one-year-old doing exactly that has been watched millions of times. Laptops without touchscreens tend to end up with small fingerprints across the display.
3. Shows Whenever
A TV schedule makes very little sense to someone who has never waited for Saturday morning. Every episode of Bluey sits in the same menu, and a kid can pick one by its thumbnail long before they can read the title. The only limit is how long a parent lets it run, which in most houses depends on how much of dinner is left to cook.
4. The Skip Button
Five seconds is the wait on a skippable YouTube ad, and kids can hit that button without looking up from their snack. A full commercial break at a grandparent's house, with no button and no way out, can seem to them like the TV is broken.
5. Grandparents on Video
Grandma lives inside a phone between visits, at least for kids whose families are spread out. FaceTime launched in 2010, and during the 2020 lockdowns video calls became the only way many families saw each other at all. A preschooler will happily carry the call around the house to show off a new toy, with the camera pointed mostly at the ceiling.
6. Tapping to Pay
Cash is an odd object if you've mostly watched adults pay by holding a phone near a little screen. Apple Pay arrived in 2014. Preteens now carry their own debit card from an app like Greenlight, and their parents can see every purchase at the corner store.
7. School on a Laptop
In spring 2020, schools across the country closed their buildings and moved class onto video calls, and the oldest members of the generation were in fourth grade. Back in person, much of their homework still lives on a school-issued Chromebook. Some districts now turn snow days into remote learning days, and kids tend to take that personally.
8. Asking a Chatbot
To a 12-year-old, asking an AI to explain fractions can feel about as unusual as asking a teacher. ChatGPT came out in November 2022, and the youngest kids in the group will never remember the world before it. Schools are still arguing over whether it counts as cheating, and meanwhile a lot of students use it like a search bar that talks back.
9. Watching Other Kids Play
Forbes listed Ryan Kaji, then seven, as the highest-paid YouTuber of 2018, mostly for unboxing toys on camera. For his audience, watching somebody else play with a toy was part of the fun of wanting it. The same logic now fills whole Saturday afternoons with other people's Minecraft worlds, narrated by someone the kid has never met.
10. Roblox as the Hangout
After school, friends often meet up on a Roblox server before they've even finished their snack. Kids run pretend restaurants there and argue over trades with classmates they'll see again in the morning at the bus stop.
Oberon Copeland @veryinformed.com on Unsplash
11. Digital Money
Robux and V-Bucks feel like real currency to a kid saving up allowance, complete with an exchange rate they know by heart. A new Fortnite skin makes a character look different and nothing else. Kids will still spend birthday money on one without a second thought.
DrawKit Illustrations on Unsplash
12. Vertical Video
Most of what Gen Alpha watches is taller than it is wide. TikTok and YouTube Shorts both fill a phone held upright, so a sideways video can look like something their parents made. Kids flip a tablet upright out of habit, even for shows that were filmed the other way.
13. Subtitles On
Words on the screen come standard, since so many creators burn captions right into their videos. Some families leave subtitles running on the living room TV full time, and nobody under 12 finds that strange. It helps with mumbled dialogue, and it helps even more when a younger sibling is asleep in the next room.
14. No Phone on the Wall
According to the CDC's National Health Interview Survey, a large majority of American adults now live in homes with no landline. A kid in one of those homes has probably never heard a dial tone, and memorizing a friend's number sounds like a party trick. Their parents knew dozens by heart.
15. Being a Dot on a Map
Apps like Life360 and Find My put a kid's location on a parent's phone as a small moving circle. For a kid walking home from school, that circle comes along whether anyone thinks about it or not. Kids check the map too, mostly to see how close Dad is to pickup.
16. Doorbells With Cameras
Knocking on a friend's front door means being on camera. Ring, which Amazon bought in 2018, made video doorbells common enough that kids expect a voice to answer through a speaker before anyone opens up. Regular visitors learn to wave at the lens on their way up the steps.
17. Dinner From an App
Takeout arrives with a live map of the driver, and kids watch that little car icon creep across the neighborhood like it's a race. DoorDash drivers often snap a photo of the bag on the porch before they leave. Calling a restaurant and reading a card number out loud feels like a chore by comparison.
18. Menus You Scan
During the pandemic, restaurants swapped paper menus for QR codes taped to the table, and plenty never switched back. A first grader can point a phone at a black-and-white square and find the kids' meals faster than their grandfather can find his reading glasses.
19. Cars With No Key
Turning a key in the ignition looks like something from an old movie. Most new cars start with a button, and in an electric one, there's no engine noise to tell you it's on. A federal safety rule makes new EVs play a low hum at slow speeds so pedestrians can hear them, and for some kids that hum is what a car sounds like.
20. A Digital Footprint From Birth
Many of these kids had photos online before they had names, starting with the ultrasound announcement. First steps and first days of school went up on Instagram, and some of those kids are now old enough to ask for posts to be taken down. France passed a law in 2024 that adds a child's privacy to the things parents are legally responsible for protecting, and that includes photos.
