Is love 💕 really in the air for Gen Z?
Valentine's Day, Bumble IPO, and some unanswered questions on Gen Z and dating.
We’ve seen quite a few articles and posts come out recently about Gen Z, dating, and Valentine’s Day. And the most interesting part of it all was that we saw research arguing DIFFERENT sides. The research we found was contradictory across two separate Gen Z agencies…here’s one example we saw from a peer firm (no source attributed to the statistic and we’ll protect their identity):
Q: Wait. You’re saying there is contradicting research from other Gen Z agencies?
A: Yes.
Q: Why?
Filter bubbles. Availability bias. Social media shows us what we want to see and rarely exposes us to contrarian thought. That’s why everyone has a different FYP on TikTok, and why you may not have seen many of the trends we share here in this newsletter. It’s likely the people sharing those stats are only sharing what they are seeing as trending. If you’re single, you probably won’t see too many V-Day couple activities on your FYP.
There’s also just laziness. We are prone to confirmation bias, looking for and interpreting information and data that confirms what we already believe to be true, and when we find it we’re satisfied. Just like in the example above (after some googling, we found that the source for that 70% stat is actually from February 2020, not 2021).
Q: So what should I believe?
A: Definitely not everything.
Q: Well, what do you believe at GenZ Designs?
Well for one, we do not believe that romance is dead or dying. I would not be too worried about our generation becoming anti-romantics. We believe this year was just different…as people have been saying for nearly 11 months.
Our consumer research follows this pattern: 1) Literature review 2) Data collection and analysis from existing content 3) Social listening 4) Custom quantitative surveying/polling and qualitative interviews and 5) Connecting the dots and applying our strategic framework to develop insights.
Our job is to learn what Gen Z thinks and interpret what that means. That means we look for more than one post, one research article, or one survey response. The difference between good and bad research can mean astronomically different insights and strategies.
Q: You didn’t answer the question - what do you believe about Gen Z and Valentine’s Day?
Unfortunately, we’re not going to share everything we know, right here and right now. What we do know is that this Valentine’s Day was untraditional, as expected. Many articles cited examples of other ways brands, platforms, and couples were doing things to give people an option to celebrate. TikTok hosted their first-ever long-form concert last night live with Justin Beiber. Many of us probably spent more time with family this year than friends because of…COVID. And as we near closer and closer to 1 year into the pandemic life, some of us may have just needed an excuse to celebrate something. While we still have plenty of research to do on our side for the way our generation is treating romance and dating, we encourage you to do this:
Question. Rethink. Seek out different opinions and different perspectives. Look to break out of your filter bubble and explore different news sources from different influencers or businesses.
Or, if it’s easier, just work with us.