Foresight Friday: Fiona Harkin, director of foresight

Every Friday, we wrap up the topics, issues, ideas and viral moments everyone’s been discussing. This week, director of foresight Fiona Harkin welcomes Generation Beta to the world.

: Whoa, 2025 – you’re serving it up already? It’s only the beginning of January so I shouldn’t have expected any significant shifts but it certainly looks like the digital culture wars are still game-on. With Meta announcing it is dumping third-party fact-checking – NewsGuard has been called a ‘censorship cartel’ by incoming chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr – and Elon Musk carrying on like he’s president of the world, this is shaping up to be the post-post-truth year that no one needs.

: And it’s against this backdrop that we officially welcome the first of Gen Beta (b 2025–2039). Gen Alpha (b 2013–2025) is complete and speculation around what kind of world this next generation will grow up in has already begun. As we once labelled Gen Alpha as ‘digital natives’, will these Beta babies be ‘AI naturals’? You can read more about the ongoing validity of generational demographics in our Generations: Now and Next report.

: There is some (often wild) opinion going around about what Gen Beta will shape up to be. But whether running STEEPLE analysis to look at their future relationship with tech, for example, or extracting their attitude to the environment, I can’t help but think – not of the plausible, possible, probable future for Gen Beta – but for the preferred future for them. What we want for Generation Beta starts now, with the decisions we make today. The rest is mere speculation.