Wide Open Spaces

Gen Alpha, the first truly digitally native generation, is growing up amid hurry, overwhelm, noise, and boundaries. So while they may be constantly online, beware of assuming that this is a generation that only wants to engage there. Instead, research is pointing to a persistent and profoundly human desire for the unbounded, unstructured, and highly tactile experiences that stand in direct opposition to their digital norm and the identities many of their parents are managing for them.

As Gen Alpha is fundamentally reshaping family consumption habits, from travel bookings to weekly grocery runs, it is crucial for brands seeking short-term engagement and long-term loyalty to understand the dynamics behind their desires and behaviors.

It’s Cool To Be IRL.

Believe it or not, the generation that’s glued to tablets (40% or more of those under 6 years old already have their own¹), doesn’t actually want to be online that much. Despite growing up completely immersed in digital life, many Gen Alphas are showing clear signs of screen fatigue (40% of 12-15 year olds report that they take intentional breaks from their devices²) and a preference for physical, shared experiences that allow them to gain mastery and test their independence away from screens (nearly 73% said they’d spend less time online if there were more friends to play with in our neighborhoods³). If the recent and growing success of entertainment destinations such as Urban Air Trampoline Parks, Top Golf, and Bowlero bowling alleys are any indication, kids just want some space to jump, whack, and throw things around together.

The Rebellion Against Being Optimized.

Travel soccer, tutoring, child settings, STEM camp, screen time rules, emotional-social learning. For many Gen Alphas, their school lives are increasingly rigid. Their “play” is all organized activities. Parents are spending over $40 billion a year on organized sports and the U.S. online private tutoring market alone was worth over $4.3 billion in 2024⁴. These Gen Alphas are rebelling against the constant optimization and management of their routines and their identities. Even viral phrases like the intentionally meaningless “6-7” (dictionary.com’s 2025 Word of the Year) is a form of linguistic rebellion. Since it has no purpose and makes no sense, it cannot be graded. Similarly, a resurgence in makerspaces and “slow” activities like crafting (after three straight years of declining sales, Michael’s is projecting sales to grow 4.3% in 2025⁵) speaks to the Gen Alpha challenge: Let us play without purpose, get messy, and use our imaginations the way they were meant to be used – without rules.

The Parents Are Not Okay.

In keeping with their “concierge” overengineering approach to parenting, parents are highly vocal about their rising concern for their Gen Alpha kids. The decline in academic performance, the mental health crisis, social media addiction (a massive 2025 national poll on children’s health found that 75% of parents rate “social media” and “too much screen time” as their top health concerns for kids⁶). “They don’t know how to be bored!” “Their attention spans are broken!” “They’re dopamine addicts!”⁷ Many of these parents desperately aspire to be the parents who curate a low-stim toy collection and inspire their “iPad kid” to build a pillow fort. And yet, the majority of kids 8-12 aren’t allowed to be in public without an adult; over 25% of 8 and 9-year-olds can’t even play unsupervised in their own front yard⁸. To get some actual space, what Gen Alphas might need more than anything else is for someone to help with their parents’ anxiety.

Marketing Takeaways:

– Build Digital Bridges, Not Traps: For Gen Alpha, the dichotomy of “online vs offline, digital vs physical” that comes so naturally to us adults, isn’t real. It’s all just life. And many Gen Alphas are increasingly proactive about balancing that life and not getting stuck on a screen. Marketers must be intentional about how digital products and online content get Gen Alphas off their screens and immersed in physical, hands-on, connective experiences. For the next generation, there is no life without digital, but there is also no life with only digital. Brands must be intentional in offering a bridge, not a cage.

– Be Willing To Break The Rules. For No Reason: Brands that bend towards the unhinged are winning with Gen Alpha not only because they are entertaining, but because they are joining their audience in openly rebelling against the overthinking, overengineering, and overstrategizing of older generations. Perhaps the draw of “brain rot” is that its inherent “junkiness” feeds Gen Alpha’s hunger to tune out the things they see weighing their parents down. Marketers, long obsessed with telling stories, will need to contend with a generation drawn to “no plot, just vibes.” And consider the ROI of joining Gen Alpha in reveling in the act of being messy, unpredictable, and human.

– Help Their Parents Chill Out: The biggest barrier to Gen Alpha getting wide, open spaces isn’t them. It’s their parents’ anxiety. If brands want to build a bond with Gen Alphas and prove themselves as trustworthy advocates, they will need to stop marketing to their parents’ anxiety and instead help parents show up as confident leaders, not worried concierges. Marketers can be part of redefining good parenting not as being perfect, but as not trying so hard to build perfect kids.

Check out the other parts of this series here: Part 1

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1 – Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight,” February 2025

2 – The Harris Poll, 2024 in The Atlantic. (Aug 2025). What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones

3 – The Harris Poll, 2024

4 – Project Play. (Feb 2025). Project Play survey: Family spending on youth sports rises 46% over five years; Grand View Research. (2025). U.S. Online Private Tutoring Market | Industry Report, 2030.

5 – S&P Global. (July 2025). Research Update: The Michaels Cos. Inc. Ratings A.

6 – C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. (Aug 2025). Top health concerns for 2025; AJMC. (Aug 2025). Mental, Physical Health Top Parental Concerns in Comprehensive New Poll.

7 – National Institutes of Health (NIH). (March 2025). Demystifying the New Dilemma of Brain Rot in the Digital Era: A Review.

8 – The Harris Poll, 2024

Note: This post is inherently biased, looking at Gen Alpha through the lens of a more affluent, suburban lifestyle. For many, particularly lower-income families, a “phone-based childhood” isn’t the problem, it’s the solution for a real world that actually isn’t safe. For the Gen Alphas who don’t have access to safe communities in the physical world, the digital world is the only wide, open space they have. Similarly, for parents working multiple jobs and relying on their kids to take care of themselves and each other, they only wish they could engage in “concierge parenting.” In short, the insights we share above are true, but they are not the only ones.