Connecting with Gen Alpha this holiday

All the while, Gen Alpha seems more interested in what is happening on YouTube Shorts or in their group chats, laughing at things that sound and look like nonsense, things most adults would categorically call a waste of time.

This is where the rift lives, in that feeling that what they are watching, saying or doing is pointless and confusing. I feel it too. I scroll through endless videos that look like absolute slop to me and see no meaning on the surface. That reaction bothers me, because it’s also signaling that I am looking for meaning in the wrong place.

Adults roaming the Earth today were taught to connect through conversation, interpretation and mastery. We learned understanding through language, through story arcs, explanation and shared conclusions. We expect meaning to unravel logically and reward attention with insight. That training and world view collides head-on with the world Gen Alpha finds reprieve in.

Gen Alpha is surrounded by institutions and structures they did not create and did not opt into. This is not a new phenomenon, but the internet and AI have completely changed how youth is experienced. Their time, movement and attention are constantly managed. Their choices are tracked. Their boredom is interrupted. Their social lives unfold under observation. Their consumption is algorithmically curated. They are expected to navigate systems that most would struggle to thrive in if they were dropped into them cold without fully developed prefrontal cortexes.

Under those conditions, the way connection forms changes.

The content and language Gen Alpha creates thrives inside systems we built, but in ways we didn’t plan for. YouTube Shorts now behaves less like a content delivery platform and more like an environment to exist within. There is no beginning and end, no grand lesson and repetition, absurdity and flattened language are intentional. This is content designed to be inhabited rather than explained.

We have seen versions of this before. Artists like René Magritte and Salvador Dalí responded to industrialization and mechanization with surrealism, giving the brain relief from the rigidity of realism and imposed order. Gen Alpha is responding to a different system, but the impulse is familiar. In their environment, coherence does not travel far and language is morphed into nondescript expression. Over time, abstraction becomes the most durable way to participate without being pinned down.

This is difficult for adults because we helped create a culture that values resolution and semantic meaning. We like tidy story arcs and conclusions. We want progress to point somewhere and achievement has been coded into us. The point is the point. Our kids, being forced to operate inside these same tightly structured systems all day long, are less interested in reproducing that in the spaces they control. Often, the absence of a point is the point.

Gen Alpha instead privileges relational meaning. Who is this moment shared with, when does it happen and under what conditions. The tension between generations comes from this mismatch. Adults reach for articulation, kids operate through synchronization and shared presence. Adults want to get somewhere, kids want to share space without pressure.

Connection, in this context, is simpler than we think. Cooking together. Sitting on the couch while something that feels dumb plays in the background. Going for a walk without filling the silence. These moments can feel thin to adults who equate closeness with conversation, but they are regulating and spacious for kids.

To connect, adults need to do some hard things. We need to tolerate ambiguity and be comfortable with unfinished moments and silence. We need to let go of the need to force explanations in real time and allow the shared experience to be enough.

Like with “67,” the meaning was never in the explanation.

This holiday season, connection is less about understanding Gen Alpha’s world and more about being present and steady inside it with them. That’s the challenge — let us know how it goes.