Last week I fielded a question from a reporter about Generation Z (defined as anyone born before 1995). I’m not a demographer, but I do happen to know quite a few Gen Zers, as the parent of two myself (soon-to-be 13 – Corbin, and 10 – Harper), and also as an active volunteer at my son’s middle/high school. I was startled by some of the reporter’s assumptions about Gen Z, and what that might mean for retailers.

The two that stood out to me the most are that they are mobilely-oriented almost to the exclusion of anything else, and that they may be socially-oriented, but in the digital age, those connections are shallow and broad – leaving Gen Z more socially inept. I’d like to take a shot at those two assumptions.

Small Screen vs. Big Screen

As parents, my husband and I resisted the siren call of the mobile phone until Corbin turned twelve. We waited until the summer before he started 6th grade (middle school) because middle school meant a 5-mile round trip bike ride when the weather was good, and a phone call to come pick him up if it wasn’t, a far cry from his simple less-than-a-mile walk home from elementary school the year before. It’s hard to believe that he has only had his phone for a year, because the way he uses it – and keeps track of it – you’d think he’s had it forever.

With Harper, the advantages of Corbin having a phone rapidly became clear. When he wanted to go to a friend’s house, we didn’t have to call parents or drive over to houses to engineer a pick-up. He could ride his bike, and if we wanted him home we could text him. And with her big brother off to middle school, Harper was now walking to elementary alone. So by December of last year, we caved and also bought her a phone. Not because she wanted one (although she did, most desperately), but because we wanted to be able to get a hold of her no matter where she was.

Fast forward to now. Yeah, their phones are integral to their lives, but they still spend way more time on laptops and in front of the TV. Harper uses the communication aspects of her phone far more than Corbin – she regularly holds FaceTime meetings with her friends in the morning to decide what they should wear and if what she picked looks good (sigh). Corbin plays games and sometimes texts. And if his friends want him to come over, they are still more likely to ring the doorbell than just text him, though that has happened.

But Corbin is required to have a laptop for school, and many of the applications on his computer aren’t made for a smartphone. Minecraft, Google Sketchup, Photoshop, the Lego NXT programming interface, and other esoteric 3-D modeling software all require a more desktop experience, and some of them don’t even work on a Mac.

And my daughter’s life revolves around her DirecTV playlist. In fact, it’s far more of a punishment for her to take away TV time than it is take away her phone, though we have found that with the digital spread of traditional media, groundings sound more like the legal clauses setting out definitions at the beginning of a contract: “show ” is defined as any episodic or movie content that is available on TV, YouTube, Netflix, or Amazon Prime. If either one of our children is egregiously in trouble, we “go 1890′s ” on them and ban all electronic devices, with the exception of their toothbrushes. Yeah, we’ve had that legal negotiation too.

Research has supported that big screens are still more important than small to Gen Z. JWT Worldwide published a study in May 2012 that showed that 72% of children (both the 8-12 year old group and the 13-17 year old group) used their TV’s multiple times per day, vs. 56% of 13-17 year olds who used their phones multiple times per day, and only 39% of 8-12 year olds.

This school year, kids at Harper’s elementary school will be encouraged to bring phones, tablets or laptops to school, but not required (this is for 5th grade). I still haven’t figured out how they’re going to manage that just from a simple device management perspective, forget about network or power, but the intent is to use technology to enhance the experience when they can, and supplement with school-provided iPads for those kids who don’t have anything. You couldn’t pay me enough to be their poor tech teacher come August 12, when this strange, unorganized program first gets rolling. Next school year, when she moves to middle school, she’ll be required to have a laptop.

Corbin will continue on to his second year of laptop-driven learning this year, and will accumulate more applications that do not have mobile capabilities, which reinforce laptop as primary electronic access. We’re trying to teach him to use his phone to stay organized – setting up reminders, using the alarm, using the calendar, etc. I emphasize trying. But he’ll still be looking at big screens more than small.

For retailers, this is a cautionary tale: just because you see kids nose-deep into their phones doesn’t mean that this is all they know. They may be more comfortable with phones as communication devices at their tender ages than previous generations, but the phone is no productivity tool – they still need a laptop for that, and once school gets rolling, it’ll be just like any job: the majority of their time will be spent on laptops, not phones. And given the choice to watch on a tablet vs. a TV, they’ll still choose TV. For me, it looks like it’s still going to be a world of the right device for the right application – and it will still be on retailers to figure that out in a shopping context.

Socially Oriented vs. Socially Inept

The other assumption that the reporter asked me about related to mobile phones, but also brought in social media. Her assumption was that kids spend more time connecting with people via digital channels, likely through their phones, and so aren’t as good at “live ” social connections. I guess the expected implication is that Gen Zers will be even more likely to want self service in stores, because they won’t want the social complication of dealing with a store associate.

So, first, if you encounter a child who doesn’t know the basics of please and thank you and that the phone is not appropriate at meals with other people, etc, etc, please don’t blame the child for that. Blame the parents. No electronic devices are allowed at meals in my household, and that rule is enforced equally for adults and kids. As a parent, I’m not going to stomach the excuse that “technology made my child rude “. That lesson was either set by example, by parents not paying attention to their kids, or both.

Beyond that, there’s the whole “more connections but shallower ” thing. I don’t have much experience as a parent here. Corbin turns thirteen in August, which gets him access to Facebook if he wants it. But it’s not something that he’s asked about or expressed a lot of interest in. I suspect that some of his reticence is that he has some friends who don’t have any consideration for what’s cool to do to friends online and what’s not cool, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with them.

Harper, on the other hand, has already asked about Facebook (she has 3 more years, and that’s one thing I won’t cave on), and she’s already gotten in trouble for “accidentally ” creating a Facebook account which I had to delete. But she also has had a friend move away, whom she still FaceTimes regularly. And she’s asked permission to change the password on her phone in order to keep out a friend who wants to use her phone to text a boy, something the friend’s parents have banned on her own device (heads up, parents – that was an eye-opener for me. She’s nine).

But what I’ve found in my kids as well as the kids they know is that they prefer to spend time with each other directly much more than online. Sure, they’re happy to FaceTime or Skype. And they tend to use video much more than I do. But they prefer group gaming in person, where they set up their laptops at the kitchen table and play Minecraft together, or grab some extra PlayStation remotes and play Little Big Planet all sitting on the same couch. They also still grab a football and head out to the street on our cul-de-sac or down to the park.

The only exception is this trend I see with Harper and her friend who moved. Sure, they may eventually drift apart. When one is in Colorado and the other is in Iowa, they’re going to develop new relationships with other people and spend less time talking to each other. But FaceTime creates a much deeper experience than the relationship I had with my friends when I moved away – which consisted of a couple of letters back and forth and then we all gave up.

And if Harper and her friend can keep this level of engagement until they both get on Facebook, I can see a future where they stay in touch forever. I have no idea what happened to my elementary school friends, and it’s been so long I have no idea what we’d have in common now. With Harper, I think that will be a much different outcome. Many more relationships, yes, but deeper ones, because they’ve been built on something personal first.

I think it’s a mistake for retailers to think that online social engagement translates into a Gen Z preference for online. In my experience, I’ve found the opposite. The kids I see value in-person experiences even more, because they have the contrast to the less-than-ideal digital experiences. They don’t take them for granted. Skype is cool, but not as cool as in person. If all you’ve got is Skype, then fine. But given a choice, the Gen Zers I know would absolutely prefer to hang out together than online.

In the end, Gen Zers may turn out to be different around the edges, but they’re still people, and they still will need to shop, and when they get out of college and start building lives of their own, they’ll be just as time-starved and overwhelmed by life as any of us were. I think it’s a mistake to look at “digital natives ” and see only digital. If anything, I think they will value the personal more, because it will be what helps them keep that digital life in balance, and in perspective.

What does that mean for retailers? Ha! It means no easy answers about connecting with the next generation, that’s for certain. Be careful the assumptions you make!