Talk politics.

So far, not much can be said about the "Alpha" generation - and no surprise. The concept includes those born between 2010 and 2025, ie its latest representatives haven't been born yet.

The "Alpha" generation is the first to grow up entirely within the 21st century. And this, completely under the total influence of digital technologies. The "Alpha" children hardly know anything about the analogue world. They have been in contact with smartphones and tablets since they were babies. Many people intuitively learn to operate with these devices even before they learn to speak.

This innate affinity for digital technology will be the biggest challenge in dealing with the Alpha children. They are hyper-flexible and find it difficult to adapt to temporal and spatial relationships, like confined special spaces such as kindergartens or schools.

Therefore, their educators and teachers must help them establish themselves in this new world. And it is good to include new subjects in the curriculum, along with the traditional ones like history, such as programming and safe handling of social networks.

But there is more - many of these children get immersed in the digital space before they can even walk: they're actually present there as soon as their pregnant mother takes a selfie, or when they get their first word spoken recorded on video. The proud parents are happy to post these shots on the Internet, but one day they may prove inconvenient for their children.

In order to better assess the social behavior of the Alpha children, researchers are focusing mainly on the generation of their parents - the millennials. How do they treat their children, how do they grow up? Let's remember - millennials are considered somewhat disoriented, but also ambitious and complete perfectionists. They are the ones who always want to do everything right - including when it comes to raising children. All this leads to the fact that this new generation is overly cared for and spared things that it should, in principle, be able to handle on its own.

And this is potentially a problem. We have found that excessive care affects children just as much as insufficient care. But today, the former is much more common. Children of overly attentive parents are no more unhappy, but find it more difficult to deal adequately with interpersonal relationships - such as making friends or coming into contact with strangers.

The ability to deal with conflicts on their own, to express their own opinions and show imagination in their contacts with their peers can also become a challenge for them. According to a study by the Center for Generational Kinetics, the game behaviour of 56 percent of 4-5-year-olds does not correspond to their age. And for 2-3-year-olds and 6-7-year-olds, things do not look much different, ie they are having problems with their social behavior too.

Of course, a single study should not be making us draw general conclusions about a whole generation, especially since the situation in the last year and a half has been far from normal. In particular, children without siblings did not have a chance at all during the pandemic to maintain important contacts with other children for their development. Depending on the environment in which they grow up, they have gained a very different experience, which cannot be put under a common denominator.