In the 20th century, adulthood had a script: graduate, work, start a family. For Generation Alpha, that script is shredded. This cohort faces a world where climate upheaval, AI-driven education, and shifting job markets have upended traditional milestones.
This issue examines how today’s youth will adapt by embracing AI-driven learning, collective ownership, and authenticity in a tech-driven world.
This issue also highlights our webinars, tools, and resources that will help you build resilience for a future filled with uncertainty.
The question isn’t what’s next — it’s how we’ll shape it.
Signals from the Future
These signals from IFTF's Future Factors platform point to emerging shifts in how the next generation navigates authenticity in an AI-powered world, learns, communicates, and share resources.
Online writing course taught by AI Agatha Christie
Imagine taking a civil rights class from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or a physics class from Albert Einstein. BBC Maestro, an education streaming service, is launching a writing course where the instructor is an AI avatar of deceased mystery author Agatha Christie. Using her collection of writings, archival interviews, and private letters, BBC used AI and an actress to reconstruct her likeness.
What if learners acquired skills directly from our monumental figures of the past?
Gen Z chooses renting over owning
Instead of buying and owning things, younger generations are borrowing items from strangers online while renting out their personal things to make money. Pickle, Yoodlize, BabyQuip, KitSplit, and Fat Llama are all apps that allow users to rent anything including clothes, sporting equipment, baby strollers, and electronics; and highest earning lenders can earn up to $3,000 a month.
What if society moved from a culture of individual ownership to collective sharing?
Platform trains Gen Z in respectful disagreement
The founder of Khan Academy has established a new program, “Dialogues,” which connects youth aged 14 to 18 online so that they learn to have productive conversations on divisive topics, such as abortion, climate change, and immigration. The intention is not to debate topics or convince their peers, but rather build skills in listening to and sharing perspectives while maintaining respect.
What if future generations learned the skills to navigate difficult conversations and differing opinions, just like they learned the alphabet?
Students impose self-surveillance to prove they didn’t use AI
With many students using AI to cut corners, some who complete assignments all on their own are being accused by teachers of using AI’s help. One college student received a zero on an assignment when her professor incorrectly concluded that AI wrote it for her. Students are now proactively recording hours of work on their computer screens in case they need to prove their honest work to suspicious instructors.
What if future students have to work harder and harder just to prove their worth in face of AI’s growing power?
IFTF FEATURE
The Uncanny Valley of Growing Up: When Traditional Milestones Meet New Realities
Generation Alpha is expected to follow traditional paths to adulthood while living through unprecedented crises, economic precarity, and dizzying technological advances. IFTF's latest research examines how the world's largest-ever youth cohort is responding to this dilemma through three key strategies: strengthening local climate resilience, developing sophisticated tech boundaries, and reimagining financial health as a public journey. The most promising path forward, however, transcends these approaches by fundamentally redefining adulthood for an age of uncertainty.
Read a forecast brief about our new perspective, "The Uncanny Valley of Growing Up." It's the seventh in a series exploring uncanny valleys across society, culminating in an anthology exclusively for IFTF Vantage Partners later this month.
If you're already an IFTF Vantage partner, read this full Perspective on IFTF Vantage Point.
To learn more about accessing these forecasts and/or joining the IFTF Vantage partnership, contact our team to explore how we can help your organization navigate the critical transitions ahead.
IFTF INSIGHT
Vantage Quarterly Signals Memo: Your Early Detection System for Change
A signal is an early indicator of significant change — a small innovation or disruption happening today that hints at larger transformations to come. The IFTF Vantage team's latest Quarterly Signals Memo collects the most compelling of these indicators spotted by our global foresight community. Available exclusively to Vantage members, this digest analyzes each signal's potential impact across different domains, helping organizations spot transformative shifts before they go mainstream. The report unpacks why these changes matter and how they might reshape our understanding of what's possible. Its digestible format makes insights easy to share and act upon.
The Signals Memo is one of many ways the Vantage program plugs you into the "know and flow" of IFTF’s ongoing research. Contact us or join the webinar on Thursday, June 26 at 9am PT, to learn more about membership.
IFTF SERVICE SPOTLIGHT
Oregon 2035 Scenarios: From Tech Paradise to Climate Collapse
What if you could see the seeds of possible futures — and stop the most destructive ones from taking root? IFTF recently partnered with 1000 Friends of Oregon to explore four radically different scenarios set in 2035, from Insatiable, where endless growth devours Oregon's natural heritage, to Liminal, where technology reshapes the very meaning of community. Through short videos, these scenarios provoke urgent conversations about the choices we face today.
Want to master this powerful foresight tool? Join IFTF's Scenario Building Training this September. Register now and help shape your tomorrow.
Upcoming IFTF Foresight Essentials Trainings
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ALL UPCOMING TRAININGS & EVENTS »
IFTF WEBINAR
Future-Proof Your Organization With IFTF Vantage
Join us for a 30-minute session on June 26 to explore how the IFTF Vantage program can support your strategic goals. We’ll share how forward-thinking organizations are using Vantage to navigate uncertainty, design future-ready strategies, and make better-informed decisions today.
Discover what’s possible when you face the future with IFTF.
Thursday, June 26 | 9:00am PDT
Register here »
IFTF FORESIGHT TALK
The Flock Strategy: How Diverse Movements Can Save Democracy
Join IFTF's Chief Impact Officer Rachel Hatch in conversation with Future Currents Executive Director Connie Razza, PhD about reimagining movement-building in the United States. Learn how the Horizons Project used strategic foresight to chart new paths for collective action and democratic renewal in uncertain times.
Tuesday, July 8 | 9:00am PDT
Register here »
IFTF WEBINAR
Transform Your Strategy: Free Introduction to Futures Thinking
In this focused 30-minute session, IFTF foresight experts Lyn Jeffery and Sara Skvirsky introduce essential tools for navigating uncertainty and seizing tomorrow's opportunities. You'll learn methods to spot emerging trends before they become mainstream, make more confident long-term decisions, and turn future insights into actionable strategy. Perfect for leaders, strategists, and innovators ready to move beyond reactive planning to proactive foresight.
Register now to start your foresight journey.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025 | 9:00am PDT
RESOURCES
A Living Knowledge Base for Design Futures
Want to dive deeper into designing better futures? Strategic Design Futurist Masaki Iwabuchi has curated an open-source knowledge base that connects you to global resources on Transition Design, Speculative Design, and Systems Design. This collaborative platform welcomes contributions from practitioners worldwide.
"It is difficult to enter into the strange and always shifting world of experiential and design futures. This page consolidates a wide range of resources and references and is a great place to go to deepen your knowledge of the practice and practitioners in the field."
— Dr. Jake Dunagan,
CONSIDER THIS
Let Your Kids Be the Teachers
“Think of video games as interesting but dangerous urban neighborhoods. You can either forbid your children from going there, or you can go there with them to help them develop their own safe practices. I recommend the latter. Learn from your kids, as you hope they will learn from you. Immersive learning ability is more than the willingness to use online immersions, simulation, and gaming. It can be simply going into a world that is different for you.”
— Bob Johansen, et al. Leaders Make the Future, Third Edition: 10 New Skills to Humanize Leadership with Generative AI
Navigate the Future with IFTF
IFTF's services combine cutting-edge research, practical training, and collaborative partnerships to foster strategic foresight and build future-ready capabilities across various sectors and industries:
IFTF Foresight Essentials — strategic foresight training
IFTF Strategic Advisory Services — custom research to seize emerging opportunities and build capacity for future readiness
IFTF Vantage — a partnership that provides your organization with research, training, and resources to become future-ready
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