Andrew Roth on Gen Z as digital captives

What this conversation is about

Andrew Roth founded DCDX, a research and strategy firm that studies his own generation for the brands and employers trying to reach it. He is a Gen Zer himself, and he started the firm after stepping back in 2020 to ask what role he wanted to play in his generation’s future. What he saw looking out was not encouraging: mental health, loneliness, a world organized around technology that does remarkable things and also pulls people away from who they are. What he wanted was for his generation and the next to have a better and more human life.

Glenn Llopis opened with the adult version of the same problem:

"we're told what to do inside the box we're given. This is extraordinarily limiting. It suppresses us and we quickly lose our sense of identity" — Glenn Llopis · 00:00:02

Glenn also put a harder question to him early. Eighteen years ago, Glenn was told that people needed to know his cultural identity before they could know him. Is hiring a researcher to explain a generation the same move in different packaging, a way to learn about people in order to manage them? Roth said it is a little of both, and that is the honest answer.

The most visible generation, and the least understood

His core observation is about visibility. No generation has ever been written about this much, and none has been this badly understood, because the questions never stop arriving. Social media asks you to construct an identity. Dating apps ask you to build a profile. Both arrive before you have an answer.

"we are constantly having this lens and mirror put back into our faces asking us questions of who we are before we know that ourselves." — Andrew Roth · 00:12:41

That, he argues, is why the most connected generation is also the loneliest. The tools make it easier than ever to reach someone, while the behaviors that actually connect people have to be learned alone. Likes and replies satisfy without fulfilling, so you live in a state of being topped up and never fed.

From digital natives to digital captives

His firm’s research retired the phrase everyone uses. Digital native, he says, only describes when you were born. The line at the top of this page is what he proposes instead: a promise of connection delivered as a life of connectivity. People scroll to mute what they feel rather than to feel more, and routines and sleep bend around the devices.

The hopeful part of that lens is what it makes of the return to in-person life. Membership communities, the third place, people leaving the room to go find each other. You can read it as what every generation does when it grows up, or you can read it as an attempt to escape captivity. He reads it the second way.

"I think what happened in this era of social media was we didn't put people first. And because we didn't put people first, we ended up prioritizing products and prioritizing profits." — Andrew Roth · 00:21:34

His warning about what comes next follows directly: artificial intelligence will matter enormously, and the same question applies to it. Do we put people and connection ahead of the product and the profit this time?

Connecting is not connection

Glenn told him about a senior leader he had been coaching who broke down in the middle of a feedback conversation, because nobody had ever made a conversation about them rather than about the business. Roth’s response was that this is exactly the realization people need to have, and that it has to end in collaboration rather than in you versus me.

"When we don't feel seen or known at our truest, how can you feel as if you're connected" — Glenn Llopis · 00:14:28

Glenn named the trap in commercial terms. Connecting makes you responsible to someone for as long as they are buying. Connection means wanting to know who someone is whether or not it ever turns into a sale. Roth’s advice for anyone trying to understand young people is to stop scrolling for the answer: the loudest voices on a feed are not the majority, and the people worth understanding are the ones quietly watching.

Places, programs, purpose

Asked what an organization can actually do, he gave three things. Places: create real, physical places where people gather around a shared interest, using the digital tools to get them there rather than as the destination. Programs: make it consistent, because consistency removes the pressure of a one-time event, and if you cannot come this week there is another one next week. Purpose: treat connecting people as a responsibility the organization carries, in the same breath as the other causes it has taken on.

"definition in an age of endless options is paralyzing." — Andrew Roth · 00:33:40

"Just because you don't see it, because your labels and categories suppress it, doesn't mean it's not in there." — Glenn Llopis · 00:34:14

The last word was about patience, which is where most employers lose. Short-term tactics win the moment and cost the long-term relevance, and the investment that looks hardest to justify is the one that pays.

"the real ROI is the one that will return year over year, over year later when your people, your community, are rewarding you for that investment in them." — Andrew Roth · 00:36:52