Starbucks, Intuition, and Being Born in the Wrong Decade

Tweens are grabbing an iced latte to get a hit of belonging, a third of Gen Z believe they have “psychic abilities,” and nearly half of young adults say they’d live in the past if they could. But first: 

Slang of the Week: “You the birthday.”

The phrase “you the birthday” (also spelled “you da birthday”) can be used to refer to someone who has made themselves the center of attention—like it’s their birthday—either for a flattering or an unflattering reason. The phrase started because of the rapper Hunxho’s song “Birthday Girl,” where he says, “She eat, she the birthday girl,” with just enough space between the words “birthday” and “girl” that some listeners thought he was calling someone “the birthday.” 

And now for our three conversations..

1. Matcha for the Masses  

What it is: Teenagers are flocking to Starbucks to socialize and sip on what one Grub Street writer called (paywall) “an easy, affordable sign of belonging.”

What’s actually going on: Starbucks beat investor expectations for Q1—by a lot. The news comes one year after Starbucks’ CEO switched gears, pivoting from a strategy that favored app ordering and mobile pickup stations, and returning instead to the idea that Starbucks stores could be the “third space” people find themselves at between home and work (or school). As a result, Starbucks (and a few other cafés with candy-tinted, coffee-adjacent drinks) have become what the milkshake joint was to postwar American teens in the 1950s. Teens who can afford the indulgence, via an allowance or their own babysitting money, are shelling out a few times a week on colorful matcha lattes and fruit-flavored energy refreshers that taste sweet and look great in a social media post. 

Continue the conversation: What’s your favorite place to hang out after school? 

2. On Knowing  

What it is: According to a Talker Research survey of 2,000 Americans, 30% of Gen Zers answered the question “How would you describe your intuition?” by saying, “I’m basically psychic—my gut is almost never wrong.” 

Why this isn’t exactly about tea leaves: Questions 22 through 28 in the survey all addressed different aspects of intuition. Some of the survey’s test categories for intuition included “Knowing when something is ‘off’ even if you can’t explain why” and, “Felt a strong urge to reach out to someone and found out they needed it.” An article in The Guardian pokes fun at some of the results, suggesting that being able to predict how situations will play out is “just basic pattern recognition.” But if anything, the survey answers do suggest that Gen Z is open to “non-rational” ways of knowing and understanding—perhaps more so than older generations.

Continue the conversation: What’s the difference between logic and intuition? 

3. Not Quite Nostalgia  

What it is: Nearly half (47%) of adults ages 18-29 said they would choose to live in the past if they could, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk Poll.

Why the youth are yearning: Parents might watch this video and think nothing of it, because it might be how they remember high school—couples hugging in the hallways, people dancing and talking to their friends. “You Know How We Do It” by Ice Cube plays in the background over a time capsule full of teenagers doing normal teenager things in the year of our Lord, 1998. But the phrase “School before social media 1998” calls attention to the thing most teens would notice first: no phones detected. In the late 90s, the internet was around, sure, but it was not in everybody’s pockets yet. As one commenter put it, this was a time “when the phone was for calls only 💔.” Videos like this consistently do well on social media because they hit on young people’s longing for an era they have never known. It’s normal to feel nostalgic, but this is not nostalgia; it’s yearning. 

Let’s translate this one further…

As a teenager, there were many nights when I found myself watching Grease and wishing that I somehow lived in the 1970s and the 1950s—simultaneously. In between watching various nostalgic movies and TV shows, I was often also getting fed nostalgic edits on social media, made by my peers, yearning for a time without the complications that social media brought into our lives. 

It looks like this yearning for the past has only intensified. We’ve come a long way from the days when the beleaguered Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway in the original The Devil Wears Prada, was the most chronically online person we’d see depicted on screen. Now, teens cringe seeing phones and social media on TV shows and movies—perhaps it reminds them too much of reality. 

In her new book GIRLS (out May 5 in the US), Freya India highlights the shift from the internet being somewhere people visit, to it becoming their default home base. As one Dazed article she quotes in her book puts it, “We no longer log off.” (Freya and I had a conversation this week about girlhood, and how to care for teen girls in a digital age—you can listen to that here!) The widespread longing to live in another decade might simply be a wish to be offline.

It is easy to spiral about the state of the world and how technology seems to be eroding so many aspects of our lives. But God intentionally put each of us in this period of history. While we are in quite a different context than Esther was, we can be encouraged that we, too, were created for such a time as this. 

For more context and nuance, check out our Roundtable podcast on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, here are three questions to help you continue the conversation with your teens: 

Parenting together,

Jenna Mindel and the Axis Team

In Other News…

1. The Devil Wears Prada 2, which comes out today, is projected to make $180 million on its opening weekend. The original film is a cult classic with younger viewers, and the trailer for this sequel set a record of getting 181 million views within 24 hours.
2. Michael, a movie about pop star Michael Jackson, set its own record for musical biopics with a $97 million domestic opening last weekend. The film, which stars Jackson’s nephew, has been criticized for sanitizing parts of the origin story of the one-time King of Pop. 
3. Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, an animated spinoff series that continues to explore the world of Eleven and Mike in Hawkins, Indiana, is now streaming on Netflix. 
4. The music video for Laufey’s new single “Madwoman” highlights a lineup of Asian American Gen Alpha favorites, including figure skating gold medalist Alysa Liu, The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Lola Tung, and Katseye’s Megan Skiendiel.
5. The discontinued iPod has a nostalgic aesthetic and analog-esque appeal, according to several young people interviewed by the New York Times who got the devices second-hand. One summed it up: “I find this modern even though it’s really old.” 

PS: Know someone who could use our conversation starters with their teens? Share the CT with a friend!