The consumer rulebook used to be fairly straightforward: Brands shaped perception, doctors dispensed health advice, ownership mattered, and spending more signaled success.
Gen Z is playing by a different set of rules.
We asked thousands of consumers about how they shop, spend, and make decisions, and Gen Z consistently stood apart. In our latest State of the Consumer report, by McKinsey’s Anna Pione, Clarisse Magnin, Danielle Bozarth, and coauthors, four trends emerged from the data: a new tech-driven path to purchase, the health revolution, the experience economy, and the rise of the resourceful consumer. Across each trend, Zoomers sit at the center.
Consider the new tech-driven path to purchase. Gen Z discovers brands through social media more than any other channel, while baby boomers still gravitate toward physical stores. Twenty-eight percent of Gen Zers, meanwhile, are already using gen AI to shop, above the 22 percent average across consumers. Yet the generation that relies most heavily on social media and AI also expresses the lowest levels of trust in both. In an era of endless feeds, creator recommendations, AI summaries, and doomscrolling, credibility is becoming harder to earn.
Health is undergoing a similar shift. Medical breakthroughs such as GLP-1s and the explosion of wearables have made health and wellness an even greater focus area while putting more health data into consumers’ hands than ever before. For many Gen Zers, a smartwatch, glucose monitor, sleep tracker, or LLM has become part of how they understand and manage their health. Seventy-five percent of Gen Zers use wearables or digital tracking tools, compared with 32 percent of baby boomers, and they’re more likely to ask an AI model about a health concern. Together, those habits amount to a parallel health ecosystem—one that exists alongside the traditional healthcare system rather than entirely inside it.
The experience economy is expanding, too. Across generations, spending on experiences continues to outpace spending on goods, but Gen Z stretches the definition of an “experience.” A gaming session, a streaming marathon, or an evening spent with an online community can hold the same weight as a concert or a night out. Twelve percent of surveyed Gen Zers say they would splurge on at-home entertainment, twice the share of baby boomers. Touching grass still has its place; staying in increasingly does, too.
Then there’s the rise of the resourceful consumer. Half of Gen Zers buy secondhand every two to three months, and half seek DIY inspiration online. The appeal of these behaviors extends beyond saving money. The thrill of the hunt—finding a perfectly worn vintage jacket or a beautifully restored coffee table—has become a marker of taste with its own social currency. Call it DIY mogging, if you will.
TL;DR: Gen Z isn’t waiting for institutions, brands, or experts to shape their decisions. They’re building their own consumer playbook with algorithms, wearables, group chats, and streaming queues. If there was ever a memo on how consumers were supposed to behave, they left it on read. |
