Understanding the Greta Effect

Why the need for coaching on this? Why not simply play the role most parents have played for millennia?

Granted, we suffer today from a breakdown of the extended family and globalisation means that we tend to live further away from relatives than our parents' generation. Some parents now find themselves without any hands-on access to family elders, who might once have provided advice and support.

Technology does offer us wonderful tools to help us provide oversight and contact points for our children. In the end, though, gadgets can only augment human contact. In an age of 'high tech', teens need 'high touch' and real-world face-time more than ever.

Generation Edgers will not respect acquiescence when they're looking to their parents, teachers and leaders to provide role modelling and the benefits of experience.

Leaders and parents also need to heed what this generation says in the digital space. This is where much of their activism begins.

It is where nascent ideas will be personally and collectively developed over time. It is where future campaigns will be organised.

We must also grasp that Edgers are more likely to display self-reliance than Millennials. Studies have shown that they already expect to meet opposition in the pursuit of their goals. They also believe that obstacles must be met with strength.

Leaders, educators and public service providers will need to avoid a 'nanny state' approach to Edgers, allowing them more room to work some things out for themselves. Any attempts at spoon-feeding are likely to be met with defiance.

Finally, in seeking to understand the mindset of Edgers, it is helpful to realise that on some moral and ethical issues they are more conservative than Millennials.

A 2014 report from the UK's National Health Service showed that the proportion of under-20s who said they had taken illegal drugs in the month previous had halved compared to a decade earlier.

At that time, only two drugs listed as being on the rise among Edgers and both were legal. They were Ritalin and ModaSinil, both of which are stimulants that are sometimes used to power students through long study sessions.

The Greta Thunberg effect is, like most large-scale movements, partly a result of the right person and the right cause converging at the right time.

The response to it, particularly among young people, is mystifying or concerning to some adults. Yet it is understandable through the lens of not only climate concern but generational traits.