Chloe Combi has interviewed hundreds of teenagers and children born between 1994 and 2005. She has talked to some of the richest and poorest kids in the country. She has travelled on night buses with gangs, gone on a post-GCSE trip to Glastonbury, hung out in crack houses where teenagers get high, rehabilitation centres where they get help and churches where they find God. She has found that Generation Z are selfish, violent, scared, sex-obsessed and apathetic. She has also found them delightful, curious, kind, and worried about their futures.

She talks about her research and her new book, which provides an emotional, illuminating, sometimes dark, sometimes hilarious odyssey through the lives of this generation told in their own voices.

Speaker biography:

Chloe Combi is a former school teacher. She is a columnist for the Times Educational Supplement, and also writes for the Independent, Guardian, Marie Claire and the New Statesman. She’s a regular on TV and radio debates including Channel 4 News, Newsnight, Sky News and Woman’s Hour. An article she wrote on pornography and children in 2012 precipitated a major national debate. Her work on child poverty, gangland culture and street violence granted her an invite to No. 10 and she is a consultant on youth issues for the Mayor of London. She is the founder of the youth project Write Club.

Part of Festival of Ideas.

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