What Do You Prioritize? What About Your Neighbor?: GULF SOUTH INDEX
DOWNLOAD OUR 2024 REPORT
The 2024 Gulf South Index by The Ehrhardt Group and Causeway Solutions has been our most read report to date! Thank you for all your support, and stick around for continued insights on consumer behavior, generational differences and more. If you missed this year’s report, click the link below to download now!
Every day, we make hundreds of decisions. Some are smaller – what we wear and what we eat – but some are bigger. What, or who, do we believe in? What do we want to do with our lives? These decisions don’t exist in a vacuum; our priorities guide our decisions, but the decisions we make influence what we prioritize. Throughout history, Americans and Gulf South citizens have occasionally aligned on these priorities, other times not so much. In the divided landscape of 2024, different generations are heading down different paths.
1. New Age Values
Across the Gulf South and the country, each generation holds different priorities and values as more or less precious. Sometimes surprising and sometimes not, the cultural landscapes each generation has been brought up in leads them to their own conclusions.
What don’t we agree on? According to the 2024 Gulf South Index by The Ehrhardt Group and Causeway Solutions, values such as patriotism and religion are much more important to Baby Boomers than Generation Z in the Gulf South, with Millennials and Gen X both falling somewhere in the middle. Values like these, which may have been more important to older generations, are seeing a serious dip in the newer age.
What we can agree on is the prioritization of hard work and the importance of family. When looking at all the polled values, these two hold the highest percentages for all generations across the board, and the least variation between them as well. Unsurprisingly, money also ranks as a highly important value all around.
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2. The Supremes of Summer
Whether you’re part of the 40% of the Gulf South that uses social media three or more hours a day or part of the 26% that spends one hour or less, chances are you haven’t been able to avoid another summer of endless vacation posts. While international travel has been on the rise post-pandemic, this summer seems to have provided a perfect storm of influential events.
The Swiftie Effect: As superstar Taylor Swift takes her record-breaking Eras tour to 11 European countries through the summer, Morning Consult suggests a large number of international travelers are stopping by her stadiums on their own European tours, a clear example of the growing “event travel” trend. In February, 20% of Morning Consult respondents said their reason for upcoming trips was “attending a specific event.” This is up from 15% in late 2021. Consumers are finding savvier ways to have all their priorities met.
Olympic Excitement: Event travel trends aren’t just restricted to concerts, and the arrival of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, beginning this week, is another event guaranteed to draw even more visitors to the already-popular destination spot. But the excitement is not just for those able to watch in-person. Although only 33% of national respondents and 42% of the Gulf South view patriotism as a very important priority, Nielsen reports almost 60% of Americans intend to watch the 2024 Paris Olympics. Whether we prioritize our patriotism or not, we can’t wait to root for Team USA.
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3. Making the Most of our Media
Most people probably won’t find it shocking to hear that Gen Z and Millennials use social media differently than their older counterparts, but the different relationships each generation has with their media sources is deeper than that and tells us about more than just time usage.
Wastin’ Time: According to the 2024 Gulf South Index, 53% of Gen Z’ers in the Gulf South spend three or more hours a day on social media. Compared with 34% of Gen X and only 18% of Baby Boomers, it’s clear that Gen Z dominates the social media sphere. The only generation above 50% in usage, and the highest percentage users of apps such as Snapchat and TikTok, their domination doesn’t seem to be fading.
And if our decisions shape our priorities… Gen Z’s decision to use social media so heavily is undoubtedly shaping their generational impact. 44% of Gen Z Gulf South respondents have a great deal of trust in social media sites for their information. While this number doesn’t seem huge, it’s drastically higher than Gen X at 22% and Baby Boomers at 5%. Even Millennials, Gen Z’s closest peers, only trust social media a great deal at 31%. With rampant misinformation plaguing these social sites, Gen Z may have to work harder than others to ensure they aren’t making decisions around false intel.
But we all do it. According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, eight out of 10 Americans get news from their devices. And in a 2016 study from Pew Research Center, 64% of Americans believe fake news has cause a great deal of confusion about basic facts. 23% even admit to sharing fake news themselves. While the digital era makes it easier than ever to take everything at face value, we should all prioritize putting in the work to make sure what we’re reading, saying and sharing is true, even if it takes time.
The good news is, we might be getting there. In July 2023, Pew reported more Americans than ever supporting tech companies taking steps to restrict false information, up 65% in from 56% in 2019.
***
It’s unrealistic to imagine a world where all of our priorities and values align perfectly at all times, and frankly, that world sounds a bit boring. Even though sometimes these divisions might feel overwhelming and impossible to overcome, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. Here at the Gulf South Index, we’ve always believed we may have more in common than we might think, and some of this research implies the world could be catching up. Here’s to hoping the trend continues!
DOWNLOAD OUR 2024 REPORT
The 2024 Gulf South Index by The Ehrhardt Group and Causeway Solutions has been our most read report to date! Thank you for all your support, and stick around for continued insights on consumer behavior, generational differences and more. If you missed this year’s report, click the link below to download now!
Every day, we make hundreds of decisions. Some are smaller – what we wear and what we eat – but some are bigger. What, or who, do we believe in? What do we want to do with our lives? These decisions don’t exist in a vacuum; our priorities guide our decisions, but the decisions we make influence what we prioritize. Throughout history, Americans and Gulf South citizens have occasionally aligned on these priorities, other times not so much. In the divided landscape of 2024, different generations are heading down different paths.
1. New Age Values
Across the Gulf South and the country, each generation holds different priorities and values as more or less precious. Sometimes surprising and sometimes not, the cultural landscapes each generation has been brought up in leads them to their own conclusions.
What don’t we agree on? According to the 2024 Gulf South Index by The Ehrhardt Group and Causeway Solutions, values such as patriotism and religion are much more important to Baby Boomers than Generation Z in the Gulf South, with Millennials and Gen X both falling somewhere in the middle. Values like these, which may have been more important to older generations, are seeing a serious dip in the newer age.
What we can agree on is the prioritization of hard work and the importance of family. When looking at all the polled values, these two hold the highest percentages for all generations across the board, and the least variation between them as well. Unsurprisingly, money also ranks as a highly important value all around.
***
2. The Supremes of Summer
Whether you’re part of the 40% of the Gulf South that uses social media three or more hours a day or part of the 26% that spends one hour or less, chances are you haven’t been able to avoid another summer of endless vacation posts. While international travel has been on the rise post-pandemic, this summer seems to have provided a perfect storm of influential events.
The Swiftie Effect: As superstar Taylor Swift takes her record-breaking Eras tour to 11 European countries through the summer, Morning Consult suggests a large number of international travelers are stopping by her stadiums on their own European tours, a clear example of the growing “event travel” trend. In February, 20% of Morning Consult respondents said their reason for upcoming trips was “attending a specific event.” This is up from 15% in late 2021. Consumers are finding savvier ways to have all their priorities met.
Olympic Excitement: Event travel trends aren’t just restricted to concerts, and the arrival of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, beginning this week, is another event guaranteed to draw even more visitors to the already-popular destination spot. But the excitement is not just for those able to watch in-person. Although only 33% of national respondents and 42% of the Gulf South view patriotism as a very important priority, Nielsen reports almost 60% of Americans intend to watch the 2024 Paris Olympics. Whether we prioritize our patriotism or not, we can’t wait to root for Team USA.
***
3. Making the Most of our Media
Most people probably won’t find it shocking to hear that Gen Z and Millennials use social media differently than their older counterparts, but the different relationships each generation has with their media sources is deeper than that and tells us about more than just time usage.
Wastin’ Time: According to the 2024 Gulf South Index, 53% of Gen Z’ers in the Gulf South spend three or more hours a day on social media. Compared with 34% of Gen X and only 18% of Baby Boomers, it’s clear that Gen Z dominates the social media sphere. The only generation above 50% in usage, and the highest percentage users of apps such as Snapchat and TikTok, their domination doesn’t seem to be fading.
And if our decisions shape our priorities… Gen Z’s decision to use social media so heavily is undoubtedly shaping their generational impact. 44% of Gen Z Gulf South respondents have a great deal of trust in social media sites for their information. While this number doesn’t seem huge, it’s drastically higher than Gen X at 22% and Baby Boomers at 5%. Even Millennials, Gen Z’s closest peers, only trust social media a great deal at 31%. With rampant misinformation plaguing these social sites, Gen Z may have to work harder than others to ensure they aren’t making decisions around false intel.
But we all do it. According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, eight out of 10 Americans get news from their devices. And in a 2016 study from Pew Research Center, 64% of Americans believe fake news has cause a great deal of confusion about basic facts. 23% even admit to sharing fake news themselves. While the digital era makes it easier than ever to take everything at face value, we should all prioritize putting in the work to make sure what we’re reading, saying and sharing is true, even if it takes time.
The good news is, we might be getting there. In July 2023, Pew reported more Americans than ever supporting tech companies taking steps to restrict false information, up 65% in from 56% in 2019.
***
It’s unrealistic to imagine a world where all of our priorities and values align perfectly at all times, and frankly, that world sounds a bit boring. Even though sometimes these divisions might feel overwhelming and impossible to overcome, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. Here at the Gulf South Index, we’ve always believed we may have more in common than we might think, and some of this research implies the world could be catching up. Here’s to hoping the trend continues!
President
The Ehrhardt Group