PROTEIN AGENCYYOUTH REPORT2017
Cultural Research
Youth Insights
Trend Forecasting
Ethnographic Study
For Protein Agency's 2017 youth culture report, I helped study a generation the report called "Post-Youth" — 16-24 year-olds coming of age faster and more skeptically than any before them, fluent in causes and self-education but wary of institutions, brands, and easy narratives. The research combined observational analysis, a 3,400-person global survey, and community interviews and ethnographic hangouts with the very youth being studied — a methodology I contributed to directly, sourcing and interviewing friends and drawing on community organizations I was personally part of, so the trends surfaced spoke to lived experiences.

The report identified two defining tensions shaping the generation: Authentic, the pursuit of self-determined identity through personal growth and collective creativity in the face of a world they felt was built without them, and Fake, a fascination with digital reinvention and ironic subversion as both an escape from institutional collapse and a form of quiet rebellion against it.