The Gen X/Z Exchange: Navigating Career, Purpose & Modern Life Across Generations
Ever find yourself wondering why you aren’t happier, where your career is going, or why life suddenly feels uncertain — even when everything looks fine on paper?
If you’ve ever felt stuck, off-track, or unsure what comes next, you’re not alone.
The Gen X/Z Exchange is a life navigation podcast where a Gen X dad and his Gen Z daughter explore the biggest challenges facing modern life - from career direction and purpose to relationships, wellbeing, identity and the changing world of work.
Across generations but facing many of the same questions, Chris and Lily bring honest conversations and real-world perspective to the uncertainty so many people feel today. Chris has navigated layoffs, career pivots and the realities of midlife change, while Lily is figuring out early career decisions, identity and adulthood in a fast-changing world.
Together, they bridge generational perspectives to help you:
- make sense of career and life transitions
- navigate work and purpose in a changing economy
- improve relationships and wellbeing
- feel less alone in the challenges of modern life
These aren’t expert lectures or quick fixes. They’re candid conversations about figuring life out - together.
If you’re navigating a career change, questioning direction, dealing with midlife or quarterlife uncertainty, or simply trying to understand how life looks different across generations, this podcast is for you.
Follow us now and join a growing community learning how to navigate modern life - one honest conversation at a time.
The Gen X/Z Exchange: Navigating Career, Purpose & Modern Life Across Generations
Should social media be banned for under-16s? Phones, schools & the trust gap with Amit Singh Kalley
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Should social media be banned for under-16s in the UK - and what can we learn from Australia? Do phone-free schools actually work, or do they just push problems underground?
In this episode, we’re joined by Amit Singh Kalley - leading commentator on this topic and the creator of the viral Periodic Table of Emojis. Amit helps us explore one of the most urgent debates facing parents, schools, and policymakers.
Amit shares how he keeps up with the fast-changing language of teens, and why adults still underestimate the pressure young people face online. Drawing on his experience as a Deputy Headteacher who banned phones at his school, he unpacks what actually works - and what doesn't.
You’ll learn:
- The four questions Amit believes parents should ask their children every day
- What phone-free schools can achieve
- How to rebuild trust when phones have created a wall between parents and children
We look at some of the research in Jonathan Haidt’s book ‘The Anxious Generation’ and look at the very real risks like grooming and sextortion. We discuss the peer pressure between parents as well as teens, whether gaming platforms should be included in a ban, and how Gen Z may one day look back on being handed smartphones so young.
Listen in and you’ll discover what good conversations about social media actually sound like - and how parents and teens can walk the digital path together, instead of pulling in opposite directions.
Hit play now and join the conversation we can’t afford to avoid.
How to contact Amit:
https://forworkingparents.com/
https://www.instagram.com/forworkingparents/
https://www.tiktok.com/@forworkingparents
https://www.facebook.com/forworkingparents
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amitsinghkalley
1.00 Intro to Amit
2.05 The idea for the Periodic Table of Emojis
3.40 Keeping up-to-date with how teens communicate
5.14 What are adults still not getting about social media?
7.35 The wall built between parents and children and how to break it down
8.48 The 4 questions to ask your children every day about their online experience
11.07 ‘The Anxious Generation’ and the accidental phone-based childhood
12.12 Amit’s experience of banning phones at school and the results
14.37 Lily’s experience of having phones in school
17.04 The language of the social media ban
18.20 How Gen Z will look back on being given phones & social media
19.35 The dangers of access for young people - grooming and sextortion
23.55 Can we hold the social media companies to account?
28.14 Would a ban work?
30.52 Reports on the changes in Australia so far
32.22 How it could be implemented in the UK and will we do it?
37.45 How to have a good conversation about social media between parents and teens
41.14 Should we ban gaming platforms too?
43.49 How teens might react to losing social media access, how to make
The Gen X/Z Exchange is a UK podcast exploring career change, purpose, wellbeing and modern life through honest conversations between a Gen X dad and his Gen Z daughter - helping you navigate life’s transitions with perspective across generations.
Send us a voice message on Speakpipe!
https://www.speakpipe.com/thegenxzexchange
Connect with us:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisperkins172/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lily-perkins-8446a82bb/
