The trend for this age group to buy shares and investment properties, to marry and have children later is all part of their overall pattern of planning. Mr Mackay says that a result of the constant change throughout their lives has resulted in shandies avoiding making commitments to career, marriage, study or religion. It is a group, he says, that likes to keep its options open. The group often exhibits tribal behavior yet favors friends over family and tends to live transiently. Issues such as AIDS, multiculturalism, drugs, the Internet and burgeoning technology form part of the backdrop against which the shandies have grown up.
Fashion is important to shandies, but they also love their cargo pants and skate shoes.
They prefer the inner-city and they will rent rather than buy when they do finally move out of home. Mr Mackay say they stay at home years longer than did their parents. They also stay at school longer than any other generation and go on the dole in larger numbers, and sooner than other generations. There is a downside to having so many options. Mr Mackay says that, by postponing the commitments that to other generations offered a sense of purpose and meaning to life, this generation' s lives lack structure.