Businessweek | Gen Alpha
Kids Show Us What They’re Into, From Pokémon to Pop Stars
●We gave them disposable cameras to document their stuff, in all its glittery, sporty, nerdy glory.
Childhood bedrooms hold a special place in the cultural imagination—they’re where we grow up, after all. We asked kids across the US to show us their spaces and talk us through what they’ve filled them with. What emerged is a snapshot of Gen Alpha life: Labubu key chains and Pokémon cards, trendy hoodies and vintage typewriters, disco balls and dinosaur skulls. Some kids are entrepreneurial, selling things they’ve made with 3D printers or waiting to cash out on a collection they’re building. Others are sewing drag costumes or writing novels or making beats on a drum machine. They have screen time limits they sometimes forget to follow and friends they’d rather see in person anyway. Here’s what’s in their rooms—and on their minds.
Henry and Otis share a bedroom—and not much else. Henry is all sports, all the time. His favorite thing in the room is his Inter Miami banner “because one of my favorite players plays for them.” That would be Lionel Messi, whom he’s rooted for “since I was, like, 7.” Henry plays on a soccer team and follows other sports too: “baseball, basketball, maybe a bit of football.” When he’s not on the field, he’s on his mom’s computer searching for sports cards.
Otis, meanwhile, loves using his iPad. He watches videos from science YouTuber Mark Rober; plays
Among Us,
Minecraft and Roblox; and uses the Lego app to find instructions for sets
he’s lost the manuals to. His iPad time is capped at one hour on weekdays and two on weekend days, and
when it runs out, he turns to his extensive dinosaur collection, inspired by the Jurassic World
animated series. A clay
dinosaur skull sits on his shelf; remote-control car transmitters cover the wall nearby, though he
admits, “I don’t get to actually play with them much.” His most prized possession is a Labubu he
campaigned for relentlessly until he got it for his birthday; he’s the only kid in his class with a real
one. 
Otis’ mom also just gave him a cow stuffed animal from a trip to Switzerland, and his brother got a
goat because, like his favorite athlete, “he’s the GOAT.”
Lily splits her time between two bedrooms—one at her mom’s house, one at her dad’s—and her personal style threads through both spaces. “I like colors and girly things,” she says. She has a vast lip gloss collection that’s meticulously 
organized on a spinning display: “In one compartment, I put all the ones I don’t use as much. Then in another, I put my ChapSticks, and then I have the more expensive ones and then ones that are my favorites,” which are by Summer Fridays and Rhode. She keeps her daily look simple, but when friends come over, “we’ll do crazy makeup with colored eye shadows.” She also loves perfume, which she stockpiles more than she wears. Lily has a mannequin head at each house to develop her hairstyling skills (“I find it easier to do other people’s hair, but I do like trying different hairstyles on myself too”), and she gives skin-care-focused makeovers to “anyone who’s willing,” favoring hip K-beauty products such as snail mucin, which she admits “is kind of gross, but I still like it—it’s nice on your skin in a weird way.”
She belongs to her school’s unicycle club, which inspires more Saturday morning dedication than basketball or soccer ever did. Lily’s also the proud new owner of a Lunicycle—like a unicycle but “without a seat, so it’s just the wheel.” 
Although she doesn’t spend much time on social media, she runs an Instagram account for her dog, Nala. She has a pet axolotl named Slugbug too. “It’s an amphibian salamander thing,” she explains, “but it only stays in water, and it has these frilly gills that stick out.”
Last summer, Hendrix graduated to a “more grown-up room,” which, in their case, means disco everything: a
whole wall papered with a giant disco ball, a disco ball hanging from the ceiling, a mirror covered in
itty-bitty disco balls. 
Their mom
“discos everything she sees” for Hendrix. Next to a faux-taxidermy ram with gold horns hangs a wig
stash—“I do a lot of drag,” Hendrix notes—including a beloved Trixie Mattel wig worn for Halloween
(Hendrix sewed the rest of the costume themself). A bright blue wig was once a favorite, but it’s gone
mostly untouched since they dyed their hair a matching shade. Other discerning touches include a lava
lamp and bookshelves lined with graphic novels; cute figurines and stuffies spill across every surface.
Labubus and
Squishmallows are tied as their favorite, with Jellycats ranking last: “I don’t really play with
Jellycats anymore. I had them a lot when I was a kid.”
Ari’s first obsession was trucks, thanks to Truck Tunes, 
a series of
albums for toddlers about
vehicles; that phase also included many, many rewatches of the movie Cars. Then came
Pokémon. “It was the third obsession,” Ari says. (He can’t remember the second.) Ari has tons of Pokémon
cards, action figures, stuffies and a Pikachu- and Jigglypuff-filled sticker book.
He loves
stickers of
all
kinds and, after receiving a pack of 1,000 from a family friend over the summer, started putting them
all
over his dresser. His
favorite is
a Game Boy sticker, though he hasn’t actually played a Game Boy yet. In fact, his only tech devices are
a
small retro boombox and a Yoto audio player, which he uses to listen to Magic Tree House books
under a Nugget fort he built.
Ryker is a big reader. “I probably read more than two hours a day between school and home,” with a goal
this year “to
read at least a hundred books.” A Hogwarts castle decorates one of his walls, and he estimates he’s read
the
Harry Potter series “20 or so times since I was 9.” Perhaps the only thing he likes more than
reading is
writing. He got a vintage typewriter for Christmas and is “using it to write a fiction book, so I got
special paper
and brads to type and bind a book.” He uses an old smartphone to craft the chapters and then types them
by hand on the
typewriter afterward.
Ten dictionaries and thesauruses support the effort—“the last word I looked up was
‘unceremoniously.’” Stacks of magazines and newspapers tower on the bookcase: “I have not thrown away a
single one. I like them
because they look cool up there.” Ryker also has a 3D printer. “I like to make
toys for me and my sister,” he says, “and I also sell things that I make.”
Down the hall, in his little sister Mia’s room, pandas are everywhere. “They’re one of my favorite animals, and I like animals a lot,” she says. (She also has a shark that Ryker printed for her.) She shares her space with pet cats named Minty and Pepper, and pet frogs named Legend and Webby. Like her brother, Mia enjoys reading: Dog Man comics fill the shelves.
The centerpiece of Rishi’s bedroom is a swiveling display case that shows off his many collections. The top shelf holds a bunch of pocket-size Funko Pops, while the second and third shelves are dedicated to blind box figures from Pop Mart, the Chinese toy company with a location at a nearby mall that Rishi and his mom like to go to. The thrill is the not-knowing—you buy a sealed box and see what you get only when you open it. Rishi also collects Pokémon cards, manga series and Labubus. (Is the Labubu craze still going at his school? “Nah, no. It died down just this year,” he says.) A silver glitter Polaroid camera sits on a shelf. He likes to photograph “stuff in the house, like my dog,” who he named Velvet. On his laptop Rishi plays games through the online gaming platform Steam and teaches himself to code, a passion sparked by a technology class at school: “I like that I get to control what’s actually happening.”
Julian’s grandmother bought him what he calls “a crappy skateboard” on a beach vacation in the Northeast.
It was chilly and overcast in the middle of summer, so the family wandered over to the skate park.
Julian was hooked and is now on his third board.
He’s into sneakers (his aunt and uncle got him his
first pair of Jordans for his 9th birthday), but he’s also a Crocs guy (he likes to mismatch his blue
and red pairs). Julian sees his Pokémon cards as an investment, especially since he has a $100 card in
his possession. “I’m just waiting to sell them,” he says. When does he plan to cash out? “When I’m
around my parents’ age, ’cause then they’ll be worth a lot.” He pretty much likes ’90s movies only—his
favorite is Dumb and Dumber—and he has a special affection for kids’ sports flicks such as
The Mighty Ducks and Angels in the Outfield. A bottle of cologne sits on his dresser;
he used to wear it every day but stopped. “When I’m
near my friends, they’re very sensitive to it.”
His little brother, Benny, is a multi-sport kid with trophies from the many teams he’s on and basketball shoes that stay in the box to keep them in mint condition. Like Julian, he’s into Pokémon (his brother got him hooked) and is a big fan of Minecraft, both to play on his iPad and to plaster all over his room in sticker form. His most-wanted birthday items include in-game purchases on Fortnite, some batting guards and a signed Shohei Ohtani Dodgers jersey. He sleeps surrounded by stuffed animals—his favorite is a Bitcoin plushie his dad gave him.
Rubykate wants to be a pop star—Taylor Swift and HUNTR/X from KPop Demon Hunters are her
favorites—and she likes to practice with her metallic pink karaoke mic. She does choir and soon plans to
sign up for a Broadway dance program at school, though she’s not sure she’ll get in. (“Sometimes there’s
just too many kids,” Rubykate says.) 
When she’s not
performing, she’s making things: She hand-beads friendship bracelets, paints on canvas, sews dresses for
her American Girl dolls out of old beach cover-ups and creates miniatures with kits from Miniverse, a
popular line of teensy hyperrealistic DIY toys. She also enjoys creating tiny edible candies with Popin’
Cookin’ sets.
She loves Sephora and has an impressive lineup of beauty products on her desk to show for it, though
she’s allowed to wear makeup only on weekends or “when I go to a birthday party.”
Rubykate takes
piano but laments the trade-off: “I really like nails, but they don’t really mix because I can’t wear
nails when I practice piano.”
Reuben likes to
do lots of things in his room: “make beats on my beat computer, draw in my giant comic
books, chill in my bed.” The beats are mostly hip-hop, an interest sparked when he saw the 2025 Super
Bowl halftime show and heard Kendrick Lamar for the first time (“I have a poster of his album in my
room, actually”). He listens to
“clean versions” of rap tracks from Kendrick, J. Cole and Lil Yachty. A
custom keyboard covered in his own doodles connects to his desktop computer, and a new drum kit is still
waiting to be set up. Music is only part of Reuben’s creative output.
“I love making
tiny little books,”
he says. “I became known in my kindergarten or first grade class as the guy who can draw a really good
Sonic.” His fandom runs deep—“I’ve never been into a series more than I’ve ever been into Sonic”—and his
favorite movie is Sonic the Hedgehog 3: “I went insane when that came out.”
The polka-dot walls were Margot’s idea, and much of the art in her room is work she made herself. She
likes to draw pictures with an app called ibisPaint—“one of the easiest drawing apps,” she says. Margot
plays Roblox, but she’s over the popular game Steal a Brainrot. 
“I never get any good
brainrot,” she says. She sometimes watches videos of other players getting “the best brainrot, and it
just makes me really jealous.” She’d rather play outside anyway, with her two best friends in her
neighborhood, Melina and Gigi. A recent acquisition is a Pink Palm Puff sweatshirt she received after
every other girl at school started wearing one. “They’re the
best hoodies—they’re really comfy, and they
can keep you really warm.” Before you wash them, they have a scent, and hers smelled like ocean breeze.
Margot’s a Labubu devotee—most of hers are gifts or from trips. She used to bring them to school, but toys got banned after kids were playing with them during math. The giant ones, she explains, are called Zimomos. “There are all different things. It’s kind of hard to keep up with them sometimes.”
