Gen Z Out-Saves Older Generations by 28%

The most revealing statistic in The Gen Z Decoder Ring isn’t that Generation Z racks up 425 digital activity days each month, more than double that of baby boomers, but that the number has started to decline.

PYMNTS Intelligence finds Gen Z’s daily app use fell 7% between 2024 and 2025. Far from screen fatigue, it may be a sign of digital maturity: a cohort that has stopped experimenting with technology and started curating it.

The report — based on more than 25,000 U.S. consumer responses — is titled “The Gen Z Decoder Ring: Gen Z Isn’t Different. They’re Digital by Default.” It argues that this generation has quietly normalized what once seemed revolutionary. Their lives are not “online” or “offline.”

They’re simply lived at app speed.

Gen Z leads every other generation in 8 out of 11 digital categories, from mobility and entertainment to health. Yet the story behind the numbers isn’t about endless screen time. It’s about optimization, knowing which digital tools actually make life easier and dropping those that don’t.

Key Data Points:

425 digital activity days per month: Gen Z’s total engagement is one-third higher than the average consumer and 2.5 times that of boomers. But it’s trending down as young adults streamline their digital routines.

36% of income saved: Despite lower earnings, Gen Z saves a larger share of take-home pay than any other group — 28% more than the national average — and spreads it across bank accounts, digital wallets and crypto holdings.

55% with side hustles: More than half of Gen Z earns supplemental income, but PYMNTS finds most do it to fund specific purchases or experiences, not to cover essentials — a reframing of gig work as lifestyle design rather than survival.

Beyond the Obvious

Strip away the apps and algorithms, and Gen Z’s goals look familiar: build credit, save money, stay healthy, have fun. What differs is the infrastructure they’ve built to reach those goals. A rideshare replaces car ownership. A tele-visit replaces the waiting room. A buy now, pay later plan becomes the first step toward a credit score.

The PYMNTS data show that Gen Z integrates technology, rather than overusing it. Health maintenance looks more like preventive car maintenance: five extra days a month on mental-health apps, three more on virtual therapy, three on telemedicine. Their homes are virtual marketplaces as much as physical addresses, with 17% buying groceries at Amazon or Whole Foods, which is triple the rate of older consumers. And they approach money management the same way they approach wellness: as a system to tune continuously.

That mindset has forced traditional industries to adapt. Chime, Varo and Greenlight built banking products for Gen Z’s realities, and the big banks followed with fee-free accounts and credit-building tools. Telehealth companies like Teladoc and BetterHelp turned mental-wellness apps into mainstream services. And retailers from Walmart to McDonald’s redesigned their businesses around the on-demand logic of Gen Z’s daily life.

The surprise ending of the report is that Gen Z’s hyper-digital behavior isn’t the outlier, it’s the template. As PYMNTS notes, the behaviors that seem uniquely Gen Z are “becoming universal as digital infrastructure improves and tools become more intuitive.”

What makes this generation stand out is not that they’re different, but that they’ve made difference disappear. Technology has faded into the background and Gen Z has taught everyone else how to live with it.