Great post. My two daughters are Gen z, like you. 23 and 25. I'm acutely sensitive to the lack of security they feel at the speed with which the world is changing. I was reading a post by someone I follow who had this to say (among much more): "... the speed of (jobs) replacement will make ... the experience of the steel, shipbuilding, tooling, electronic components, durable goods, automotive and any other industries you can think of look like a stroll in the park"
Who wouldn't be unnerved coming of age during a time like this? I know that pretty much everything I do now for income will be done by AI within 10 years. I'm 64 and it unnerves me. I try to imagine what it is like for your generation and it makes me rethink every stupid knee jerk reaction my generation has for the younger generation.
As a Gen z'er, Kyla once again captures how I feel but lays in out in a much more understanding way than I could articulate.
I currently work a pretty unfulfilling corporate job, making good money for my age (25) but one thing that I struggle with being 3 years out of college is finding that meaning in a job. Seeing people that have worked the company for 10-15 years, really hits me hard. The concept of staying at a company for that long is difficult for me the think about. I mainly struggle grasping that timeframe because of what it is like to be Gen z in America. Everything Kyla said in this piece rings true. I am afraid of AI taking my job, I see older people who are far more worried about short-term outcomes rather than long term effect. For example, my parents (who are very liberal) live in Nashville, TN, our neighborhood is zoned for single family housing on one acre land. There's plenty of room for more housing, more duplexes. But there is stiff resistance to changing the zoning laws because everyone is afraid that it will hurt their precious value of their home... And what really ticks me off is that most of the homes in this neighborhood were bought 20+ years ago and have most likely already been paid off. My parents do not see the long term benefit of creating more housing for my generation, they want the short term benefit of having their home remain high value, just so they can sell it in the next 10 years.
Being a Gen Z'er is so weird and stressful the more I think about it, but posts like this and others is really making me rethink how I live and what I want my life to be. As I approach turning 26, I am really considering going to flight school and work my way to becoming an airline pilot. I crave meaning in my jobs, and I want to take a risk on myself (which I feel like I haven't done before).
As a younger gen-zer (22), why don't you try to tap into the digital economy after your 9-5. This is what I'm hoping to do after graduation, 9-5 work and 5-9 try to make music, content, or any sort of art that could resonate with the world and help me make it in the creator business.
Yes - the original comment makes me think of having two jobs for two separate lives. One job for your offline life and one for your online self. If we stop living offline (jobs, dating, friends, shopping) how will we feel fulfilled? Humans have certain basic societal needs that can’t be fed exclusively online.
Scanlon’s thesis suggests that previous generations enjoyed a safety net—a world of steady career progression, institutional stability, and clear paths to wealth accumulation—while Gen Z is uniquely adrift. But has stability ever really existed?
The 1400s-1700s: If we go back even a few centuries, people lived in a world of famine, plague, religious wars, and absolute rulers with unchecked power. In feudal Europe, most people never left the villages they were born in, and their careers were dictated by lineage. The idea of predictable progress was nonexistent.
The Industrial Revolution (1700s-1800s): Entire industries collapsed as mechanization and urbanization displaced workers. The rise of factories destroyed artisan trades, creating widespread social unrest. Child labor was common, wages were low, and there was no "institutional trust"—only brutal survival in rapidly changing economies.
World War II (1939-1945): This is true unpredictability. An entire generation of young men faced the draft, and millions never returned. Families were displaced, cities were bombed into oblivion, and nations teetered on the edge of destruction. Those who survived had to rebuild economies from scratch.
The 1960s-70s: The Vietnam War draft meant young people didn’t just fear job instability—they feared dying in a jungle on the other side of the world. The U.S. faced mass civil unrest, assassinations of leaders, racial violence, inflation, and an energy crisis. Institutions weren’t just distrusted—they were actively fought against in the streets.
The notion that Gen Z is facing unprecedented instability is, frankly, myopic. Every generation has faced profound uncertainty. Every generation has had to navigate technological disruption, economic upheaval, and cultural transformation. The difference isn’t the level of uncertainty—it’s the perception of it.
I think you're missing the core part of my argument (which is my failure as an author) and I very much appreciate this comment. But while the historical comparisons you've provided are interesting, looking back before the 1900s takes us too far from understanding our current moment and the specific institutional frameworks that emerged post-WWII. It's outside the thesis of the piece. I'm not arguing that previous generations had perfect stability nor that gen Z has unprecedented amounts - that would be naive. The Boomer Blueprint I describe wasn't about guaranteed success (I explicitly note it didn't work for 43% of Boomers). Instead, it was about having legible paths to progress. You could understand the mechanisms, even if you couldn't trust them to work in your favor. What makes our current moment unique isn't the degree of instability, right, rather it's the nature of institutional dissolution. When I've talked with hundreds of people across 20+ states, what emerges isn't just anxiety about change (every generation has that), but a fundamental inability to comprehend how institutions will even function in five years. This isn't just about distrust, it's about legibility. We're watching two simultaneous forces that make this moment really weird (and again, this is based on hundreds of convos I have had across the country, this isn’t me anecdotally spewing) but we have (1) the active dismantling of government institutions (regardless of how you feel about Trump, this is objectively happening) and (2) the emergence of AI systems that their own creators say will transform or eliminate traditional career paths! That combination creates something new, right? Not just unstable institutions, but increasingly incomprehensible ones. There are papers talking about this, like the Stantcheva Upward Mobility paper out of Harvard, Chetty et al on the Fading American Dream, AICarpenter et al on the Evolution of the National Bureaucracy in the United States, and the Public Trust study out of Pew that documents what you've highlighted but also documents the complete cratering of trust that has happened over the past decade. Thank you for your comment, a lot of my work previously has been arguing that perception outweighs reality on so I understand what you mean!
I agree that perception plays a huge role in how people view the past and the present. However, I think a major difference now than in past generations, is the massive amount of information. In the 1960s (for example) there were newspapers, radio, and television news. Everyone for the most part was receiving similar information...Now everyone is reaching different information from thousands of different sources...all this information feeds the perceptions to some extent in my opinion.
This is a really good point, but I think where this thesis holds water is when you compare Gen Z to some of their immediate demographic counterparts. Gen X, Millenials grew up in a time of a lot more institutional stability and the sense that “is there a chance to make a good life if I follow the path prescribed for me” was probably a lot more secure for some of their immediate generational peers, vs people who are no longer living.
Kyla’s report checks with Toffler’s assertions on the accelerations of change. So, despite your observation that there’s nothing new under the sun, the rate of the changes are far more rapid than any of those disruptions of the past. War being maybe a prominent exception, but I think we all can agree that’s an extremity where all bets are off.
Meanwhile North Koreans are fighting in Europe, the US is still fighting in the Middle East and China sees Trump capitulating to Putin... We seem to be pretty close to that extremity.
I was never given the impression Kyla was writing this as a universal commentary. And last time I checked, still no draft in the US and very few, if any (non-clandestine) US troops in combat. So, I’d say we’re not there yet.
I hope you are right. Though I think wider war in Europe and/or war breaking out in Asia along with endless war in the Middle East are increasingly within the cone of probability. Especially because of the current administration's isolationist rhetoric and maybe in part because we don't have a draft, chances of war are up. But again, I hope you are right!
Likewise. I’m just trying to reinforce that Kyla’s piece was unduly criticized by Cowen’s remark. They wanted to expand her criticism beyond the intended sphere. But I agree with you that the prospects in the next 4 years for a war in Europe look abysmal.
I was born in 1957 – a solid boomer. My high school experience was clouded by the Vietnam war. I was on the side of “HELL NO”, refusing to say the pledge or sing the anthem (nobody really cared or noticed.) I figured out that HS was designed to sperate the college-bound from the non, and joined the latter. I spent some time working locally in northern Cal then moved to Chicago where I worked in on-board services at Amtrak for four years. This experience opened my eyes to a) the incredible diversity of our country and b) the startling (to me) fact that racism was alive and thriving.
I got married and moved back to the w. coast, enrolled in a one-year program for computer programming and operations. It was luck that I got into “data processing” in the mid-eighties. I worked for some small companies around Portland and the SF Bay area before Internet, before modems. I had to get in my car and drive to visit the customers for whatever needed doing. I spent a lot of time talking to customers on the phone, trying to avoid a long drive for a quick fix. This experience of dealing with live, unwashed customers (also at Amtrak) was invaluable.
Later in my IT career, I got some technical certifications and was employed by some large corporations. In those days, management had yet to figure out how to optimize the IT department, so it was overstaffed. I learned how to manage projects of moderate scope, “get stuff done” by developing contacts at various work locations, again doing lots of phone work to avoid getting on an airplane.
I am appalled by the lack of entry level jobs available to young folks trying to get started. I tell my nieces and nephews to find work with interesting people in a diverse environment. IMHO that’s the golden ticket to professional satisfaction, aside from reasonable compensation and benefits. I am appalled and dismayed that companies have shrunk every facet of service to the minimum, affording customers few options when encountering difficulty. Human touch is still important. I hope the pendulum can swing back, hard, and soon. Good luck to us Humans.
Thank you, as always, for your solid analysis and excellent, from the heart writing.
The point about the zero-sum behavior of Gen Z is spot on! So a decent amount of people are scared to show that they care and put in effort into activities and behavior that show some interest or might require a low term commitment to get results.
Your points about gaining wealth overnight and traditional pathways to stability not being viable reminded me of my favorite article equating Addison Rae hosting a WWE fight to the fall of the civil service exam in China. A tad absurd but still a great read.
Lots of good stuff in here but i don’t understand your conclusion.
You state “…He didn’t mean this exactly, but I am extrapolating - the "safe path" (corporate job, 401k) might be the riskiest bet.”” but don’t really back it up with anything. I can see the rest of your essay’s points perhaps weakening this safe path, especially when factoring in the cost of higher education, but calling it the riskiest bet in the world of rug pull meme coin schemes, changing algorithms, and unprecedented political instability seems like quite a leap.
This article is strangely pro-crypto gambling. Yes, a good trade means you can earn millions of dollars, but only because the people on the other side lose it.
Do you discern any structural differences across intersectional identities within Gen Z? For example, do Gen Zs sort toward either end of the barbell according to their families wealth? According to ethnic backgrounds? According to visible or invisible disabilities?
As a fellow Gen 1.0 I could totally see this shift first hand. There's a book called disappearance of rituals that touches on this concept of serial perception where we're constantly registering new information but nothing lingers; from on sensation to the next without ever coming to a closure.
What generation has not been through unimaginable change, trauma, and hardship since time immemorial? The level of uncertainty in the world feels more or less the same to me. It feels more like we (including myself) are losing our ability to deal with it.
If people had cell phones during the Cold War people might spend every minute reading about whether or not they were about to get nuked. There’s a fixed amount of known facts but an unlimited amount of speculation that can happen. The incentives for media consumption are totally out of whack. What might have been digestible from a single newspaper article is now spread across 700 TikTok’s, 400 tweets and 3 substacks. The information from these is the same, but an anxious person now has a much deeper rabbit hole. People used to have religion to manage uncertainty for them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new monotheistic religion emerge from AI amidst this chaos.
I feel like Kyla herself is emblematic of this phenomena where she has transitioned from a typical structured job in finance to now teaching/informing on economic topics in short form videos. Why would I get a PhD in Economics that takes years and opportunity cost to publish research while constrained by academic bureaucracy, when instead I could do independent research that is more applicable to the layman and also sees me immediate returns (after building a brand) for the work that I put in.
But then what if I don’t want to create a digital brand for myself? We cannot all be influencers and not all of us want to be. In the same vein, not everyone wants to be PhD professor, tied to tenure and the hyper-stability it brings. When most people are not inclined to the extremes but are being pushed to those extremes, will something be lost in terms of happiness and or productivity?
that's sort of what I was trying to explore here, the confusion of the middle path. It's a bit hard to put into words, and based on a few other comments, I don't know if I did a great job! But your summary does a better job than I did!
goodness, I really relate to that, I don't really like either of the extremes (especially the influencer one), but I don't know where to go as I wander down that middle path. 2000s gen z
Interesting post! First just a funny observation. I'm an old millenial (oregon trail gen! 1981) and we think of *ourselves* as the last analog micro-gen! I remember coming home from college and finding it notable that my younger brother, still in high school, was spending his whole evening on AIM!
And a question. I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on the draw of creator riches as a factor. To me, as someone who's only ever used YouTube among the big social and social adjacent platforms (not including substack I guess...), getting rich as a content creator feels the same as the dream in my gen of becoming a rich/famous musician or actor/actress. As in, cool dream but ~everyone knew that wasn't going to be their future.
You lean much more on boomer narcissism, post-China globalism, and technological advancement in your explanation here. But you also seem to be pointing to the creator economy as a bigger factor than the existence of rich entertainers were on the culture and dreams of my generation. If I'm reading that right I'd be interested to hear your hypotheses about why that is.
Maybe I'm just old but the average kid my age watched just as many hours of TV per day as the average Zer spends on tiktok. As in, just as ever present. You think the illusion of anyone can do it is that strong?
I think it’s different bc you don’t need to go through the past channels of fame anymore of auditioning or touring. You can produce, direct, and star in videos for low cost and then market it directly to an audience. Not to say it makes it easier since it’s still a numbers game most of the time, but there’s less barriers to entry.
For sure lower barrier to entry. In the 90s everyone knew a few guys (it was mostly guys) with a four track who played open mics and had delusions they were the next Kurt Cobain. Not as low bar as videos made and posted at home, but still pretty low. My point is just it would feel surprising to me if the change in medium and it drawing both boys and girls would make it so the percentage with delusions of grandeur exploded to such a degree that it really shifted culture.
Is the mechanism maybe more just the 2010s version of social media culture being all teens recording their lives and curating them for IG and constantly thinking about how they can present their current moment in media instead of living? As in, not with delusions they will become a rich influencer or creator, but just that being the dominant culture?
" When people say the government is "broke," they're not just talking about finances, they're talking about trust."
Because one party has spent decades undermining the trust we have in our elected officials (don't get me wrong some didn't deserve it in the first place) and our educated experts (again there are some issues with peer review etc). This complete dissolution in belief that the people in a specific career are no better equipped to do something (enact policy to better our lives, produce medicine and treatments to keep us alive) than a random person with a smartphone, has been a major factor in the crumbling faith the population has in the government, which they now claim is still acting in our best interest, while they dismantle the systems that our taxes (should) pay for and which were put up to protect us.
I chose a career in STEM after being told if I work hard and pay my taxes and feed a retirement fund that I'd see the same life as my parents, now my retirement fund could be worthless in 30 years and I have no idea what my taxes are even paying for.
This article leaves me with a sense of struggle to describe how the current world looks like, and how to find a place in it, since many common descriptions just stopped to make sense. Although different people see their future in different directions, I don't see anybody being confident, no matter how radical the way is. Everybody, across generations, is driven by uncertainty. Only the reactions are different.
The safe bet now is the riskiest way - no doubt. That safety depended on conditions no longer met. But nobody knows the new conditions. While a single crypto trade can win as you described, most lose. For each successful social media star there is a crowd not making it, not even close. It is the definition of a zero sum game. Winning is possible, but not probable.
Looking at economic data since a long time, I saw much of that coming. Not AI, not the pandemic, but even without both we would still live in very difficult times right now. In my opinion, we experience a historical cycle ending, something which is always stressful and hurts many people, and eventually resolves to a new cycle starting that can only be understood in hindsight once it is stable. Not great for most individuals. AI and the pandemic do matter, but there is much more if you are looking for root causes.
Your research may have been deeper than your article says and the USA may be more efficient than Germany. (Which I suspect, but how much?) Even though here it looks like much fiscal money is spent on legitimate purposes, diving in deeper shows horrible overhead and administration costs. It is crazy how little is actually spent on the subject in many areas. Our community towns hall was just extended significantly to hire more people for administration. No, the community did not grow really. It is all growth in overhead. The elections will not change any of that. Will DOGE in the USA uncover and fix that? I have no idea.
You do not question why people now are used to change things they do not understand, to FAFO. It is self created complexity. The last decades built many things, and with each the world got a little bit more complicated, and people got used to not understand the underlying. Secret algorithms are the icing on top, not something new really. Understanding something down to all details has gotten very hard, and sometimes impossible. So people don't. For anything created, there is a total cost of ownership. That makes start-up companies fast. And it makes our culture slow. Too slow to still manage itself.
Born 1969, certainly a boomer looking at demography, I just survived yet another layoff. I saw it coming for like a year, because I read the business reports of my employer, which few do, all of them old. The same shocked faces as always. The same rage and disappointment, wondering what they did to deserve being treated that way if they got kicked out, or if they will be on the losing end next time if they did not. That feeling of uncertainty unified the generations for a moment, comfort and advice was given: Expect it to happen again. Save and invest, you will need it. Care for your own well-being. Loyalty will be punished, not rewarded. The company is not your friend or family. Contacts were exchanged to stay in touch, to tell of available jobs. That's the difference to society, where everybody feels the uncertainty, but then continues to struggle alone, reactions depending on their generation.
I always tell my friends, If your grandkid comes up to you and asks "Dad/Mom, when everyone was getting rich and famous off TikTok, what were you doing? Why did you not try to go viral and create immense wealth when it was easier?" Would I have the heart to tell them "No little xyz, I just was too scared of coming off as cringe to my peers to even try and make it on these platforms that people have created generational wealth off of." This weird hypothetical question I thought of has created an immense sense of urgency within my being.
As someone who grew up with the internet: one of the "Digital Natives", the growing influence of AI, and my increasing mistrust in institutions are acting like a force pushing me towards the left side of the barbell, one of unshakeable belief in the digital systems. However, I feel like I exist in the mid-point of the barbell by trying to create value through content creation. The risk of content creation is not that high. At most there are peers who will think that I am "cringe", but the potential returns to a viral video is massive. I don't know how to name the urgency I feel to create these videos because it feels like if I don't get into content creation now, an increasingly bleak future is ahead of me where the newer generation no longer feels any inhibition to be in front of a camera and create content and the content creator market will be even more saturated.
You touch on young people in some instances gravitating toward Democratic Socialism, and a lack of trust that the 'bargain' of a corporate (or government, currently) career is no longer risk averse. Coming from an older person who has gone through 4 'careers' and countless iterations of corporate leadership (as well as several layoffs, elimination of pension, etc.), I'd love to get your take on the increasing momentum toward employee ownership as an alternative business structure.
There are numerous versions of this, from ESOPs to Employee Cooperatives that provide some measure of control over the long-term prospects of workers' economic security and they are growing in popularity.
I think employee ownership can be a great business structure in order to fairly compensate employees for their contributions and also incentivize them to increase a company’s efficiency and profitability. But it will not help prevent certain jobs or industries being rendered obsolete by AI and disappearing.
Great summary of Gen Z mood. What to do if evolution pushes questioning the nature of the self? Seriously looking into the nature of self and beliefs inherited from birth , over time, yields answers and resolutions to issues presented above on a personal level. Adyashanti, Taoism, Gurdjieff and some others point the way for the serious seeker. A seeker who can entertain the idea that maybe , the ultimate source of resolution of his issues is to be found one level up.
Great post. My two daughters are Gen z, like you. 23 and 25. I'm acutely sensitive to the lack of security they feel at the speed with which the world is changing. I was reading a post by someone I follow who had this to say (among much more): "... the speed of (jobs) replacement will make ... the experience of the steel, shipbuilding, tooling, electronic components, durable goods, automotive and any other industries you can think of look like a stroll in the park"
Who wouldn't be unnerved coming of age during a time like this? I know that pretty much everything I do now for income will be done by AI within 10 years. I'm 64 and it unnerves me. I try to imagine what it is like for your generation and it makes me rethink every stupid knee jerk reaction my generation has for the younger generation.
As a Gen z'er, Kyla once again captures how I feel but lays in out in a much more understanding way than I could articulate.
I currently work a pretty unfulfilling corporate job, making good money for my age (25) but one thing that I struggle with being 3 years out of college is finding that meaning in a job. Seeing people that have worked the company for 10-15 years, really hits me hard. The concept of staying at a company for that long is difficult for me the think about. I mainly struggle grasping that timeframe because of what it is like to be Gen z in America. Everything Kyla said in this piece rings true. I am afraid of AI taking my job, I see older people who are far more worried about short-term outcomes rather than long term effect. For example, my parents (who are very liberal) live in Nashville, TN, our neighborhood is zoned for single family housing on one acre land. There's plenty of room for more housing, more duplexes. But there is stiff resistance to changing the zoning laws because everyone is afraid that it will hurt their precious value of their home... And what really ticks me off is that most of the homes in this neighborhood were bought 20+ years ago and have most likely already been paid off. My parents do not see the long term benefit of creating more housing for my generation, they want the short term benefit of having their home remain high value, just so they can sell it in the next 10 years.
Being a Gen Z'er is so weird and stressful the more I think about it, but posts like this and others is really making me rethink how I live and what I want my life to be. As I approach turning 26, I am really considering going to flight school and work my way to becoming an airline pilot. I crave meaning in my jobs, and I want to take a risk on myself (which I feel like I haven't done before).
Loved the piece, Kyla
As a younger gen-zer (22), why don't you try to tap into the digital economy after your 9-5. This is what I'm hoping to do after graduation, 9-5 work and 5-9 try to make music, content, or any sort of art that could resonate with the world and help me make it in the creator business.
As an older gen-zer(27) it can be hard to have the energy to do work in the digital economy after a full day of “normal” work
Yes - the original comment makes me think of having two jobs for two separate lives. One job for your offline life and one for your online self. If we stop living offline (jobs, dating, friends, shopping) how will we feel fulfilled? Humans have certain basic societal needs that can’t be fed exclusively online.
The Myth of Predictable Progress
Scanlon’s thesis suggests that previous generations enjoyed a safety net—a world of steady career progression, institutional stability, and clear paths to wealth accumulation—while Gen Z is uniquely adrift. But has stability ever really existed?
The 1400s-1700s: If we go back even a few centuries, people lived in a world of famine, plague, religious wars, and absolute rulers with unchecked power. In feudal Europe, most people never left the villages they were born in, and their careers were dictated by lineage. The idea of predictable progress was nonexistent.
The Industrial Revolution (1700s-1800s): Entire industries collapsed as mechanization and urbanization displaced workers. The rise of factories destroyed artisan trades, creating widespread social unrest. Child labor was common, wages were low, and there was no "institutional trust"—only brutal survival in rapidly changing economies.
World War II (1939-1945): This is true unpredictability. An entire generation of young men faced the draft, and millions never returned. Families were displaced, cities were bombed into oblivion, and nations teetered on the edge of destruction. Those who survived had to rebuild economies from scratch.
The 1960s-70s: The Vietnam War draft meant young people didn’t just fear job instability—they feared dying in a jungle on the other side of the world. The U.S. faced mass civil unrest, assassinations of leaders, racial violence, inflation, and an energy crisis. Institutions weren’t just distrusted—they were actively fought against in the streets.
The notion that Gen Z is facing unprecedented instability is, frankly, myopic. Every generation has faced profound uncertainty. Every generation has had to navigate technological disruption, economic upheaval, and cultural transformation. The difference isn’t the level of uncertainty—it’s the perception of it.
I think you're missing the core part of my argument (which is my failure as an author) and I very much appreciate this comment. But while the historical comparisons you've provided are interesting, looking back before the 1900s takes us too far from understanding our current moment and the specific institutional frameworks that emerged post-WWII. It's outside the thesis of the piece. I'm not arguing that previous generations had perfect stability nor that gen Z has unprecedented amounts - that would be naive. The Boomer Blueprint I describe wasn't about guaranteed success (I explicitly note it didn't work for 43% of Boomers). Instead, it was about having legible paths to progress. You could understand the mechanisms, even if you couldn't trust them to work in your favor. What makes our current moment unique isn't the degree of instability, right, rather it's the nature of institutional dissolution. When I've talked with hundreds of people across 20+ states, what emerges isn't just anxiety about change (every generation has that), but a fundamental inability to comprehend how institutions will even function in five years. This isn't just about distrust, it's about legibility. We're watching two simultaneous forces that make this moment really weird (and again, this is based on hundreds of convos I have had across the country, this isn’t me anecdotally spewing) but we have (1) the active dismantling of government institutions (regardless of how you feel about Trump, this is objectively happening) and (2) the emergence of AI systems that their own creators say will transform or eliminate traditional career paths! That combination creates something new, right? Not just unstable institutions, but increasingly incomprehensible ones. There are papers talking about this, like the Stantcheva Upward Mobility paper out of Harvard, Chetty et al on the Fading American Dream, AICarpenter et al on the Evolution of the National Bureaucracy in the United States, and the Public Trust study out of Pew that documents what you've highlighted but also documents the complete cratering of trust that has happened over the past decade. Thank you for your comment, a lot of my work previously has been arguing that perception outweighs reality on so I understand what you mean!
Have you read "The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig?
I agree that perception plays a huge role in how people view the past and the present. However, I think a major difference now than in past generations, is the massive amount of information. In the 1960s (for example) there were newspapers, radio, and television news. Everyone for the most part was receiving similar information...Now everyone is reaching different information from thousands of different sources...all this information feeds the perceptions to some extent in my opinion.
Excellent comment. Analyzing generational differences has become the new astrology. All i see is human nature playing out over and over again.
This is a really good point, but I think where this thesis holds water is when you compare Gen Z to some of their immediate demographic counterparts. Gen X, Millenials grew up in a time of a lot more institutional stability and the sense that “is there a chance to make a good life if I follow the path prescribed for me” was probably a lot more secure for some of their immediate generational peers, vs people who are no longer living.
"Millennials grew up in a time of a lot more institutional stability"—depends on the country
Kyla’s report checks with Toffler’s assertions on the accelerations of change. So, despite your observation that there’s nothing new under the sun, the rate of the changes are far more rapid than any of those disruptions of the past. War being maybe a prominent exception, but I think we all can agree that’s an extremity where all bets are off.
Meanwhile North Koreans are fighting in Europe, the US is still fighting in the Middle East and China sees Trump capitulating to Putin... We seem to be pretty close to that extremity.
I was never given the impression Kyla was writing this as a universal commentary. And last time I checked, still no draft in the US and very few, if any (non-clandestine) US troops in combat. So, I’d say we’re not there yet.
I hope you are right. Though I think wider war in Europe and/or war breaking out in Asia along with endless war in the Middle East are increasingly within the cone of probability. Especially because of the current administration's isolationist rhetoric and maybe in part because we don't have a draft, chances of war are up. But again, I hope you are right!
Likewise. I’m just trying to reinforce that Kyla’s piece was unduly criticized by Cowen’s remark. They wanted to expand her criticism beyond the intended sphere. But I agree with you that the prospects in the next 4 years for a war in Europe look abysmal.
I was born in 1957 – a solid boomer. My high school experience was clouded by the Vietnam war. I was on the side of “HELL NO”, refusing to say the pledge or sing the anthem (nobody really cared or noticed.) I figured out that HS was designed to sperate the college-bound from the non, and joined the latter. I spent some time working locally in northern Cal then moved to Chicago where I worked in on-board services at Amtrak for four years. This experience opened my eyes to a) the incredible diversity of our country and b) the startling (to me) fact that racism was alive and thriving.
I got married and moved back to the w. coast, enrolled in a one-year program for computer programming and operations. It was luck that I got into “data processing” in the mid-eighties. I worked for some small companies around Portland and the SF Bay area before Internet, before modems. I had to get in my car and drive to visit the customers for whatever needed doing. I spent a lot of time talking to customers on the phone, trying to avoid a long drive for a quick fix. This experience of dealing with live, unwashed customers (also at Amtrak) was invaluable.
Later in my IT career, I got some technical certifications and was employed by some large corporations. In those days, management had yet to figure out how to optimize the IT department, so it was overstaffed. I learned how to manage projects of moderate scope, “get stuff done” by developing contacts at various work locations, again doing lots of phone work to avoid getting on an airplane.
I am appalled by the lack of entry level jobs available to young folks trying to get started. I tell my nieces and nephews to find work with interesting people in a diverse environment. IMHO that’s the golden ticket to professional satisfaction, aside from reasonable compensation and benefits. I am appalled and dismayed that companies have shrunk every facet of service to the minimum, affording customers few options when encountering difficulty. Human touch is still important. I hope the pendulum can swing back, hard, and soon. Good luck to us Humans.
Thank you, as always, for your solid analysis and excellent, from the heart writing.
The point about the zero-sum behavior of Gen Z is spot on! So a decent amount of people are scared to show that they care and put in effort into activities and behavior that show some interest or might require a low term commitment to get results.
Your points about gaining wealth overnight and traditional pathways to stability not being viable reminded me of my favorite article equating Addison Rae hosting a WWE fight to the fall of the civil service exam in China. A tad absurd but still a great read.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/16/taiping-rebellion-addison-rae-meritocracy-exams-rebellion/
Lots of good stuff in here but i don’t understand your conclusion.
You state “…He didn’t mean this exactly, but I am extrapolating - the "safe path" (corporate job, 401k) might be the riskiest bet.”” but don’t really back it up with anything. I can see the rest of your essay’s points perhaps weakening this safe path, especially when factoring in the cost of higher education, but calling it the riskiest bet in the world of rug pull meme coin schemes, changing algorithms, and unprecedented political instability seems like quite a leap.
This article is strangely pro-crypto gambling. Yes, a good trade means you can earn millions of dollars, but only because the people on the other side lose it.
Do you discern any structural differences across intersectional identities within Gen Z? For example, do Gen Zs sort toward either end of the barbell according to their families wealth? According to ethnic backgrounds? According to visible or invisible disabilities?
As a fellow Gen 1.0 I could totally see this shift first hand. There's a book called disappearance of rituals that touches on this concept of serial perception where we're constantly registering new information but nothing lingers; from on sensation to the next without ever coming to a closure.
What generation has not been through unimaginable change, trauma, and hardship since time immemorial? The level of uncertainty in the world feels more or less the same to me. It feels more like we (including myself) are losing our ability to deal with it.
If people had cell phones during the Cold War people might spend every minute reading about whether or not they were about to get nuked. There’s a fixed amount of known facts but an unlimited amount of speculation that can happen. The incentives for media consumption are totally out of whack. What might have been digestible from a single newspaper article is now spread across 700 TikTok’s, 400 tweets and 3 substacks. The information from these is the same, but an anxious person now has a much deeper rabbit hole. People used to have religion to manage uncertainty for them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new monotheistic religion emerge from AI amidst this chaos.
I feel like Kyla herself is emblematic of this phenomena where she has transitioned from a typical structured job in finance to now teaching/informing on economic topics in short form videos. Why would I get a PhD in Economics that takes years and opportunity cost to publish research while constrained by academic bureaucracy, when instead I could do independent research that is more applicable to the layman and also sees me immediate returns (after building a brand) for the work that I put in.
But then what if I don’t want to create a digital brand for myself? We cannot all be influencers and not all of us want to be. In the same vein, not everyone wants to be PhD professor, tied to tenure and the hyper-stability it brings. When most people are not inclined to the extremes but are being pushed to those extremes, will something be lost in terms of happiness and or productivity?
that's sort of what I was trying to explore here, the confusion of the middle path. It's a bit hard to put into words, and based on a few other comments, I don't know if I did a great job! But your summary does a better job than I did!
I think you did a great job! I was just kind of speaking from my own perspective and ranting haha, thanks for the post and response
goodness, I really relate to that, I don't really like either of the extremes (especially the influencer one), but I don't know where to go as I wander down that middle path. 2000s gen z
Interesting post! First just a funny observation. I'm an old millenial (oregon trail gen! 1981) and we think of *ourselves* as the last analog micro-gen! I remember coming home from college and finding it notable that my younger brother, still in high school, was spending his whole evening on AIM!
And a question. I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on the draw of creator riches as a factor. To me, as someone who's only ever used YouTube among the big social and social adjacent platforms (not including substack I guess...), getting rich as a content creator feels the same as the dream in my gen of becoming a rich/famous musician or actor/actress. As in, cool dream but ~everyone knew that wasn't going to be their future.
You lean much more on boomer narcissism, post-China globalism, and technological advancement in your explanation here. But you also seem to be pointing to the creator economy as a bigger factor than the existence of rich entertainers were on the culture and dreams of my generation. If I'm reading that right I'd be interested to hear your hypotheses about why that is.
bc social media makes it more prevalent and in their face
Maybe I'm just old but the average kid my age watched just as many hours of TV per day as the average Zer spends on tiktok. As in, just as ever present. You think the illusion of anyone can do it is that strong?
I think it’s different bc you don’t need to go through the past channels of fame anymore of auditioning or touring. You can produce, direct, and star in videos for low cost and then market it directly to an audience. Not to say it makes it easier since it’s still a numbers game most of the time, but there’s less barriers to entry.
For sure lower barrier to entry. In the 90s everyone knew a few guys (it was mostly guys) with a four track who played open mics and had delusions they were the next Kurt Cobain. Not as low bar as videos made and posted at home, but still pretty low. My point is just it would feel surprising to me if the change in medium and it drawing both boys and girls would make it so the percentage with delusions of grandeur exploded to such a degree that it really shifted culture.
Is the mechanism maybe more just the 2010s version of social media culture being all teens recording their lives and curating them for IG and constantly thinking about how they can present their current moment in media instead of living? As in, not with delusions they will become a rich influencer or creator, but just that being the dominant culture?
" When people say the government is "broke," they're not just talking about finances, they're talking about trust."
Because one party has spent decades undermining the trust we have in our elected officials (don't get me wrong some didn't deserve it in the first place) and our educated experts (again there are some issues with peer review etc). This complete dissolution in belief that the people in a specific career are no better equipped to do something (enact policy to better our lives, produce medicine and treatments to keep us alive) than a random person with a smartphone, has been a major factor in the crumbling faith the population has in the government, which they now claim is still acting in our best interest, while they dismantle the systems that our taxes (should) pay for and which were put up to protect us.
I chose a career in STEM after being told if I work hard and pay my taxes and feed a retirement fund that I'd see the same life as my parents, now my retirement fund could be worthless in 30 years and I have no idea what my taxes are even paying for.
This article leaves me with a sense of struggle to describe how the current world looks like, and how to find a place in it, since many common descriptions just stopped to make sense. Although different people see their future in different directions, I don't see anybody being confident, no matter how radical the way is. Everybody, across generations, is driven by uncertainty. Only the reactions are different.
The safe bet now is the riskiest way - no doubt. That safety depended on conditions no longer met. But nobody knows the new conditions. While a single crypto trade can win as you described, most lose. For each successful social media star there is a crowd not making it, not even close. It is the definition of a zero sum game. Winning is possible, but not probable.
Looking at economic data since a long time, I saw much of that coming. Not AI, not the pandemic, but even without both we would still live in very difficult times right now. In my opinion, we experience a historical cycle ending, something which is always stressful and hurts many people, and eventually resolves to a new cycle starting that can only be understood in hindsight once it is stable. Not great for most individuals. AI and the pandemic do matter, but there is much more if you are looking for root causes.
Your research may have been deeper than your article says and the USA may be more efficient than Germany. (Which I suspect, but how much?) Even though here it looks like much fiscal money is spent on legitimate purposes, diving in deeper shows horrible overhead and administration costs. It is crazy how little is actually spent on the subject in many areas. Our community towns hall was just extended significantly to hire more people for administration. No, the community did not grow really. It is all growth in overhead. The elections will not change any of that. Will DOGE in the USA uncover and fix that? I have no idea.
You do not question why people now are used to change things they do not understand, to FAFO. It is self created complexity. The last decades built many things, and with each the world got a little bit more complicated, and people got used to not understand the underlying. Secret algorithms are the icing on top, not something new really. Understanding something down to all details has gotten very hard, and sometimes impossible. So people don't. For anything created, there is a total cost of ownership. That makes start-up companies fast. And it makes our culture slow. Too slow to still manage itself.
Born 1969, certainly a boomer looking at demography, I just survived yet another layoff. I saw it coming for like a year, because I read the business reports of my employer, which few do, all of them old. The same shocked faces as always. The same rage and disappointment, wondering what they did to deserve being treated that way if they got kicked out, or if they will be on the losing end next time if they did not. That feeling of uncertainty unified the generations for a moment, comfort and advice was given: Expect it to happen again. Save and invest, you will need it. Care for your own well-being. Loyalty will be punished, not rewarded. The company is not your friend or family. Contacts were exchanged to stay in touch, to tell of available jobs. That's the difference to society, where everybody feels the uncertainty, but then continues to struggle alone, reactions depending on their generation.
I always tell my friends, If your grandkid comes up to you and asks "Dad/Mom, when everyone was getting rich and famous off TikTok, what were you doing? Why did you not try to go viral and create immense wealth when it was easier?" Would I have the heart to tell them "No little xyz, I just was too scared of coming off as cringe to my peers to even try and make it on these platforms that people have created generational wealth off of." This weird hypothetical question I thought of has created an immense sense of urgency within my being.
As someone who grew up with the internet: one of the "Digital Natives", the growing influence of AI, and my increasing mistrust in institutions are acting like a force pushing me towards the left side of the barbell, one of unshakeable belief in the digital systems. However, I feel like I exist in the mid-point of the barbell by trying to create value through content creation. The risk of content creation is not that high. At most there are peers who will think that I am "cringe", but the potential returns to a viral video is massive. I don't know how to name the urgency I feel to create these videos because it feels like if I don't get into content creation now, an increasingly bleak future is ahead of me where the newer generation no longer feels any inhibition to be in front of a camera and create content and the content creator market will be even more saturated.
You touch on young people in some instances gravitating toward Democratic Socialism, and a lack of trust that the 'bargain' of a corporate (or government, currently) career is no longer risk averse. Coming from an older person who has gone through 4 'careers' and countless iterations of corporate leadership (as well as several layoffs, elimination of pension, etc.), I'd love to get your take on the increasing momentum toward employee ownership as an alternative business structure.
There are numerous versions of this, from ESOPs to Employee Cooperatives that provide some measure of control over the long-term prospects of workers' economic security and they are growing in popularity.
I think employee ownership can be a great business structure in order to fairly compensate employees for their contributions and also incentivize them to increase a company’s efficiency and profitability. But it will not help prevent certain jobs or industries being rendered obsolete by AI and disappearing.
Great summary of Gen Z mood. What to do if evolution pushes questioning the nature of the self? Seriously looking into the nature of self and beliefs inherited from birth , over time, yields answers and resolutions to issues presented above on a personal level. Adyashanti, Taoism, Gurdjieff and some others point the way for the serious seeker. A seeker who can entertain the idea that maybe , the ultimate source of resolution of his issues is to be found one level up.
Topical - https://www.kapilguptamd.com/2019/04/23/through-the-eyes-of-a-self/