passerby
passerby
Hello fellow Agora Road Travelers. A few months ago, I came across two comments by Eden and TheVisionist about teaching Zoomers technology. Generational tech gaps are common—inevitable, even—but it didn't occur to me that ~today's kids~ would be so far behind. I decided to look into it more and ended up writing a whole essay about it. Thought you guys might be interested. 
We often pity older generations who fall for online scams because they're obvious to anyone who knows how the internet works. What will our scam be at their age? I'd like to think we could adapt by then, but maybe it's naive to assume that today's grandparents are uniquely susceptible. They aren't.
I bring this up because every generation adapts to technology in its own way. Generation Z (born 1997-2012) has been slower to take up ubiquitous systems, such as Microsoft Office, desktop interfaces, spreadsheets, and Windows file directories. In Gen Z's lifetime, the tech industry shifted to intuitive productivity apps, touch screens, mobile operating systems, GPS, and automatic file management with cloud storage. With a reduced barrier to entry, the user experience for everyday tech is objectively better.
Gen Z — currently 11 to 26 years old — is entering a professional paradigm demanding dual proficiency in intuitive apps and legacy tech. Will today's kids struggle to perform at their jobs? Or will their perceived naiveté be a unique advantage?
Gen Z excels in some tech areas, particularly social media content and video/photo editing. In their affinity for visuals and user-generated multimedia, they populate video-sharing apps and spend nearly half of their waking hours on screens, averaging 7.3 hours daily. Pew reports that around a third of teens use at least one of the five big platforms (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat or Facebook) almost constantly.
Gen Z critics would say social media experience doesn't always translate to jobs, but why not? It's useful in the fields young jobseekers are most interested in, including marketing and advertising, recruiting/HR, and sales. Glassdoor Economic Research shows Gen Zers are happiest in creative, non-technical roles.
When they lack soft skills, Gen Zers could always retool their basic capabilities to stay competitive. Some employers and universities now offer Gen Z-targeted classes on email writing, presentations, and in-person communication. They're also ahead of other generations on AI augmentation. According to a recent Salesforce survey, about 70% of Zoomers use generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, but only half of the general population has tried it.
Adaptability is required in today's cutthroat professional world, especially given the national context: America's days of low unemployment are numbered. The job market remains too strong to evade the tightening policies of the Federal Reserve, whose inflation strategy relies on slowing wage growth. Meanwhile, half of Zoomers and Millennials already live paycheck to paycheck. Bank of America reports that 37% of Gen Z has experienced a financial setback in the last year, with 27% borrowing money from friends/family.
In the analog-to-digital transition, we saw how early-childhood tech exposure shapes how a generation juggles everyday social, financial, and psychological pressures. With a shifting socioeconomic picture underway, it's worth observing Gen Z's relationship with both legacy and modern technologies.
Age will always influence how we adopt new forms of communication. Everyone has their clueless moments with technology. There's a little Gen Z in all of us.
Companies recognize the trends. In a corporate strategy memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote that Gen Z and digital-native companies prefer using
Young people like touch screens, seamless organization, and voice-controlled interfaces, which could mean the next generation's economy and lifestyle centers around online content. One can imagine an alternative future in which today's rate of automation multiplies over a shorter timescale. The resulting job-market vacuum is sure to be filled by tech giants reeling unemployed minds into their virtual worlds of social commerce. Hard skills and trade expertise may be irrelevant in this reality, where in-person offices and worksites are traded out for holographic interfaces, in-app purchases, and text/speech communication. People with no tech training can still find jobs and make money.
The seeds for such a transition are present today but have yet to reach the masses, as evidenced by the ongoing popping of Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse bubble. VR-based social media experiences haven't lived up to the hype, partly because only 11% of Gen Zers and Millennials own VR headsets today — a share unchanged since 2018. Executives are still banking on some magic uptake, investing heavily in immersive hardware, software, and content. Meta's VR/AR division racked up $11.4 billion in operating losses in the first nine months of 2023. (2022 losses totaled $13.7 billion.)
For now, consumers of all ages seem settled in our social mediums of choice: apps on handheld devices. That's why 69% of digital ad spending will be generated through mobile in 2027, per Statista Market Insights. This paradigm relies on consumers favoring free, ad-supported social media apps over paid subscriptions.
At what point do we start to get sick of it all? A recent Harris Poll shows 67% of Americans across all age groups are nostalgic for a time before everyone was "plugged in." Still, we're open-minded about emerging tech like robotics, AI, and virtual reality work. There's an appetite for both whims.
^ Feature phones on the market (composite by me).
Interestingly, a small but growing niche of Gen Z wants to unplug from smartphones. Counterpoint Research reports that Zoomers and Millennials are driving sales in the feature phone market, following a new demand for "dumb phones" — cheap but retro-stylish flip phones with limited connectivity features outside of calling/texting. Albeit just a 2% share of total U.S. handset sales, there's at least some collective consciousness of young people looking to detox. About 2.8 million feature phones will be sold in 2023.
Gen Z is watching our shortcomings. Non-Gen Z adults have adapted to tech, sure, but that doesn't mean it's a healthy relationship. We have our own weaknesses with technology, from eye strain to psychological issues to chronic FOMO. Zoomers already recognize tech's impact on their mental health. In a recent Common Sense Media survey of 11- to 17-year-olds, most respondents reported that they "sometimes" or "often" use technology in ways that interfered with in-person socializing, sleep, or disengaging from media when needed. Here are some interesting quotes from 10th and 11th graders.
Our messes leave Gen Z with a precarious financial outlook. Their cash has 86% less buying power than that of Baby Boomers in their 20s. After adjusting for inflation, the average four-year college tuition has risen 747.8% since 1963, leaving Zoomers with more student debt than Millennials. Both generations are taking on higher loads of credit card debt this year, though Gen X and Baby Boomers hold the highest balances.
Young people have their own innate vulnerabilities. Easily swayed, they've always been a valuable target of politicians, corporations, religions, and pandering advertisers. All try to hook "the youths" early and reel them in with out-of-touch messaging and entertainment. Some take the bait. Now, all of that stimulation is packed into a social feed and stored in their pockets.
Gen Z is apparently entering the workforce with inferior tech skills, weakening their competitive edge. Some jobs may see a short-lived culture clash while early-career adults figure out ubiquitous hardware and software. Generational reductionists might assume they'd shut down from the pressure. But would they?
Depriving the next generation of a multiplatform tech education will only increase their exposure to the same conundrum. Parents and teachers often advocate for tech moderation, which may be healthy for Gen Alpha in theory. But adults forget they were rebellious kids once, rejecting rules and conformity. Likewise, spoon-feeding and patronizing will only make technology unattractive and overly complicated. Kids will reach for the easier thing and live to regret it as they're pummeled with constant "I told you so's" in the following decades. And so, the generation-blaming cycle continues...
History's problems repeat because we let them.
Agora readers: What's your experience with all of this? Any Zoomers want to weigh in?
(This essay originally appeared on my Substack and Medium. It was inspired by comments in these Agora threads. )
We often pity older generations who fall for online scams because they're obvious to anyone who knows how the internet works. What will our scam be at their age? I'd like to think we could adapt by then, but maybe it's naive to assume that today's grandparents are uniquely susceptible. They aren't.
I bring this up because every generation adapts to technology in its own way. Generation Z (born 1997-2012) has been slower to take up ubiquitous systems, such as Microsoft Office, desktop interfaces, spreadsheets, and Windows file directories. In Gen Z's lifetime, the tech industry shifted to intuitive productivity apps, touch screens, mobile operating systems, GPS, and automatic file management with cloud storage. With a reduced barrier to entry, the user experience for everyday tech is objectively better.
Gen Z — currently 11 to 26 years old — is entering a professional paradigm demanding dual proficiency in intuitive apps and legacy tech. Will today's kids struggle to perform at their jobs? Or will their perceived naiveté be a unique advantage?
Tech Competency and Generational Reductionism
For years, Western society widely believed Gen Z was innately literate in computers and software. While initially hailed as "digital natives," recent reports suggest they're struggling to keep up with older coworkers and bosses, including Millennials (ages 27-42), Gen Xers (43-58), and Baby Boomers (59-77). Millennials always complain about picking up the slack from Boomers' and Gen Xers' tech challenges. This burden may persist as a similar culture shock hits Gen Zers/"Zoomers." Recent corporate surveys highlight this dynamic:- According to Salesforce's 2022 Global Digital Skills Index, only 31% of Gen Z feel "very equipped" for digital-first jobs. Few believe they have advanced skills like coding, data encryption/cybersecurity, and AI.
- In a Dell Technologies survey, over a third of Gen Z said their middle/high school education lacked tech preparation, with 56% receiving either very basic computing skills or none at all.
- A ResumeBuilder survey revealed that 74% of managers find Gen Z harder to work with than other generations, citing inferior tech skills, effort, and motivation. One-third preferred working with Millennials due to their productivity and tech skills; 30% like working with Gen X because they're honest and productive.
- In a global poll by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, 43% of Gen Z reported being victims of cybercrimes, nearly three times as much as Baby Boomers (15%) and more than double that of the Silent generation (born 1928-1945) with 20%.
Without long-term studies tracking Gen Z's learning curve over time, we naturally turn to imprecise anecdotes. A quick keyword search on social media or Google returns copious discussions on both sides of the issue.
Gen Z excels in some tech areas, particularly social media content and video/photo editing. In their affinity for visuals and user-generated multimedia, they populate video-sharing apps and spend nearly half of their waking hours on screens, averaging 7.3 hours daily. Pew reports that around a third of teens use at least one of the five big platforms (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat or Facebook) almost constantly.
Gen Z critics would say social media experience doesn't always translate to jobs, but why not? It's useful in the fields young jobseekers are most interested in, including marketing and advertising, recruiting/HR, and sales. Glassdoor Economic Research shows Gen Zers are happiest in creative, non-technical roles.
When they lack soft skills, Gen Zers could always retool their basic capabilities to stay competitive. Some employers and universities now offer Gen Z-targeted classes on email writing, presentations, and in-person communication. They're also ahead of other generations on AI augmentation. According to a recent Salesforce survey, about 70% of Zoomers use generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, but only half of the general population has tried it.
Adaptability is required in today's cutthroat professional world, especially given the national context: America's days of low unemployment are numbered. The job market remains too strong to evade the tightening policies of the Federal Reserve, whose inflation strategy relies on slowing wage growth. Meanwhile, half of Zoomers and Millennials already live paycheck to paycheck. Bank of America reports that 37% of Gen Z has experienced a financial setback in the last year, with 27% borrowing money from friends/family.
In the analog-to-digital transition, we saw how early-childhood tech exposure shapes how a generation juggles everyday social, financial, and psychological pressures. With a shifting socioeconomic picture underway, it's worth observing Gen Z's relationship with both legacy and modern technologies.
Age will always influence how we adopt new forms of communication. Everyone has their clueless moments with technology. There's a little Gen Z in all of us.
Gen Z's Vision and Future Tech Development
The digital-native mythos assumed that all future technology would be naturally intuitive, a narrative that distracted adults from teaching Gen Z the core competencies of legacy systems. This might have been achieved if those same adults had been faster to phase out legacy tech in favor of new and improved iterations. Instead, in an increasingly online world of free sites and apps, Gen Z became drawn to social media, video content, and text/image-based communication. According to 2022 data from Pew Research, the share of teens who say they're online "almost constantly" has nearly doubled since 2014-15, jumping from 24% to 46%.Companies recognize the trends. In a corporate strategy memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote that Gen Z and digital-native companies prefer using
Gen Z's mobile-first vision and virtual communication preferences will influence tech development for the next several decades, setting a tone for how "Generation Alpha" (early 2010s to present) will adapt to new systems and technologies.
Young people like touch screens, seamless organization, and voice-controlled interfaces, which could mean the next generation's economy and lifestyle centers around online content. One can imagine an alternative future in which today's rate of automation multiplies over a shorter timescale. The resulting job-market vacuum is sure to be filled by tech giants reeling unemployed minds into their virtual worlds of social commerce. Hard skills and trade expertise may be irrelevant in this reality, where in-person offices and worksites are traded out for holographic interfaces, in-app purchases, and text/speech communication. People with no tech training can still find jobs and make money.
The seeds for such a transition are present today but have yet to reach the masses, as evidenced by the ongoing popping of Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse bubble. VR-based social media experiences haven't lived up to the hype, partly because only 11% of Gen Zers and Millennials own VR headsets today — a share unchanged since 2018. Executives are still banking on some magic uptake, investing heavily in immersive hardware, software, and content. Meta's VR/AR division racked up $11.4 billion in operating losses in the first nine months of 2023. (2022 losses totaled $13.7 billion.)
For now, consumers of all ages seem settled in our social mediums of choice: apps on handheld devices. That's why 69% of digital ad spending will be generated through mobile in 2027, per Statista Market Insights. This paradigm relies on consumers favoring free, ad-supported social media apps over paid subscriptions.
At what point do we start to get sick of it all? A recent Harris Poll shows 67% of Americans across all age groups are nostalgic for a time before everyone was "plugged in." Still, we're open-minded about emerging tech like robotics, AI, and virtual reality work. There's an appetite for both whims.
^ Feature phones on the market (composite by me).
Interestingly, a small but growing niche of Gen Z wants to unplug from smartphones. Counterpoint Research reports that Zoomers and Millennials are driving sales in the feature phone market, following a new demand for "dumb phones" — cheap but retro-stylish flip phones with limited connectivity features outside of calling/texting. Albeit just a 2% share of total U.S. handset sales, there's at least some collective consciousness of young people looking to detox. About 2.8 million feature phones will be sold in 2023.
Gen Z is watching our shortcomings. Non-Gen Z adults have adapted to tech, sure, but that doesn't mean it's a healthy relationship. We have our own weaknesses with technology, from eye strain to psychological issues to chronic FOMO. Zoomers already recognize tech's impact on their mental health. In a recent Common Sense Media survey of 11- to 17-year-olds, most respondents reported that they "sometimes" or "often" use technology in ways that interfered with in-person socializing, sleep, or disengaging from media when needed. Here are some interesting quotes from 10th and 11th graders.
Too Many Projections, Not Enough Foresight
Conflict between age groups will always exist. As humans get older, our learning capacity deteriorates. Our instinctive fear of replacement, rejection, and irrelevance only exacerbates this reality, causing us to lash out at our young counterparts and dismiss the novel things they create and consume. Preoccupied by our manic projections, we grow distracted from solving the real problems. We reassign our crises to the next generation and the unsuspecting souls after them.Our messes leave Gen Z with a precarious financial outlook. Their cash has 86% less buying power than that of Baby Boomers in their 20s. After adjusting for inflation, the average four-year college tuition has risen 747.8% since 1963, leaving Zoomers with more student debt than Millennials. Both generations are taking on higher loads of credit card debt this year, though Gen X and Baby Boomers hold the highest balances.
Young people have their own innate vulnerabilities. Easily swayed, they've always been a valuable target of politicians, corporations, religions, and pandering advertisers. All try to hook "the youths" early and reel them in with out-of-touch messaging and entertainment. Some take the bait. Now, all of that stimulation is packed into a social feed and stored in their pockets.
Gen Z is apparently entering the workforce with inferior tech skills, weakening their competitive edge. Some jobs may see a short-lived culture clash while early-career adults figure out ubiquitous hardware and software. Generational reductionists might assume they'd shut down from the pressure. But would they?
Depriving the next generation of a multiplatform tech education will only increase their exposure to the same conundrum. Parents and teachers often advocate for tech moderation, which may be healthy for Gen Alpha in theory. But adults forget they were rebellious kids once, rejecting rules and conformity. Likewise, spoon-feeding and patronizing will only make technology unattractive and overly complicated. Kids will reach for the easier thing and live to regret it as they're pummeled with constant "I told you so's" in the following decades. And so, the generation-blaming cycle continues...
History's problems repeat because we let them.
Agora readers: What's your experience with all of this? Any Zoomers want to weigh in?
(This essay originally appeared on my Substack and Medium. It was inspired by comments in these Agora threads. )
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