Gen Z/Alpha will be the death of the economy
TLDR: I'm not worried about having a job because GenZ/Alpha can't concentrate for more than a couple seconds at a time.
Has anyone spent time with a middle-schooler lately? I'm young enough to have a brother in that age range so I have been around the generation quite a bit with his friends, job fairs, sporting events, etc. They cannot go 30 seconds without a video playing inches from their face! When they're eating they're swiping, gaming, talking, appointment... they never turn it off. Has anyone seen research suggesting this is detrimental to the health of these kids yet? I get the parents that give their kids a phone early on to just shut them up but I feel like this is the worst age to get them hooked on stupid videos. Don't get me wrong I'm not perfect, I spend probably a couple hours/day on reels but what I'm talking about goes way beyond that.
Anyway...seeing kids like this and their inability to hold eye-contact with anyone older then them is sad. I have confidence anyone who got through school before this wave of short-term videos will have no problem holding a job once this age gets to 18-21. It is taking away all soft skills and turning them into robots. Let me know if I'm wrong!
You’re right and yeah I’ve seen some research and heard anecdotal evidence kids are starting to lag behind in school.
btw you’re gen z too
Yeah I updated the post... mostly meant Gen Alpha
The proportion of below average IQs is increasing but the smart kids are getting smarter with each generation. You analyze schools like MIT CMU and Caltech and see that math/physics/CS/engineering programs have been becoming increasingly more difficult with more kids taking honors tracks and grad courses. Same goes for a lot of humanities majors but it’s less strong of a trend. The increasing proportion of dumb kids with no academic or social intelligence is increasing but not at a rate where it would decrease the talent pools for jobs that really “require talent.” For all finance related jobs (IB, global markets etc) the issue is that the talent pool is decreasing due to more profitable opportunities in swe, quant, and buy side undergrad roles which are a fairly new thing. Lastly, the rise of ML, AI, and new advanced Monte Carlo/processing methods are gonna provide enough tech advancements where the demand for talent is gonna decrease heavily, so we won’t have to worry about its supply in a few years.
The definition of a mathematical average makes this impossible. Plus considering that cognitive ability (g factor, or just g) is affected by environmental (i.e. polution levels, nutrition, etc.) and genetic factors that are independent of each other, g will follow the CLT and maintain it's normal distribution. You aren't going to get population level shifts of people towards dumbness with the tails getting bigger, that doesn't have any rational basis in theory or practice.
I'm a fulltime UG student...
100% agree and in the same boat as you (Born 2003). I'm more so talking kids born after 2008 - kids that have had toxic social media from the second they get a phone in their hand. Not their fault, just sucks.
Totally agree. I was born in 2006, and didn't have a screen stuck in my face growing up. I had an hour of TV a day, with 15 minutes of time on my mom's phone, and that was it. All my friends are in the same boat. We turned out fine. My younger cousins have grown up with an ipad no more than 2 feet from them their entire life, and are 8 years old and absolutely addicted to TikTok. Gen Alpha are the ones setting the social trends now. Their social skills are non-existent. I'm seriously worried for their futures. Hopefully they grow out of it.
Another 06' here,
the advent of mindless digital media like “Skibidi Toilet” is contributing greatly to the coined “brainrot” that’s evermore so prevalent amongst people in GenAlpha.
I think we lucked out, we had Minecraft and that’s about it.
“I’m 18 and this is deep”
Just because these generations are glued to screens it isn't all for the worse. When my nephew was 18 months I put him in front of an xps 13 and had him begin to model. His excel shortcuts are better than the majority of BMO bankers and is a prodigy in the making. Gotta use it as a weapon
Second this. Right when my son turned 6 I started offloading a little bit of my diligence work at my LMM fund to him. Have definitely saved myself ~10-15 hours a week while making sure my son is the next Henry Kravis. Win-win if I say so. He can crank out a memo on ppt like there's no tomorrow. Unfortunately, the kids at school refer to him as a "weird fuck" when he starts talking about the investment merits and risks of the local laundromat during recess.
New title - Laundromats: Death of Economy
I hate that I’m old enough to remember when older generations said this about my generation
Amen. I don't even want to mention which generation. They said this about the one before mine too.
Poor for society but how will this cause the death of the economy?
We'll just import in the ones that are good in that case, life will go on (but welfare will be bigger)
Why blame them? That's extremely poor parenting.
Not blaming them, just making a statement.
did you saw the edits of kids 13/14 yo escaping the matrix and waking up at 6am to meditate?
DiD yOu SaW
american that speaks only 1 language mocking a polyglot european
& clearly I prefer the c1 in many languages than c2 in only 1 ;( must be sad for you bro
This should be motivation then
Maybe Maybe not.....Hahah honestly seeing the amount they spend to live a certain lifestyle they are accumulating debt like no ones business. It's amazing saw a video of some girl being audited by that IG accountant and she was like oh I don't pay my loans they'll be forgiven......While bad news for these generations, it's good news for those that do care about their finances or older generations. We will get to buy houses and still borrower and have a nice lifestyle while they suffer and make rates go back to pre pandemic historic lows, we will have the cash flow to own the means and invest in the market.
The world is ours for ineptitude of the weak and feeble minded, yes no matter what you should spend all your money buying a class online about Buying Lambo's to rent on Turo!
Remember that something like ~70% of them are still being supported by their parents, even beyond age 30 (according to a few articles and research), and so they live a certain lifestyle that they expect, because they aren't paying for it, from housing, to credit cards, to everything else.
Many opened credit cards during covid era, with 0% APR intro rates, and if their parents can't afford the CC bill, after APR bump once the CC intro rate fully expires (e.g. going from 0% APR, to now 30% APR), it shows in the recent CC default numbers of late/non-payment. Parental finances are quickly dwindling, and even the wealthier parents are starting to feel that it's getting wildly out of hand, and stressing.
I foresee a period where many will default on their debt, and it will impact their parents as well, and might take a few years to balance out afterwards.
(I also see many companies will default on debt, but that is a separate topic).
From an economic standpoint, I don't think the economy has fully moved beyond the damage of COVID, as many factors (intro rates, spending savings, parents helping, etc) only delayed economic pressure, rather than firmly avoiding it. A lot is still to come.
In the end it's sad, kids raised as trust fund babies by non trust fund families!
I can't say much, I make my own money, but there is a trust, I only touched it for college and have invested my allowance for a house in real estate while I decide where I live. I live off what I make and listened to my parents about how much to spend/save/needs budget. We do get access to the family accountant and CFP both of which I pay a bit for. But it's weird the new money is taking the path the old old legacy money took back in the 80s and 90s, but don't have the means those families had.
I think parents set up kids to be addicted by giving them phones at a young age without any restriction. I find it annoying that some kid will be watching stupid tiktoks while everyone else is trying to have a conversation at the dinner table. Attention span is also declining. I've noticed from personal experience when I consume content by reading physical books, paper notes I tend to memorize it better than using my laptop or iPad. The science studies give mixed results but wonder if anyone else noticed something similar?
Hot take: I think Gen Z is the most bifurcated generation in ages. Half the kids are blue haired losers and half are as hard working as any other generation.
I feel particularly sad for what this means for the hard-working half. Politically speaking, you will have to deal with the blue-haired losers trying to tax you and stop you from being a productive citizen for the rest of your life. The gamble is whether the productive half of Gen Z will be strong enough to fight off the bitter violent blue-haired victim loser half.
The good thing about the loser half of the generation is that they won't be able to shackle us, as they lack the ability to get anything done. Sure, they'll complain online and maybe march in a protest or two, but they won't make actual change because they're far too lazy and often unintelligent to do so
Would be interesting to see some actual research on this, like study the causal effects of chronic TikTok usage on cognitive levels
Lmao yeah gen z is totally the problem.
Will probably turn out to be one of the best generations thus far.
Boomers created a highly problematic society and are responsible for:
1. the financial crisis
2. egregious environmental damage (mass pollution, sped up climate change, etc.) which costs a fuck ton of $$ each year and has left us with rapidly depleting resources. Clean breathing air is becoming a luxury. Complete absurdity.
3. an economy where you can’t buy a home until age like 45
4. hindering innovation and progress with trying to be “old school.” Goes from the workplace to education to xyz societal norms.
5. Mass inequality
Now it’s up to my generation to fix all this shit. Because all the boomers care about is “be in the office 5 days a week!” Why? “Uhhh…because I said so!”
The number of Gen z entrepreneurs is the greatest in American history. Just look at how many young founders are defying the system, dropping out of high school/college for experience, and are driving innovation in Silicon Valley.
Thank you gen z for questioning our joke of a society and driving disruption. You certainly have the older generations caught by surprise and now they’re freaking out because the world is changing too fast for their liking.
Push your foot to the pedal even harder.
Keep questioning everything.
Your response is completely ignorant of any sense of history. Boomers created "mass inequality"? Have you picked up a history book lately? Same on environment comment, same on business cycle.....these are all issues going on for hundreds of years.
If you are our savior, we're all fucked.
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