Gen Z Isn’t Powerless Against Technology
Gen Z has little familiarity with “any sense of community,” writer Freya India said in a teary-eyed rant recently.
“Attention hijacking is the thing I worry most about on a long term basis for humanity’s thriving,” wrote Jackson Dahl. “Techno-capitalism is slowly but surely turning us into something non-human. Attention is upstream of everything: presence, agency, love.”
Laments like these are everywhere online. Every week, new laments from or about Gen Z seem to go viral, spewing desperate and desolate pronunciations about technology.
The doom is pushed by some actual members of Gen Z and even more by the press and pundits eager to fret over kids these days and to moralize about technology. And the big idea undergirding it seems to be that young people are absolutely powerless to resist being lonely, degraded zombies—phone always in hand, unable to connect with fellow human beings, addicted to the dopamine hits they attain from social media likes and content slop.
But who are we helping by shilling the Doomed Zoomer narrative? It’s certainly not young people who are being served by it.
And older adults owe it to younger generations to stop enabling their disempowerment and stop pushing the lie that we have no agency when it comes to technology.
Community Is Yours for the Taking
When I look at the world around me, I see endless opportunities for community. Book clubs. Churches. Volunteer opportunities. Arts events. Political groups. Mom’s meetups. Programs aimed at young people. Programs aimed at old people. Classes. Lectures. Local sports. Comic cons. Community markets. Quiz nights at neighborhood bars. Charity walks. Not to mention all the events taking place on college campuses.
And the internet actually helps us to see, more than ever before, how much is taking place off the internet, in a way that simply wasn’t possible when I was very young.
In India’s comments about the lack of community, she mentions the fact that young people can have food delivered or check out in stores without ever talking to anyone. It’s the kind of complaint that alarmists eat up, because it is a big difference that is enabled by technology. But big doesn’t mean profound. How many of us would really say that interacting with grocery-store checkout clerks helps us feel more connected to our communities? I certainly wouldn’t.
In any event, there’s nothing stopping most members of Gen Z from using a checkout counter in a grocery store or leaving the house to get restaurant food if they think this will help them.
And there’s nothing stopping them from going out and joining in some sort of community event or group activity.
People will say that phones are stopping them. And video games. And streaming services. But embracing these diversions to the exclusion of other activities is a choice.
If we believe in revealed preference, we might assume that while some folks say they want more community, they actually prefer solitary or at-home pursuits. I think this is somewhat true. When it comes to young people, however, I think some of it might just be ingrained—they have always had these diversions to turn to, so they haven’t necessarily learned to flex other muscles. And with so many people telling them they can’t—that the allure of tech is too strong—well, why even try?
You Can Put Down the Phone (With Effort)Â
Nonetheless, I look around me and I see plenty of people—older millennials (like me), younger millennials, members of Gen Z—who have perfectly healthy relationships with their phones and with technology.
I know for many people my age, this has been a process—a gradual lessening of dependency on the dopamine provided by social media, or the fear of missing something vital if one isn’t always on it. The withdrawal sometimes comes as a natural result of growing responsibilities at work or at home. It sometimes comes as one notices a declining return on investment. Often, both.
Personally, I probably spent too much time on Twitter and other online platforms
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