Gen Z Grew up in an Enshittified World, and It Shows

With the start of the academic year, it is time to resume my teaching duties. Over the past two years, I’ve been alternating my courses at IE Business School — where the average age of students is around 30, and whose professional experience and geographic diversity gives them a unique perspective in class discussion — with courses at IE University, where students are much younger and have no work experience, but whose level of engagement I love (little wonder; we have over 30,000 applicants annually and only admit around 2,000).

I also enjoy this alternation because it allows me to understand younger people’s attitudes toward technology and innovation, which are vastly different from those of earlier generations. Yesterday, my attention was caught by this comment by Lincoln Michel, which you can see in the image on Substack. In fact, I plan to incorporate it into a new elective I’ve been offering this year, titled “Why thinking about technology matters”, which takes a very critical view of technology and, above all, of Big Tech.

Those of us born in the 1960s and 1970s have lived through incredible change. We grew up in a world before the personal computer, entering the workforce just as it was beginning to define more and more activities, and we also experienced the explosion of the internet, email, search engines, Wikipedia, digital maps and the smartphone. Each of these technologies were revolutions that upended “time-honored” concepts, creating immense value for society, even if that value isn’t necessarily reflected by GDP, and changed the way we think and work. We were there to witness their emergence, their adoption and their implications.

Those born in 2008, on the other hand, take all this for granted, realities something that were already there, and have grown up in a world already under the control of BigTech. While for us those tools and innovations expanded our freedom and capabilities, their experience has much more to do with managing their dependence: what they’re faced with are ways negotiating services over which they have no control: the interface, the data, the rules, or anything else. What they experience, essentially, is the enshittification defined by Cory Doctorow: they are lured by value proposition, then trapped and herded as they watch each product degraded so as to squeeze value out of their personal information and sell it to the highest bidder.

In reality, young people’s distrust of the world around them isn’t the result of ignorance, but of intensive exposure: they use AI extensively, but not even that familiarity sustains their enthusiasm. Fifty-one percent of American Gen Zers use generative AI every week, but only 22% feel the same enthusiasm we once felt toward the internet or search engines; 31% say they are angry, while 80% believe these tools are harmful. They’re not Luddites, but 48% believe the risks clearly outweigh the benefits, and they no longer confuse usefulness with trust. The percentage of people under 30 with concerns about AI rose from 31% in 2021 to 55% in 2026; only 11% are more enthusiastic than concerned, and 73% believe it will lead to job losses.

This should come as no surprise. The social media platforms that promised to connect them, instead harvest their data, spy on them, subject them to algorithms to maximize use and that endanger their mental health. The platforms that promised them autonomy offer the illusion of self-employment at below the minimum wage, or even unpaid. And 76% of the websites and services they use are riddled with dark patterns designed to manipulate them. It’s not exactly an experience worth celebrating. Basically, young people feel that they have no control over their lives.

Add to this the history of bubbles that were sold to them as revolutions: cryptocurrency scams, NFTs or Zuckerberg’s ridiculous metaverse. And the very same people who sold them those “wonders” are, the ones now selling them AI. The situation for those entering the job market isn’t very promising: for people aged 22 to 25 in occupations exposed to AI, employment is 19% below where it would be if it had grown at the same rate as less-exposed occupations. If they were optimistic, it wouldn’t be a miracle, it would be a display of naivety bordering on stupidity.

The contradiction with the triumphalist corporate narrative is stark: they’re promised a tool that eliminates tedious tasks, while companies are delighted because they can hire fewer people: 41% of companies plan to reduce their workforce as AI automates tasks, and they’re starting with the tasks typically performed by younger workers, removing that first rung on the career ladder for an entire generation.

Here in Spain, attitudes are similar: young people value AI but they fear failing to develop skills at the same times as losing privacy or independence. They want to use it, but they’re savvy enough to focus on demanding things like security by default, transparency, training, and regulation.

It’s not that they see AI as a bubble; instead that they deeply distrust the companies that control it, and how the benefits are distributed. Moreover, their distrust will not lessen unless they see scrupulous labor, environmental, educational, and rights protection policies rigorously enforced against the gang of unscrupulous billionaires whose only focus is to become trillionaires by exploiting every resource they can grab. This year’s cohort of new students have learned and understood how today’s capitalism works, and quite simply, they express pessimism and radical distrust toward Silicon Valley and Big Tech. Which is entirely justified. For their generation, innovation no longer means improvement. Silicon Valley long ago lost any credibility.

Pessimism? Technophobia? No, simply having eyes in their heads and the capacity to use their brains.

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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