"Something is seriously wrong."
At the 2023 Sohn Investment Conference last May, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, pointed out in an interview with Stripe's founder Patrick Collison that there were no entrepreneurs under 30 among Silicon Valley's prominent entrepreneurs for the first time since the 1970s. It was a statement signifying the bewilderment over the sudden disappearance of young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, an industry known for its youthfulness. Considering that the core of Silicon Valley's business culture has been youth for decades, as evidenced by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's controversial remarks at a Stanford University lecture in 2007 where he stated that 'younger people are smarter,' Sam Altman's observation carries significant weight.
Interestingly, from the perspective of Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor at New York University, this phenomenon reflects the characteristics of Generation Z, who are characterized by shyness, risk aversion, and reduced ambition. Furthermore, in his upcoming book, 'The Anxious Generation,' he argues that smartphones have been the most hostile element to the developmental stages of Generation Z's childhood. From the early 2010s, when smartphones became widespread and gradually became a standard possession for children, to the present day, where Gen Z is nearing their late twenties, Haidt suggests that smartphones are a key factor contributing to the worsening mental health and difficulty in finding meaning in life, which are considered hallmarks of this generation.
Generally, our society has reached a point where we can compare social media companies like Meta, which operates Instagram, and TikTok to tobacco companies. This is because both industries sell products harmful to adolescents and focus on making changes to their products to maximize customer retention, in other words, addiction. However, a significant difference is that while adolescents can choose not to smoke, social media exerts pressure on non-users in a more insidious way at a much younger age, making it difficult to break free from addiction.
Leonardo Bursztyn, an economist at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment involving over 1,000 college students, asking them how much they would be willing to pay to deactivate their Instagram or TikTok accounts for four weeks. This is a common question used by economists to assess the social net value of a product. He found that, on average, participants were willing to stop using these platforms for $50. However, when presented with the premise that most other students at the same university would also cease their account activity, the average response fell to $0. In other words, the experiment confirmed that the root of addiction to social media lies in the sense of belonging to a group, due to the network effect inherent in these platforms.
How many Gen Z individuals can comfortably say they don't have a social media account when faced with a peer's question, 'Want to follow each other?' In this respect, while cigarettes ensnared individuals in biological addiction, social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective action problem. From roughly the ages of 9 to 15, a period of heightened sensitivity to social learning, smartphones relentlessly emphasize endless comparisons with others and aimless consumption of others' lives. They are growing into adulthood while watching meaningless, 30-second challenge videos curated by algorithms.
Of course, the generations preceding Gen Z were captivated by the possibilities offered by smartphones, a technological artifact, and could not have foreseen the impact it would have on subsequent generations as they navigated their growth. Perhaps they simply grew weary of the daily debates about this technology, designed to capture and retain their children's attention.
And now, AI-powered everyday technological products are starting to become commonplace. For the generations after Gen Z, the ones who will experience adolescence in the future, conversations with ChatGPT might be considered meaningful growth experiences. So, how can we teach them not only the content of conversations but also the meaning and ways to show respect for others through attitude and demeanor? What will children learn and what new opportunities will they miss out on in conversations with artificial intelligence that fail to grasp common sense rather than complex calculations? We need to reflect on whether we, as adults, are simply reacting with mere interest to our relationships and experiences with artificial intelligence.
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