1 in 3 Gen Zers Have Done This With AI (Ryan Vet, Part 2)

So yeah, let's continue talking about AI because we have Ryan Vett. He is a futurist, he is an author, he is a speaker, he's built and scaled companies, he's been on NBC, ABC, you name it. You know, in school they taught you how to do math.

Yep.

And then they showed you the calculator and the calculator could do it. I feel like— as what's that?

That TI-88 calculator.

Yes, exactly, exactly. I think I still have it. Um, and now it's like, I feel like I can— I'm okay using AI because I've done the critical thinking.

Yes,

right. So it's okay for me to use it, but not for thee. But I do worry about their reliance on it and their ability to, to have a tolerance of frustration of not getting things done quickly.

Yeah.

So yeah, would love to hear what, what you think about AI and how it's affecting them.

You just hit on so many things. I think as human beings, right, we, we try— forget generations for a minute, throw that out the window— we, we try to remove friction in our lives. We try to make life easier for us and for the next generation. And you said convenience, you said speed, um, or maybe inferred the latter, but it's this idea that everything we do, every technological advancement, every, every move from the printing press, rewind then all the way to today. Um, you know, we've always tried to make information more accessible. We've tried to move faster towards it. Um, and we've tried to make everything more accessible, convenient, um, and just the way we need it, even the way food has evolved. And how packaged food has evolved. Now the fights around packaged food, and is it okay, is it not, not getting into that conversation. So we've always tried to remove friction in life. We've always tried to make it more interesting. But Gen Z and AI, let's talk about that for a minute because there are so many misconceptions, first of all, and things that we need to be aware of, second. So the biggest misconception is Gen Z is not leading the AI revolution. Millennials are. Gen Z is actually more skeptical. of AI. They're actually on par with, in many studies, and more and more coming out. We're about 3.5 years into most people using AI as far as generative AI goes. And in most cases, Gen Z and Gen X are almost exactly the same as their distrust for AI. They're not sure about it, their utilization of AI in their personal lives, which is really fascinating. So you're seeing millennials lead the charge there. And then Gen Z and Gen X next, and then boomers behind that. So that first of all tells you something. They're skeptical. So everyone asks, are they skeptical it's going to take their job? What are they skeptical of? Well, in the last episode, we talked about this idea of authenticity. That's the main thing that Gen Z wants. They want to— they've been raised in a world where they have to verify, then trust. Everything they've been receiving is fake news. And that doesn't mean AI-generated, but they don't trust very much. They're very skeptical. Again, very much like Gen X. The pendulum skips a generation frequently. Gen X was skeptical because they grew up in the Watergate scandal. The president that they— first president that they elected, or many of them elected, had a scandal with his intern. So you start looking at these things, the energy crisis, where institutions, which is what the boomers loved and supported, Gen X despised because the institutions kept failing them. Their parents got laid off from the corporate job, their pensions got pulled from the institution. So Gen X was skeptical of it. Millennials kind of rebuilt the institution, but in a modern way. Um, it was really Gen X building it, but millennials were the ones that, that worked there. And then now you see Gen Z, uh, again, skeptical, but now they're skeptical of, of technology on one re— on one hand. So they're, they're skeptical of the mass generation of generative AI, the, the fake news. A lot of them in their, uh, careers were probably victims of, uh, generative AI creating images of them, whether lewd images or images that were offensive or just not true. So they start to see some of that happen, and so they're skeptical there. On the other hand, while they're not fans of it, they've used it in some really interesting ways. One, a survey, and I wrote about an article back probably last year sometime, that the majority of Gen Zers are okay with government surveilling them. And I'm not just talking about like flock cameras or anything like that. They said even in their house, if it could prove a point, if it could keep them safer. Really, really fascinating. You can unpack that whole study and what they meant and the qualifiers around that. It wasn't like, hey, just go Big Brother me instantly, but it had this like 1984 vibe. And, and I was reading— when I first read the study, I had to write an article on it. So that's one area where they're okay if it keeps everybody safer, themselves and everybody else. They're not okay with it for generative information. And one other area where they are okay with it is relationships. Depending on where you look, whether it's Gallup or Pew or anything like that, between a third and three quarters, and that's a huge range. So even if you take the lower number, one in 3 of Gen Zers have been involved in some romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. And that should make us pause. Their whole life they've been behind the screen building relationships, not face-to-face but through screens. And they have basically disassociated themselves with, uh, physical relationships. And I don't even mean intimate, I mean just face-to-face relationships that— again, the studies are very varied because this is so new, but take the lowest number, take the most conservative number at 1/3 of Gen Zers have had some sort of romantic conversation involvement with a chatbot via an LLM or other online tool. That's a huge number. And we start asking, why are they in their rooms all the time? Why are they not going out with friends? Why are they not getting involved in relationships? Chances are that— and I'm not saying this is the only reason— but a large majority have experienced some sort of relationship that's quite frankly unnatural, and that's not how, how humans interact with one another. And so you start to see AI with, um, And Gen Z, there, there's all these different trends, uh, you know, is it taking their job? It's creating fake news. It could be a relationship. They've probably been a victim of AI abuse. You have all these different things that influence a generation, so they do distrust it pretty significantly.

That's incredible because, I mean, and, and then, and then we go back and, and then everybody says they have social anxiety. Mm-hmm. They do. And, and there's a reason. Because, absolutely, because they haven't had enough in real life conversations. So of course they're having social anxiety.

Yeah.

You know, for us Gen Xers, we had social anxiety. We just didn't know what to call it. Right? Yeah.

And you were told to deal with it.

And you're just told to buck up, you know?

Yep.

Yeah. Man up. Get an orange slice. Get back on the field. Right?

Yep, exactly.

So it's, it's really difficult. So what, what does a parent do if they're— if their college grad is just stuck in their room all day? Because the, the parents that I talk to, the kids are sleeping all day, they're up all night, you know, on the computers, not having relationships, not bathing themselves, not cleaning up. Um, the house or anything like that.

Yeah.

What do parents need to understand better about what's going on in that situation?

Yeah, I, I think first of all, it— there are true mental health, uh, issues that are occurring in many, uh, many situations. So seek professional advice first of all, uh, whether it's family, uh, counseling or individual counseling. That— so start there, right? Um, But some of these things are also behavioral. Parents, particularly Gen X parents, they— you named it on an earlier episode where they didn't get a lot of love from their parents, which is 100% true. The data shows that many of them never heard I love you from their father, if their father was even in the picture. And, and so flip a generation, now you have Gen X parents in particular overcompensating and being hyper-present, not missing a game. And all of that. Well, that creates a lot of anxiety for the kid, right? They, they always have to perform. They always have to do that. And, and parents have parented kids that are 20 years old, and at some point that parent relationship has to shift a little bit, and you have to let them fly out of the nest. But it's always been, hey, you can fly, but you know, there's a, a blow-up bouncy thing underneath you in case you fall, and I've got a leash. And by the way, I'm flying next to you just in case. And, and that's really hard for parents, especially when they don't want to be like their parents. Really, a lot of us parent either to be exactly like our parents because we had a great childhood, which is the rare exception, or to parent the opposite of our parents so we don't repeat the cycle. One of the things that you have to realize is, yes, if there's a true mental health concern, get that addressed professionally, but then you have to be a parent. There's 2 components of that when it comes to being in the room. One, what are they doing? That means you're going to have to have some awkward, uncomfortable conversations because a lot of things on the devices that they're in are destructive. And some of these chatbots, if you look at Scrolling to Death, it's a podcast and blog with Nikki Petrosi. I've had her on my show. Her stories there are heart-wrenching because parents aren't willing to have the hard conversations, and before they know it, their kids are sucked up into a virtual universe, whether that's through a game, whether that's through a chatbot, whether that's, uh, you know, they're being groomed and there's predators online, and, and they're falling in love or even doing destructive things to sell for others. And her stories time and time again, I mean, the podcast name tells you, Scrolling to Death. And so part of it is you have to have that tough conversation. You have to say, put the phone down. There's an article I wrote in April of this year. It says we've never been more alone. And basically Gen Z is spending more time at home than any other generation, and yet less time with their family than any other generation recently. So more hours at home, but less time at family dinners. Why? They are in a room. And so part of that is you gotta get past the, the eye roll and the, the kid yelling at you and angry. And, um, and there's ways to do it. Every situation's so different and every kid's so different. It's hard to give blanket advice, but you've gotta get out there and, and help them experience the world. Um, find out what their interests are. Um, find out what games they're playing on, on their phones and, and see if there's something comparable you can do as a family. And that means hard conversation. That means friction, which is what parents try to remove from their kids' life, but it's friction that forms us. And so we can't remove the very thing that forms us, and it only gets harder the older you get. You know, I say babies bounce. I have 3 kids, and when they're young and they're learning to walk, they fall and they get right back up again. They'll slip and they'll cry for a second, but as they get older, even 6 years old or older, they fall, and that fall is much more significant. It causes more harm to their body. They were moving faster, they're bigger, they were doing something else, they fell from somewhere higher. And now you fast forward and you, you took out all those formative years and you find them as an adult in their room acting really like a 12 or 13-year-old. That you have to have some really tough conversations, and those situations are delicate. And again, a lot of times they do need professional help because they have been rewired. Technology has rewired them. Culture and society have rewired them. So we have to figure out, again, case-by-case basis, how do you love your kids, which is what we all want to do? How do you give them the easiest life that we can while still allowing them to have the important friction that builds them to be the adult that you want them to be so they can fly and thrive?

I love so much of that. There's so many things that you said that just resonated so deeply with me. And things that I've seen myself do as a parent. But having those tough conversations about like, hey, you know, I know you're struggling, right? But you also have to, you know, clean up around the house, and you also have to provide, whether it's contribution or money or stuff like that. Those conversations need to be had.

Mm-hmm.

And they're— and what I'm finding is that a lot of them are not having them at all.

Yeah.

Or afraid to have them or don't know how.

Yeah.

Because that muscle was never developed in Gen X of how to have conversations because we just shoved everything under the rug. There were no hard conversations because nobody was talking. But now we have to learn as a generation how to parent and how to have friction and be okay with it.

Yeah. And you have to remember, you're still the parent. And when you were, you probably slammed the door in your parents' face. You probably ran out. You probably took the car and did something stupid with it. You probably ran away from home. Not saying those are appropriate or, they are normal actually, somewhat normal reactions, but you have to remember that those things happened. And if you patted your child so long and culture and society did too, that's the other big part. It's not just in the home. It's culture and society created a world in which this was okay. And normal, um, it makes it that much harder. The older they get, the harder it gets. And I think the other thing we have to remember, kids always want to please their parents. Even if they have a bad relationship with their, their parents, they always want to please. And so when they're not pleasing their parent because they're in the room and the kid knows that that's probably not healthy or helpful, it creates a spiral for them. And what's unique about this generation and culture and societies move this way is it's all about the individual. It's no longer about the family unit or anything like that. Um, Michaeline Ducliff's book, uh, Hunt, Gather, Parent, is great, and it talks about all these different cultures around the world. But the one, the one common theme is that they're all community-based. Parenting is done in community, kids are raised by each other in community, and, and you have this community-based mindset. Well, the Western world has made it an individualistic mindset. So when you wake up in the morning, all I need to do, care about, is make sure I'm getting fed. You don't see that the dishes need to be loaded in the dishwasher or that your bed should be made. And so you're thinking about me, me, me, and that's the world in which we've created for this generation. So it's our job to help undo that and help them realize that they're a part of a whole. And first of all, they're not on their own, which helps with loneliness. It takes a long time to help them understand that. But second, that every contribution, every action they have makes a difference in the lives of those that they're around every day. And it's important to be a part of that. And it gives them purpose, but it doesn't happen overnight. It's not a simple conversation. It is a I mean, think about how long it takes to raise an adult, right? Kids already know how to be kids. We're raising adults. The problem is we spent a whole generation raising kids. And I think that was a big, a big issue because kids already know how to be kids. We have to let them play but also raise adults at the same time.

Yeah, I love this. I could talk to you for hours about this because I think it's just— it's highlighting so many things about how we were raised and how this is a completely different situation. And I love what you said about like the not community feel. And, you know, and, and as we learn from the pandemic, we're all social creatures. And,

yeah,

you know, we, we need to have that social interaction, that direct face-to-face. And by being in their room all the time and being individuals,

Mm-hmm.

Right, they've forgotten how to do that. So we've kind of trained them that way, you know, in a sense. But yeah, we have to have the hard conversations and have them agree how they're going to show up in the home. And also the parent has to make some shifts too about how they're going to show up in the home.

Yeah,

because I think it is— it's— you have to be vulnerable first. You have to be the, the parent who's like, I am not going to be sending you your job listings. I'm not going to be sending you, um, I'm not going to be your alarm clock.

Yeah,

right.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, I understand that as they get older, we, um, we want them to, to launch and we want them to succeed, right? But we don't give them the room to experiment and fail, as you pointed out. I look at it like ice cream. Like when you go to an ice cream store, you know what flavor of ice cream you like because you got to sample a bunch.

Yep.

And we kind of took the sampling spoons away from them.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

And, and not only that, but we made it digital, so they can't really taste it. So again, thank you so much, Ryan, for being on the show. This has been fantastic. I hope the— I, I got a lot out of this. I learned a lot. And, um, and I really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you so much.