Kyla Scanlon
Appearances
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I think for, like, just for young people in general, maybe, I think that... For what I've heard and what I see in my comment section and what I see in my DMs is people just feel like the path is murky. And so the meme coins and the sports gambling and the AMC and the GME, all of these things that made no sense before. are essentially reliant on attention, right?
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Like that's the whole premise of the meme coin is if you can gather enough attention, the coin will run up in price. Ideally, you sell out before everybody else notices that too many people are paying attention. You capture your winnings and you go home. And so all of those things are predicated on these sort of fabrications of communities that you can create online.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Like there's entire discords that are dedicated to meme coins and sniping meme coins and getting in fast and getting out faster. Yeah. Same thing with like GME and AMC when that was happening. And so I think that's the thing is like people are really aware that attention is extraordinarily valuable.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so the things that command attention are going to be the things that make money from more people paying attention to them, which just so happens to be meme coins in this instance. And young people are very tuned into that.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I mean, the whole memo, I really encourage people to read it because it is astounding because he just lays it all out. If you wanted to become the next Mr. Beast, you definitely could just based off that memo. But what he is really good at is just maximizing metrics.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
So on YouTube, you have this retention graph and a views graph, and you can see when people stop watching your video or when they tune out. And so for him, he was laser focused for a very long time at making sure that people just stayed on the video longer and longer and longer. And the way that you make people stay on a video longer and longer and longer is is by doing wild things.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
So I think the very first thing that he got famous for was counting to maybe a hundred thousand, maybe a million. He was on a video just counting for hours and hours and hours and hours. And people were looking at that and they were like, this is crazy. And so all this attention was directed towards him. And so this whole memo was, I think, the best encapsulation that we have from the leader of
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
and sustainer of the attention economy, on the economics of the attention economy, on how it really is taking advantage of human psychology and perhaps a way that we'll look back on in 50 years and be like, oh, that wasn't good for us. But he's just, I mean, he's a master of his craft and you definitely have to give him credit for that. Like, you know, don't hate the player, hate the game.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And he's a very good player at this game.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I think it's honestly kind of painful. I remember Jules Terpac and I, who's another person who does social media stuff, we actually had a phone call about this document because we were both like, what? And it's just... You look at that and you're like, whoa, where's the room for the creative expression? Where's the room to experiment?
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And I've been doing social media for almost four years now, and I've definitely noticed the algorithms are closing in on us. There's less and less room. There's less and less air to experiment, to be creative. Because everything is so mathematically driven and it's all about views and retention. And you can try new stuff, but Mr. Beast isn't.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
He's trying new gigantic things, like his Amazon TV show that I think people were getting hurt on. And he's trying new ways to kind of...
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
do sort of scary things that are morally questionable um and that's sort of what works is like you have to people look to him making these not the best youtube but like the the most uh video the videos that retain people the most the videos that attract people the most They're not going to be the most beautiful. They're not going to be the most intellectually stimulating.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
They're going to be kind of like this weird crossover between reality TV and a game show, because that's just what our brains kind of like. We like the spinning numbers. And so I think it's very, very sad. And it makes a lot of sense to me that that was what he said. But I think it could be quite dark if we don't work on that as a society.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I mean, I think you can really get into the attention stuff and how people are very co-opted by that. In the article that I wrote about the memo, I get into that the younger generation is going to be more focused on work quality over work quantity, something that Mr. Beast does talk about. Boomers slash Gen X are very focused on putting in the hours, being at the office.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Gen Z, there was that whole quiet quitting thing that happened back when the economy was booming. And And I think for Mr. Beast, too, there was a focus on flattening the hierarchy. He was very informal in his language throughout the document, which is great. At my first job, I got trained in how to send emails because there was a certain style of communication.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think for Mr. Beast, like it was very much like, look, we have technology. We know what we're doing. We don't have to work all the time on it because essentially what we're doing is we're playing into a system that already exists. There's nothing to creatively stretch here. Just do your job and go home.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Um, and so I think that's, uh, definitely what you see in some of Jen's ears, not all, of course we're, we're generalizing, but, uh, that is definitely, I think what we've seen and how they work and how they choose to approach certain issues.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I mean, it might not be a great example, but Doge, Elon sent that email just being like a questionable email, but five things that you did this week. It wasn't like how many hours everybody worked. And so I do think sometimes you can see that happening at the managerial level. But I also think for Gen Zers, it is kind of project-based. It's like, why would I put on all these hours?
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
There was a document floating around from... I think some analysts at Morgan Stanley, maybe it was Goldman Sachs, one of the investment banks, and it was this whole deck about that we're working way too many hours and the final product isn't getting any better. They're like, just let us make a good final product instead of focusing so much on how long we're in the office.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think that deck, which explained their plight and they do work too many hours, it makes no sense anymore. how much they work. Plus, you know, what we did see from Elon Musk and Doge, plus the Mr. Beast memo. It's a shift in work for sure.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I think you've linked to this poll, the Spring 2024 Harvard Youth Public Opinion. Yeah. So that's the thing where I was like, oh, no, we're in trouble. But yeah, the institutional trust down across the board, except for the United Nations. And I think it goes back to...
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
there's just, it feels like a lot of times there's kind of gridlock politically, like the stuff that does make it through the media. It's like, Oh, they're not agreeing. Oh, the debt ceiling is like once again being negotiated. And now we have kind of, um, what's happening with president Trump's administration.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And then I think too, like the loss of trust does come from that established path, even though it was never certain that established path just sort of disappearing, right? Like pensions disappearing, uh, career path progression disappearing, perhaps a chance to buy a house one day disappearing. And so I think younger people look at all that and they're like, okay, that's not very good.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I don't really trust those institutions. And then I think too, social media can really do a number on what people trust and what they see. Misinformation is a massive problem. And at this point, we do have people at the highest levels of government just sharing misinformation left and right.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And if you're just a casual news consumer, that's going to be extraordinarily confusing and it's likely going to reduce your trust even more. So I think it's all of those things. People just are not happy with the outcomes and then they don't feel like they're able to move forward with their own life.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely both. Like you have institutions who are really caught between a rock and a hard place, you know, trying to provide some semblance of stability most of the time. Then you have algorithms that offer all sorts of opportunity, but without any real sense of security. Like once you do lose the attention game, you're gone.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think for a lot of people who are maybe playing that game, that can be quite scary. And then for young people who are watching all of that, you can probably absorb some of it. And then I think too, like the other part of it is the nature of self is redefined. There's a really good research paper that talks about the algorithmized, the algorithmic self.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And it's all about how you kind of create this new personhood when you interact with a digital reality. And so I think it definitely has something to do with people just being on the phone, you know, rage is an excellent monetization machine. And a lot of people have taken advantage of that over the past couple of years. Uh, it's kind of, we've had the WWEification of politics in a really big way.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Um, Young people are absorbing all of that. So I definitely think it's some element of the phones. It's some element of institutions maybe not doing what they're meant to be doing or not promising some semblance of stability. But I do think people are trying to redefine themselves amidst those two things, too.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I'm like, who am I in a world where institutions don't maybe provide or I'm not seeing the ways that they can provide? Who am I if algorithms take over my whole life? Literally, who are people outside of algorithms? They're making decisions for them pretty much every day.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
There's a very alarming statistic that I think John Oliver shared on one of his shows, where I think it's eighth graders are going to spend 93% of their lives online, in technology, 93%.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yeah, I mean, so what I gathered as I traveled to, you know, 20 plus states over the last eight months and having these conversations like in red states and in red cities with people who identified as Republicans or people identified as Democrats is a lot of people did swing conservative, but it wasn't because they were like... wanting immigrants out of the country.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
It was like, I just really want the economy to stabilize. And so for a lot of young people, for whatever reason, they looked at the Biden economy and they're like, this is not good. I want something different. And so I'm going to choose the other option, which just so happens to be conservative.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think that's what we saw with a lot of young people swinging Republican in the United States, specifically young men, is that there was for some of them, like, I just really want the economy to be different. I'm quite worried about my path, as we've been talking about throughout the pandemic.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And then I think with regards to young women, the election results out of Germany were quite interesting because, you know, young men did go conservative, but not any faster than the rest of the population. Like it was quite in line, but young women definitely swung to the left. And I think there you can sort of figure out why.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
A lot of the conservative talking points are rollbacks on protections for women in terms of abortion access and things like that. It just can feel like an attack on autonomy. And so I think young women are seeing that and, okay, we're going to go a different direction now. But from what I gathered in my conversations, the conservative shift has was mostly about the economy.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yeah, I think, well, so the thing with politics at the moment is that it is tribalism to a certain extent. And I think for a lot of people, you know, there's not interest in dating outside of the tribe. And so in my conversations with young people across the country, that was one thing that kind of did come up is like, I can't find anybody who...
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
It matches my interests and my interests are very, very important to me and my values and my beliefs and my morals. And so I think it'll all potentially realign in terms of everything working out okay. I don't know if we're headed toward a South Korea situation. type situation. But I think we do have a massive demographic crisis looming.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And I don't think the reason that people maybe aren't having kids is because they're not coupling. I think a lot of people are just waiting on coupling because of the cost of living and the cost of childcare. And sort of that path again to buying a house. And perhaps because I write on economics, I see everything as an economic problem.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But that's just what I've noticed is people are like, it doesn't make sense to get married. Like, what are we going to do next? And I think, too, you could also point to the digital reality consuming people and they don't meet as many people and therefore they don't date as much.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yes. Yeah. Sorry that I was like, every question I was like, housing's the problem.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
No, no, it's okay. I mean, like, again, like it's what I spend time thinking about and it's what I've done, you know, several, I've interviewed former deputy secretary of the treasury, Wally Adeyemo about housing and like what the US treasury was doing with housing policy.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I've interviewed fed presidents about housing because that's just like, as I am a person on the internet where people kind of tell me, economic woes, the thing is housing. It's forever and always housing. And like I said at the beginning, housing is the foundation for how we interact with the economy.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so a lot of people will look at our current housing environment and be like, oh, well, we just need to build more housing. But as you and I know, it's not that easy. There's zoning. There's all sorts of permitting and regulations creating a lot of headwinds. People at the Atlantic do a great job, you know, writing about this as well. A lot of people do a great job writing about this, actually.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Like, everybody kind of talks about the problems that we're facing, and a lot of it is policy and regulation. But I think for Gen Z... It's like if you can't have that seminal moment of buying a house or being able to properly afford rent, it just feels like you're not able to really get your economic life started.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
John Byrne Murdoch over at the FT, who's fantastic, of course, has a fantastic chart. talking about how young people are living at home longer, partially because of economic circumstances. And so I think housing is kind of the root of a lot of the economic problems that young people are facing, because again, it is that foundation into the economy. And I'm not the first person to say this.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I'm probably like the one millionth person to talk about this, but it is, I think, the biggest issue of our economic moment right now for living in the economy.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I mean, I think part of it is like the anxiety and just how do you get past that initial interaction? I think part of it is sort of the political environment too, where there feels like there's more polarization and isolation. A lot of people just aren't looking today. Like, you know, they're living their best single life. There's a big focus on like self-care, finding yourself.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
That'll take the rest of your life if you try to find yourself. And so... I think everything is being delayed and young people have zero interest in paying for apps. I actually interviewed my little brother, who's a 25-year-old trying to navigate Hinge, and he paid for Hinge and it worked. And then he was like, I'm never doing that again. And then he broke up with the person he was dating, sadly.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But I just think for young people... It is such a point of friction to date and to be rejected and to have to try again. And one thing I wrote about in the article was this idea of the convenience contradiction, where it feels like everything should be pretty easy. Like it doesn't make sense that this is so hard. Other people are quite complex and people have been talking about it.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
dating for you know 10 years i think tender and the dawn of the dating apocalypse was actually written about 10 years ago and so dating apps have really taken on the form of the like you know trying to make something very hard easy and so it creates this cognitive disconnect i think and young people just don't want to don't want to mess with that and who can blame them
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yes. I don't know if it's specific to mid-20s, but Pew Research has an article called Nearly Half of U.S. Adults Say Dating Has Gotten Harder for Most People in the Last 10 Years. And that article has a statistic that half of singles are just not looking to date. I do believe that's higher than it was yesterday. you know, a decade ago. 80% of women not interested according to Morning Consult.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think we're seeing some higher numbers than we used to, but like everything kind of evens out in the long run. But anecdotally, when you talk to people who haven't figured it out past like this certain age, it can get quite stressful, I think. And you definitely see that where people get, they either never try or they give up past a certain age. Yeah.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I mean, yeah. So the phone debate, yes. Jonathan, there was a big debate with him and Tyler Cowen on Tyler's podcast where they went back and forth on the data and what actually happened with that research paper. But when I...
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
When I just take myself and I take my friends and I take my little brother as an example, you definitely notice a difference in yourself when you spend a little bit too much time online. Because it creates this, again, like that rage bait cycle machine. There's that constant availability problem too, where it feels like you're stuck. always having to respond. Like there's, I don't know.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
I just think for a lot of young people, it goes back to that economic path situation I was talking about earlier. It's like, where am I going? What am I doing? Who am I? And then too, like with the algorithms, it's honestly quite difficult. And this is something that can be developed with a sense of agency, but like it is difficult to find yourself.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think for a lot of young people, some of that anxiety is,
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
can stem from being like okay i'm being fed this algorithmic content but like what do i actually like like who am i underneath all of this um there's just again that you know maybe not so much room for experimentation as there used to be but it's just all speculation i want to do some summing up here and give you a chance to tell me what you think we missed that's big but
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yes. So this list was inspired by a graphic that I saw from Rachel Gianfazza. And she broke Gen Z down into Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0. So basically graduating high school pre-COVID and then graduating high school post-COVID. And I was like, okay, I think COVID definitely has something to do with the splitting of the generations.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
No, I think that touched on most of it. I would say one thing I tried to really caveat, and we've spent some time caveating throughout the conversation, is it is a generalization. And so a lot of the comments I got on my piece were like, Kyla, you didn't think about this. And like, come on, everybody's had problems all of the time. But I think I would really ask...
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
people who are saying that kind of stuff to sort of look at what you've described where like you're dealing with, again, like this technological aspect and the physical aspect. And like for the first time ever, you have to navigate these two different realities. And like, I feel like we've been kind of being like, oh, not woe is me, but kind of like, oh, you know, bummer. But it is a bummer.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Where you're having to figure out this stuff, the technological stuff, on top of the real world stuff. And that's just life. But it is immensely complicated. There is no rulebook. There's never a rulebook. But of course, there's going to be some element of anxiety, some element of depression, because we are trying to figure out how stuff works. And that is a painful process.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And young people are leading the charge because they have to with it.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But I also think technology had a really big part to do with it, like the digital reality. And so in the piece, I talk about Gen Z 1.0 being this bridge generation. And so I'm part of that generation. I'm an ancient Gen Z. I just turned 27. And for me, I grew up in a world where I remember where there were flip phones, but I graduated into the pandemic.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so my first interaction with work was entirely online. And it's been that way ever since. And so... And summarizing that segment of the population, I talk a little bit about how they view technology as a tool rather than an environment because they're able to navigate digital spaces fluently, but it doesn't dictate their whole reality.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And then there's Gen Z one and a half, which is the COVID cohort. And so that was the group that was in maybe high school or college during COVID. And that completely shaped how they think about technology.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
technology because they had to do learning online for a lot of them it created a pretty complex relationship with institutions but they were able to see sort of the powerful nature of digital infrastructure and how that sort of kept society functioning and then the final generation is gen z 2.0 which is the first group that will graduate into this new digital economy like
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
how AI, you know, is going to shape them. And they've never really known a world without smartphones and social media to them could just be like another layer of reality.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Like there, it's really difficult, I think, for that group, just based on my travels and talking with them for them to kind of separate, it's not their fault, but for them to separate, you know, what happens on the internet versus what happens in real life.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to optionality. So I think for a lot of younger people, like the specific Gen Z 2.0 cohort, what I've noticed in talking with them is it just feels like the technology is all-consuming. When I was growing up in middle school, there wasn't really Instagram quite yet. It was there, but a lot of people weren't on it.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But when you're this age right now, when you're young and social media is kind of the forcing function, and it was the forcing function for your social life during the entirety of COVID, I think for them, it just feels almost inescapable. There's a news segment interviewing this group of students who are like no phones, like they're anti-phones.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And there are these young people who are so sick of having to swim in this water technology all the time. And a lot of researchers have written about this, like the phones are really hurting the kids. But I definitely think it feels like there's just no optionality to the technology and they're really able to see the negative consequences of it.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yeah, I mean, I think that with... So I am a huge hypocrite, and I have to just say that because I make social media videos. That's part of my job. And I think social media can be a tool. And I think a lot of young people see it in that way. You're able to connect, you're able to learn, you're able to do all these things.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But I think the environment that it creates, the trust in institutions or the lack of trust in institutions, as you've highlighted... A lot of young people are just seeing all of this dismay, this dismantling. And I think most people are able to connect the dots that it's clearly technology that's causing some of these problems.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And then when you talk about the gigantic question mark that is AI, you have young people who are in college right now. And that was a big thing when I was traveling. I was talking to these students who were like, I don't even know if a career path for me is going to exist. Like, I don't know if technology is just going to totally take it away.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think for somebody my age, so 27, I was able to kind of really grow with technology. The word processors were great. The beginning stages of AI were really great. Everything was very efficient with technology, but now instead of it becoming efficient, we're like, oh, it's actually going to replace you. And so I think young people are seeing this
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
social media aspect of technology, where it's, you know, taking over their lives, maybe making them feel not so good about themselves. And then on top of that, you have AI where it like could totally destroy like your dreams. And so I think that's kind of what they're really, really, I know that's what they're wrestling with just based on the conversations that I had.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
Yeah. So Fafnomics is that I, you know, I figure out and finding out it's like essentially chaos is the strategy. So you're just going to throw everything at the wall, see what sticks and, you know, perhaps make some mistakes, but you're just going to find out. And we're seeing that at the governance level, too, with like Elon Musk's Doge.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But for young people, I definitely think when you look at the crypto universe, when you look at sports gambling and And a lot of people have written on this idea of financial nihilism, but there's a truth to that where people are just effing around because it doesn't feel like that predictable progress path is there. And of course, for every generation, there's been significant headwinds.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But I think this is the first time where we've seen political creative destruction happening at the same time as technological creative destruction. And so young people are taking all of that into account and... Indeed, effing around and finding out, especially young men who have had all sorts of economic headwinds over the past couple of years.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
It's housing. I think it's, yeah, it's like such a boring answer, but that's really, you know, in these conversations that I've had in the policymakers that I've talked to, everybody is like, yeah, nobody can afford housing. And so it does create like that is a foundational way to interact with the economy, right? Like,
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
being able to afford rent or being able to buy a house, if you can't solve for that problem in your economic equation, it's going to be a real uphill battle. And so I think a lot of young people are looking around and the returns on education are much... They're not as predictable as they once were.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
So it never was a guarantee that you'd have a job out of college, but now it really doesn't feel like... you will at all in some instances. And of course, I'm generalizing. Housing is a big thing. Career progression is a big thing. Like you just don't stay at a company for 40 years anymore.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
And so I think young people are looking at what used to be this, you know, relatively predictable path where things sort of smoothed out to one layer over time. And like, You could kind of figure out where you were going. And it just doesn't feel like that exists anymore. And of course, it could smooth out for young people in the long run.
Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Gen Z Sees the World
But as I said, the political creative destruction at the same time as the technological creative destruction is creating more questions than answers and leading people to that financial nihilism and faffonomics.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
I think the main thing that I've taken away is there's kind of this element of faffonomics is sort of what I'm calling it, where people are like really effing around and really finding out in a very big way. Like that's what you see with Doge, with some of these maybe hasty firings and then the subsequent rehirings that have to happen, like with nuclear safety workers.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
So I think what we're seeing is just an administration that's moving pretty fast and And moving without maybe any acknowledgement of potential guardrails and just kind of a gutting happening at the federal level at a pace that we really have never seen before. And I think a lot of people are a bit worried about what that could mean.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
A lot of people are excited because they want to see debt levels go down. But I think the underlying worry then is, well, if you gut the government from the inside out and have to rebuild it, it could be quite expensive. So I think right now everybody has more questions than answers. There's tremendous amounts of uncertainty, and you can really just feel that percolating.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Well, it means F around and find out. So the idea is chaos is just a strategy, right? And so you're just going to sort of go full steam ahead and see what you can unplug and then see what stops working once you unplug it and then maybe figure out a way to plug it back in. And so that's the general strategy is just F-ing around.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And that's a very crude, introductive way to say it, but it maybe is a decent summary. Yeah.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
I think that there's a lot of distrust in institutions. And so you see things like the spring 2024 Harvard Youth Public Opinion Poll where they asked young people, you know, what institutions do you trust in? And trust in all institutions except for the United Nations was down by double digit percents. you know, trust in the media, trust in the White House, trust in Congress.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And so I think you have this base of people who just don't trust in the possibility of things getting done. And so that drives, you know, actions like Doge is able to take, like people support that because it's like, well, nothing else seems like it's working. And so you have that lack of trust. And then you have
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
The echo chambers that can be created by social media where people are hearing that, you know, this sort of strategy is the best way to approach it. There's a lot of misinformation flying around right now, like with social security payments and an understanding of what nuclear safety workers do.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
So I think it's that like there's this this lack of belief and that's all compounded by the systems that we engage in every single day. You know, the algorithms perhaps perpetuating that even more.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
I mean, I think the big thing with the vibe session is we did see and I wrote about this in my newsletter. Like we did see aspects of the vibe session show up in the electoral data. Like part of the reason that people voted for Trump is because they were like, I'm sick of this economy. I'm really tired. I just wish somebody would make it easier to afford a house. And that's so valid.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Part of the vibe session is the data might not be telling the whole story. Aspects of structural affordability like housing and child care and elder care are very important and they impact people's lives and they're extraordinarily expensive. And so with the Bob session itself, at least right now, those things are still extraordinarily expensive.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And we also saw, of course, a partisan flip and sentiment like Republicans are now feeling quite good about the economy. Democrats are feeling quite bad. This happens pretty much every election cycle. And we haven't seen things really take impact on the economy yet.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Like now that so many workers have been fired and we could have inflationary pressure due to tariffs, that could create a bad economic environment where it's totally valid to have maybe negative consumer sentiment. But... The whole goal with the vibe session story is to really talk about what data are we using to measure the economy? Like, is it the right data?
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And so in that capacity, like, who knows if we're still in one or not. But I think that the sentiment has always been a bit strange to measure.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
This is a good question, too. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has a new paper that they released last year called The Core Score. And I worked a little bit to develop some videos around it. But the whole idea is how do we measure economic well-being? And it's looking at things like housing. It's looking at things like health care.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And I think that sort of stuff is important because it gets beyond just GDP, which is like consumer spending and things like that. It just outweighs. And
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
I think if we can sort of get a little bit more granular in how people are actually experiencing the economy, which is what the core score and nonpartisan effort tries to do, that's a better way to actually figure out what's happening and how people are feeling. And then we can address the problems a little bit more head on. Like clearly housing is a massive, massive problem.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
You don't need the core score to tell you that. But then the question becomes, well, how do we build more housing? And I think that's also... measure of economic success, like not just how the economy is performing, but what are we doing in the future to make it perform even better? Things like building more housing, having more access to health care and education, etc.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
So I have been on the road traveling for the past eight months talking about my book. And I have had the opportunity to talk to a lot of young people across 25 different states about how they're feeling about the economy. And I think the main thing that I'm hearing is people are really concerned about the labor market.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Like when you talk to kids and students, not kids, in college, a lot of the times it's You know, it's like, well, I'm getting all of these skills, but when I graduate, like, this could be a totally useless degree. Like, look what happened with software engineering, which was supposed to be this really safe way to go. And so you see a lot of young people going into the trades.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Like, Wall Street Journal had this article called Gen Z is the tool belt generation. And where I'm from in Kentucky, like, you're seeing this massive move towards the trades. And so I think that is how young people are feeling about the economy. is they're not sure what their place is in it anymore.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
They're not sure where they fit, partially because the growth of AI, partially because we are seeing some dismantling of the government, and there's uncertainty about what jobs are going to be left there as well. And then you also have, and I know you all talk about this a lot on the podcast, but you have these get-rich-quick schemes at work, like meme coins.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And so when you look at these two things, you have Maybe the ROI on a college education doesn't seem as powerful as it once was. And then you have the ability to make a ton of money on what essentially could be called a scam. It's super confusing. And so I think that's what young people are really dealing with is the world is rapidly changing.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And the world is always changing, but it feels like it's changing really fast right now.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Yeah, I'm working on this piece right now, trying to iron out those details. And I think the thing is, you can have a middle path. There's sort of this barbell effect where you have people going into the trades and being like, I just hope this works. And there's so much value in that. And then you have people who are going after the meme coins, cryptocurrency, trading, etc.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And I think there's a middle path where you can use AI to enhance your job. use it to enhance your career, figure out where things are. Things aren't going to change that quickly. But I think what will be required over the next couple of months, and this is what I've said at the universities that I've been able to speak to, is you have to be adaptable. You have to learn new tools really quickly.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
You have to be on top of all the new technology that's coming out so you can figure out how to integrate it into the work that you're doing now or be prepared for when that job might change or shift. Vice President JD Vance said that he hopes that their plan is that AI will be a compliment, not a replacement.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
So at least at the federal level, that seems to be the goal is like not to have AI replace people. But, you know, I think people just have to be prepared for all possible changes. outcomes and being adaptable, being ready, being a learner and not a learned person is key. Yeah, it's very like soapboxy, but that's where I've landed. Yeah. Do you have thoughts on that?
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Like as a person who's also navigating the economy?
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
So I saw that survey too, and I think the main thing for me was the cost of a house. If you ever want to own a home, it really is so expensive, especially in city centers where I think a lot of young people either have to live or want to live for work. And so I think that's part of what we're seeing there. But then there's also...
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And this is more speculative, but there is a lack of kind of a social safety net in the U.S. now more so than ever. Like there is worries that Social Security will be there won't be enough. So people are paying into a system that they might not benefit from. And so I think the idea is like there has to be that extra income now, because if you fall, you're falling so far and falling so flat.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And I think people can really feel that, especially young people. We saw the government step up like during the pandemic when people weren't able to work and there was unemployment, but then all those things were rolled back as well. And I think that's the other thing is like we have seen the government provide, and this was during Biden's era, and then stop all of that.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And so I think young people just really feel that quite viscerally. And also the path to prosperity is, It's not as straightforward as it once was. Not that the boomers' path was incredibly clear, but there was an idea that you would have a pretty predictable return on education. You'd have a predictable path to buying a house, a predictable time in the labor market.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Of course, they dealt with stagflation and mega high interest rates, but there was more predictable wealth progression where I think for young people, it's like, well, if I don't get in on the Argentinian meme coin, who knows what could happen? We'll be right back.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Yeah. So there is a woman named Rachel John Faza posted a graphic on Twitter talking about Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0. And then Derek Thompson of The Atlantic just published an article talking about Generation C, this like subsegment of Generation Z, which is conservative. And so Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0 is kind of like the pre and post COVID segment. So Rachel has it broken up.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
You graduated high school pre-COVID and Gen Z 2.0, you graduated high school post-COVID. And when I read this graphic, I was like, well, I think there's actually three where there's the Gen Z 1.0, which I'm a part of, like I'm an old Gen Z. And so I remember a world that was analog, like my first phone was a flip phone. And then there's the Gen Z 1.5, which is the COVID cohort.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
their really formative years were shaped by COVID. For me, as a bridge generation, I graduated from college into the pandemic, so a little bit of a different experience than being in high school or college during the pandemic. And then there's the Gen Z 2.0s, which are the digital natives. They have never known a world without smartphones.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And the digital infrastructure is basically reality, right? It's not a second layer. It's the the full reality. And so that's kind of the way that I'm thinking about it. And they have all had massively different experiences with digital realities and massively different development experiences too.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
And that's just shaped how they think about the world, how they think about their economic opportunity, and how they think about society at large.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Prof G Markets
Why Chaos Has Become an Economic Strategy — ft. Kyla Scanlon
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.