Yesterday I saw a post with a title along the lines of “Gen Z mistrusts AI despite young generations’ acceptance of technology” and I wondered if that were actually true. Are “younger generations” actually more likely to adopt new technology?
Consider the graphic above. It illustrates the time from invention to adoption by 90% of the American population. Why 90%? Because I think it’s as good a metric as any to identify when a technology has been adopted.
The graphic shows something simpler and more important than generational behavior: the speed of adoption varies enormously across technologies and eras. The telephone took decades to reach saturation; the smartphone reached it in little more than a decade. That difference has more to do with infrastructure, cost, and network effects than with the attitudes of “younger generations”.
I think the notion that Gen Z’s skepticism about AI (assuming it’s true) is a good story but it doesn’t relate to what has actually happened over the last 50 years particularly well. Baby Boomers were, in effect, “optimistic from birth,” not because of anything innate, but because they were formed in an environment where optimism was the default posture. Gen Z, by contrast, has been formed in a period where pessimism is the ambient assumption. Younger generations are not inherently more likely to adopt technology; they reflect the broader cultural and economic environment in which they are formed.
I will suggest another story.
Starting around 1910 America went through a remarkable period of technological optimism. Yes, there were problems but any problem could be solved with the creative application of technology. Starting in the 1960s with authors like Rachel Carson and illustrated most graphically by the sharp decrease in aerospace spending in the 1970s.
That period of technological optimism was supplanted by one of technological pessimism, illustrated by authors like Paul R. Ehrlich. That didn’t occur all at once. At first we just had priorities more pressing than going to the moon. Over time that transmogrified into attitudes like NIMBY and even BANANA.
Maybe Artemis II’s circling the moon will spur a new wave of optimism. Fingers crossed. The future doesn’t just belong to the young. It belongs to people who identify problems and solve them with the clever application of technology.
