Last spring, college graduates across the United States started a new tradition: booing anyone who praised artificial intelligence. At the University of Central Florida, a real-estate executive was jeered for calling A.I. the next industrial revolution. In Arizona, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, was heckled for the same kind of praise. The message seemed clear. A generation that grew up with smartphones was finally pushing back.
A survey from South Korea, however, tells a very different story. Jinhaksa Catch, a job-search platform, asked 1,110 job seekers where they go first for advice when something is bothering them. Friends ranked first, at thirty-one per cent. Generative A.I. came second, at twenty-six per cent, ahead of family at eighteen and romantic partners at thirteen. The habit runs deep, too. Fifty-eight per cent said they use a chatbot several times a day, and seventy per cent had shared personal worries or feelings with one. Among those who had asked it for advice, three out of four actually followed it.
So which picture is true? Is Gen Z the generation that boos the machine, or the one that confides in it late at night? The honest answer is both, and that contradiction is the real story.
To understand it, look at why the Korean respondents said they trust A.I. They did not call it wise. Instead, they said it was objective (twenty-seven per cent), that it did not judge them (twenty-two per cent), and that it was available at any hour (twenty per cent). In other words, their praise for the chatbot was really a complaint about everyone else. A parent has strong opinions about your career. A friend might repeat what you told them. A therapist may have a long waiting list. The chatbot has none of these problems, and that is exactly why it is so appealing. It is also why people are uneasy about it.
The same pattern shows up in the United States. A Common Sense Media report found that nearly three in four American teenagers had tried an A.I. companion, and about half used one regularly. Roughly a third had even brought something serious to a chatbot instead of a person. Yet these same young people are deeply worried. According to Pew, adults under thirty are the most pessimistic age group about A.I.’s effects, with about six in ten saying it will harm both creativity and people’s ability to form close relationships. Only fourteen per cent expect A.I. to be good for society overall. One twenty-seven-year-old told the Times that she keeps A.I. out of her personal life because she doesn’t want her “social muscles to atrophy.”
Why would someone rely on a tool while also distrusting it? Anyone who has scrolled a social-media feed for too long already knows the feeling. In a July essay for Brookings, Josie Stewart and Brooke Tanner argue that Gen Z’s doubts are not just a passing mood. Rather, they reflect a careful judgment about who will benefit from A.I. and who will pay the price. After all, this generation grew up watching the last wave of tech platforms gain enormous power, and it lived through the loneliness and anxiety that followed. The worry is growing, too. Gallup found that the share of working Gen Zers who believe A.I.’s risks outweigh its benefits rose from thirty-seven to forty-eight per cent in just one year.
Tech leaders have noticed this shift. As the Brookings authors point out, many have softened their message, promising that A.I. will help workers rather than replace them. Still, a friendlier slogan is not the same as a real promise. In the authors’ view, young people will trust A.I. only when there are actual protections in place: rules for workers, payment for artists whose work trains these systems, honest reporting on environmental costs, and strong safety standards.
Meanwhile, the businesses most eager to understand Gen Z are relying on the very same technology. At Advertising Week New York this week, a panel on marketing to young people (which, as one reporter noted, included no young people) shared survey data from the research firm GWI. Eight in ten marketers said A.I. helps them understand their audience better than traditional research. Almost as many, though, admitted that A.I. had given them answers based on tired stereotypes about generations. GWI’s own report describes Gen Z as a “bundle of contradictions.” Snap’s head of research made a similar point on stage: A.I. can show you the average, but only people can find the details that matter. That point grows more important every year. The oldest members of Gen Z turn twenty-nine this year, which makes them less a single group than a wide range of adults.
The irony is hard to miss. Young people confide in a system that smooths over complexity, while marketers use that same system to smooth over young people. In both cases, the attraction is the same: a quick answer without the complications of dealing with another human being.
Even so, one number in the Korean survey deserves a second look. Friends still came first. Whatever a chatbot offers, whether patience, privacy, or round-the-clock availability, it has not replaced the oldest form of advice. Perhaps young people are not choosing machines over people after all. Perhaps, in the plainest way a survey can, they are telling us how often the people around them are busy, judgmental, or simply asleep. That is not really a problem with technology. It may be the more important story.