How Gen Alpha Will Change Society Forever

Gen Alpha is the first generation of humans to be born with access to mobile technology. By the age of two, many Gen Alpha toddlers can already interact with these devices in meaningful ways. Beyond watching Coco Melon on YouTube, they can navigate the app menu and even play some simple games. How will this level of access and proficiency with technology shape Gen Alpha? And how will Gen Alpha, in turn, change the world?

I want to acknowledge that generations are a strange concept. Grouping people in a roughly 15-year age range into one definable set of characteristics seems reductive in most cases. However, there are some instances where this distinction is useful. Generations help group people who experienced and reacted to the same historical and social events within a specific time period. The truth is that these factors unify people to an extent.

When discussing how people are handling the rising cost of housing, for example, generations are a useful shorthand to demonstrate that one group of people will experience this phenomenon very differently than others. Generation Alpha specifically is the generation that follows Gen Z, consisting of individuals born between 2010 and 2025. Most of them are still kids, with the oldest ones becoming just teenagers while the last of them are still being born as we speak.

How can we possibly know that they'll change the world when they've yet to learn how to work a part-time job or drive a car? While we can't know for sure what changes they'll bring, we do know of one major factor that influences a generation like no other: technology. We often think of technology as another way for us to express ourselves and our will; however, the 20th-century philosopher Marshall McLuhan describes it differently and perhaps more accurately. McLuhan is most well-known for this line: "The medium is the message."

What he means by this is that the media format has more significant effects on us than the actual content of the message being sent. The format media takes changes our relationships with the message and each other; it conditions us in a specific way. In the words of McLuhan, "We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." The technology that we develop alters our lives and how we interact with each other in fundamental ways.

Just like how Vid AI is trying to be on the better ethical side of tech by helping people transform their creativity into videos, one of the questions I get asked the most is, "How can I start making videos like yours?" Years ago, when I started, that answer would have been very difficult, but not anymore thanks to Vid AI, the video co-pilot I wish I had. With Vid AI, you can say goodbye to editing timelines because you can easily create and edit videos with simple text prompts. All you have to do is give it a prompt for the type of video you want. The more detailed the prompt is, the better. And afterwards, select the audience and platform of your video.

Then, Vid AI will create an engaging script, find high-quality relevant footage, add subtitles, and even a human-sounding voice-over to give you the first cut of your video in any language. Have you ever wondered what lurks in the darkest corners of space? If you don't like horror but love space, then this is for you. From there, you can give it simple text commands to make edits to your video. Don't like the style of the subtitles? Ask it to change it. Want a different intro? Ask the AI to start the video in a different way.

It will understand all of your commands and make the desired changes. The best part about it is that with Vid AI, you can upload a 30-second recording of your voice in any language, and it will clone your voice. So you only have to record your voice once and use it in any video moving forward. You can get started with Vid for free and create up to four videos a week. But if you want to clone your voice and create videos without a watermark, then I highly recommend you get the paid plan that starts as low as $20 a month and use code "APERTURE50" to get twice the number of video generation credits in your first month.

It gives you access to all the AI tools as well as millions of royalty-free stock footage clips, your own voiceover, and a video editor, all of which will cost you hundreds of dollars if you source them individually. Back to our story, excessive screen use literally changes the gray and white matter in young children's brains. It reduces their literacy, their ability to speak, and their comprehension. Families interact less with each other and more with screens. This was true when TVs entered the living room, and it's far worse now thanks to mobile technology.

As Gen Alpha gets older, they're being introduced to a medium that has shaped us more than anything else since the dawn of humankind. They're growing up as kids with social media accounts, which will drastically change how they see each other and themselves. With his concept of the global village, McLuhan suggested that TV, radio, and mass communication in general were already changing us from a society of individualism and privacy to a tribal society where everyone watches everyone else.

People act and react based on what the larger group knows and believes to be true. Social media has made McLuhan's description of mass media far more relevant. Our new tools have made us hyper-aware of what others think at all times. We affirm the values of the group we belong to, such as the two sides of the culture war. We also fear being outcast by violating the norms of these groups; we become tribalistic.

But previous tribal societies were much smaller; you could keep track of most people you came in contact with. With social media, you come in regular contact with thousands of people every single day. Humans have an evolutionary constraint of knowing about 150 people. Beyond that, we experience cortical overtaxing in the brain. With social media, we're connected to thousands of people, and in a tribal way, it's not surprising that these platforms are becoming more associated with anxiety and depression.

Gen Alpha adolescents are and will be growing up in this tribalistic world with earlier access to social media than any other generation. This not only affects the way they interact with their peers, but according to research in the field of neuroscience, it changes the way they process emotions. Generation Alpha is already entering high school environments. It's the first time that they'll be expected to write papers of considerable length. They may also take up coding in computer science courses or dabble with computer-generated images in art.

Unlike previous generations, Alpha will navigate high school with access to generative AI tools to help or completely take care of school projects for them. Some teachers are learning how to recognize what an AI-written paper looks like, but it won't prevent a student from using a program like ChatGPT to give them a draft to work off of. AI is able to code and can be used by students in computer science courses; it can easily handle level syntax work that students usually start with.

Teachers who still want their students to prove their proficiency will struggle to tell what was supported by AI and what was not. Many students will be missing out on important skills; they'll be dependent on technology in a way we've never seen before. In writing, we're able to generate ideas and bring cohesion to a large subject. The problem, though, is that if AI is taking the reins of writing, then it's also taking control of ideas and direction. Gen Alpha will become removed from the ideation process. If they do have involvement, it'll be in a higher-level direction and decision-making part.

How will an entire generation cope when every discussion is just a regurgitation of what's come before? Where will the fresh and novel ideas come from? Gen Alpha kids who were born pre-pandemic will also have experienced or seen the fallout of the global pandemic in 2020. They were physically isolated from their peers while encouraged to engage with them or entertain themselves on screens. This event exploded every digital media trend, and it meant more acquaintance with screens and less with physical human beings aside from their parents.

While Gen Alpha is commonly exposed to screens early on, they also spend much more time with their parents, who are primarily Millennials as adults. The Millennial generation is also shaped by social media. They're known to teach kids early about mental health, gender norms, and climate change. Millennials are also having fewer kids; they're far more likely to host single-family households than previous generations. This is likely due to large economic disadvantages they have to contend with, such as the price of housing, the cost of student debt, and, well, really just the cost of everything.

So while Gen Alpha are on screens a lot, they're also potentially hearing about the impact of screens on their mental health. Research on Gen Alpha so far suggests that they have some unique strengths and weaknesses compared to previous generations. Their technological literacy is very strong for obvious reasons; they're more open to knowledge and have good numerical intelligence. On the negative side, they tend to be more egocentric, prone to violence, and have a short attention span. These are just generalities and capture a moment in time for a generation that's still very young.

In discussing how they will change the world, I think it's important to avoid a couple of common angles you see in the generation discussion. The point isn't to sneer at younger generations like Boomers were prone to do towards Millennials. The tools that shaped Gen Alpha, after all, were made by the previous generations. The point is to show what possible worlds lay ahead.

Another thing to avoid is the blind optimism often displayed by marketers. They're just excited at the prospect of a generation spending more and more and being open to ads. The deciding factor that will lead Gen Alpha down one path or another is tech determinism. Are we doomed to adopt emerging technologies regardless of the harm they cause, or is society-wide resistance possible? There's a strong case for the tech determinists who believe that widespread availability of technology makes social change inevitable.

We don't seem to have many mechanisms in society to prevent new technology from taking over. The gurus who designed this tech often buy into techno-utopianism. It's a world where all of our problems are solved by technology, and in this version of society, technology progresses in a very straightforward trajectory from one advancement to the next. The tech gurus aren't really alone in this assumption; techno-utopianism has been a typical prevailing attitude for much of the 20th and 21st centuries. It's only recently that so many of us are questioning this reality.

It's hard to argue against the inevitability of tech adoption when an exciting new piece of technology or platform is introduced and is well received. It spreads, while the potential harm it can cause is never really known right away. The impact of social media is still not dissected thoroughly; we only broadly understand that it's having a negative effect on the mental health of people who use it, especially adolescents. Governments and legislation lag behind the data as well. Before any laws are introduced preventing access to harmful tech, there generally needs to be a well-established body of evidence.

Governments don't seem well-suited to properly legislate against tech platforms in a way that won't easily be skirted or cause unintended consequences. Tech literacy is only so common in policymaking, and while plenty of governments legislate based on gut reactions, lobbying and other less objective criteria is not something most of us want to encourage. To prevent tech from causing severe harm, legislation must involve a more scrutinizing approval process, but that comes with its own set of concerns.

It could undermine the open internet and require many layers of expensive bureaucracy. It just seems like tech has human welfare beat. The only potential barrier appears to be the one that's nearly impossible to steer: culture. We've become increasingly aware of the issues with excessive screen use and social media falls, and even if we don't have perfect evidence for its impact on our mental state, our firsthand experiences typically suggest it's making us feel worse.

Humans are capable of resisting compulsions for the sake of our own well-being. We're often drawn to the comfort of a sofa and TV, but choose to go to the gym instead. It's a sacrifice of time and energy to improve our physical and mental health over a cozy time on the couch. Resisting desirable technology is possible. In a similar way, the masses are hooked on their phones. Most of you watching this video are on your mobile devices, but the eagerness to reduce our screen time is growing, and so too is the resolve. The less we're on these mobile devices, the more at peace we tend to feel.

New tech isn't automatically taking off as it did 15 years ago. Apple VR seems to be a colossal failure thus far, and the metaverse is really far from being widely adopted. Maybe it served more as a reminder that we're closing ourselves off from in-person relationships. It made us confront how isolating digital media is and how we ultimately don't want what it offers: loneliness. There are rumors that Apple will be moving away from a yearly upgrade cycle for their devices because people just aren't buying new iPhones anymore.

But resistance is one thing for an adult, and it's another for a kid. The pull of screens and social media isn't easy to ignore. It's much easier for an adult to do what's best in their interest in the long term than a child. If it weren't, they probably wouldn't need parents to begin with. It is because of these complicated reasons that I believe there are two distinct paths that Gen Alpha could follow, and whatever path they go down will change the world in completely different ways that we've never seen before.

There's a future where Generation Alpha takes on an all-out embrace of current and emerging technologies. They stay on social media, discovering and making new platforms popular. The social media at Mindhive, which I'm making up for this future projection, takes our thoughts and feelings and makes them into shareable content. You just capture a snapshot of your mental state, and it's assembled into its content by AI algorithms. Presumably, Generation Alpha has widely adopted the newest iteration of Neuralink, which makes this possible.

Mindhive even shares recreations of your dreams automatically if you don't turn it off in the settings. Technology is now dissolving the barrier between our inner and outer worlds. The next frontier of privacy is captured. Gen Alpha stops caring about privacy altogether; they don't see value in keeping the inner world a secret. They give it all up to be evaluated by their online peers. Those who face rejection for their inner thoughts manage to find groups of like-minded thinkers, and these groups embrace the ideas they might have censored in their own minds previously.

The ideas might be helpful, dangerous, or benign, but regard this: there is an echo chamber to support them. Anxiety and depression grow, but the apps respond. Meditation becomes embedded in streams, asking users to stop for 10 minutes. Some move on to the next app, but others take it seriously. The algorithms better manage to stress and content, privileging a balance of media that triggers negative emotions and ones that boost esteem. The platforms do just enough to keep people from breaking and leaving.

Gen Alpha is kept in a functional state of mental wellness where they're almost entirely at the mercy of an algorithm for their happiness. Beyond the app, Gen Alpha turns AI into an intimate tool. It's how they interact with the world, removing an increasingly vast number of steps in the digital space. Only high-level considerations will be necessary; they'll simply think of a command, and the AI will take care of the rest. If they want to travel somewhere, they'll only have to tell the AI where they want to go.

They'll lose or never learn many skills, and with them, a certain level of critical thinking and idea exploration. While this may seem scary, compare it to how cars went from manual to automatic. You lose a level of control, but you have a more leisurely drive. What we consider creative work will probably shrink considerably. Any human-based creative output will be niche in the same way a handcrafted item is now.

You may think we'll always value the human touch, but the average person probably won't care. Even now, many internet users don't seem to notice or be concerned that something is AI-generated. Movie studios will find more ways to use generative AI until executives are the only ones left in the building. The 2023 writer and actor strikes were primarily focused on preventing AI from ingesting their scripts and impersonating existing actors. Eventually, AI won't have to rely on famous actors and good writers; they'll just create their own from scratch.

Also, Gen Alpha won't be watching movies the way we treat them, from media that's not connected to a social platform. Ironically, Gen Alpha will mostly have physical access to work. They'll try to embrace the trades because they'll have to earn a wage. The value of this labor will go down, and in general, they won't earn as much money. Unemployment will be much higher as there won't be enough of these types of jobs. Their society will be poor, but they'll ultimately be able to escape into their digital lives.

They'll still have mobile screens. Gen Alpha will have less and less patience for each other in person. Interacting in real life will be overwhelming for some and too boring for others. It'll be very common for Generation Alpha to use their screens for the majority of face-to-face meetings. Their identities will be wrapped up in their online personas; they won't bother to express themselves as much physically. Clothes will be more about utility and less will be consumed.

More of society will become gamified and connected to their digital experience. Their secondary education will be overhauled to be presented in digital formats that keep students stimulated. Professors will become secondary to the app-based experience that supports learning. Gen Alpha won't take written exams; they will, however, have to prompt an AI with higher precision to demonstrate what they've learned. And while some will continue to read books, others won't read outside of information presented in apps and games.

The future that Gen Alpha may adopt will seem scary for those who can remember a home phone in the kitchen, but it'll all seem like a continuum for Alpha. It may not be a harmonious existence, but it won't be a living nightmare either. There is, however, another possible future where the mental health problems associated with social media become too overwhelming. They won't just suggest intervention but demand it. Generation Alpha forces themselves off of social media and a lot of the internet in general.

Generation Alpha will be very aware of the way algorithms shape and create what they see online. In this future, AI makes being online feel uninteresting. When content is generated mainly by non-humans, it loses its appeal. What drew people online into social media to begin with is essentially gone. They came for social connection and the fear of being left out, but when there's no humans, it's the internet without connection. Social media without the social—the internet for leisure—is effectively dead.

Now sure, AI is convincingly able to simulate a conversation. If we allow ourselves to engage with chatbots, they can even give us some of the same feelings we derive from our communications with friends. But when we step back momentarily, we know that we're just talking to a machine. We're missing out on real conversations with real humans. As social animals, we're compelled to communicate with others. The facade of other people doesn't check off enough boxes; it just superficially soothes a part of that social need.

In this future, Gen Alpha yearns for privacy. The internet is fake and full of scams. It's filled with AI-generated content for companies whose sole purpose is to make money off of them, or it's scammers trying to steal in increasingly sophisticated ways. With AI taking most white-collar work, scamming will become more popular. A great section of the population is poor, looking for any way to make more money. Gen Alpha's digital avatars don't offer much factual information; they don't bother to post. They seek quiet and use the internet for utility, not as a way to kill time.

Gen Alpha effectively destroys the internet as we know it today. It's no longer a form of entertainment or a space that runs on advertising. The decrease in human users and increase in bot traffic destroyed its usefulness for marketers. Gen Alpha still uses the internet to make purchases. Some advertising on e-commerce websites exists, but that's about it. In this future, Generation Alpha will still be poor, but they've freed themselves from the chains of social media and screens that bind them.

They're reading books, being social, and putting more effort into solving society's ills. They'll try to find a better future for themselves and their kids. As adults, they'll remember their Millennial parents' concern about technology but feel the strength of will to act on them. They see the foibles of their parents' resignation to tech. A lot of their world is still digitized, but they seek out in-person experiences that are so alien to their daily lives that it becomes novel.

Such a movement wouldn't be without precedent. In the early 1800s, an English group called the Luddites rebelled against industrialization practices by destroying machinery. They were concerned about recent job losses and the wages made by the workers who operated the machines. Too much money was going to the factory owner and not the workers. We often refer to someone who is anti-technology as a Luddite, but the original Luddites didn't hate technology; they just rejected the impact it was having on workers. Luddites were rejecting the way it shaped their lives.

Obviously, there's a big difference between English workers breaking machines and an entire generation putting down their phones. Generation Alpha has a big incentive, however, to change course. They'll see the negative impact AI and social media have on their lives. While the internet loses its grip on them, the first path I described is an extreme version of a tech utopia slowly unraveling over time. The second is an expansion of our more recent rejection of this vision of the future.

It's also a natural consequence of the impact of a dead internet. I don't think either path is obvious, and the path of rejection seems better for mental well-being, but the former will still be a life worth living. Maybe it'll just be different—familiar and alien—but Generation Alpha will know how to navigate it. They were born with the tools that are shaping them, not interrupted in the middle of their youth. And who knows, maybe our disdain for the digital future is just us looking too fondly back in the rearview mirror.

We can't predict precisely how a generation will turn out, and anyone telling you otherwise is probably in marketing. I put together these two paths based on current trends pointing in different directions. Many things could change before Gen Alpha becomes the dominant generation in society. The world has been disrupted before, and it'll be disrupted again. Climate change, fascists, and killer robots could completely undermine everything about the future I just described.

Now you might be scoffing that I mentioned killer robots, but imagine consumer drone technology advancing with AI and weaponry just for a moment. An AI-driven internet may also influence society in very dark ways. It just may rise because of rigorous AI programs designed to micro-influence people until they're cheering on the end of democracy. Society might also be steered by AI-generated garbage simply designed to produce revenue from misleading clickbait. There's a whole hate farm based in Cairo, for example, that exists to make money off of anti-Justin Trudeau sentiments—he's the Prime Minister of Canada, in case you didn't know.

The creators of the content are indifferent to the cause their channel promotes. If AI and other forms of automation completely erased the middle class, then a digital life may not even be affordable for most. This too would cut Generation Alpha off from the stranglehold social media threatens to have on them. However the future unfolds, it's important not to judge a generation by some annoying traits.

We all play an enormous role in determining how future generations turn out. Gen Alpha is born with the technology designed, distributed, and embraced by our cord and those who came before us. We also have a tendency to look back on the way things used to be and pine for those old values. Our world is potentially becoming less private and more individualistic, and that causes older generations anguish and longing.

Marshall McLuhan would say that we're looking back fondly at what we see in the rearview mirror. In the 1960s, McLuhan suggested that people were prone to living in "Bonanza Land," by obsessing over the show Bonanza and its Wild West setting. People were looking back, longing in the rearview mirror at values that were gone. Whether Alpha becomes a generation that is inseparable from their digital lives or one that revolts against them is beyond our control. Our influence is only so significant up against the forces of technology and the complexity of society.

This is a nice reminder to focus on what is in our control. As the Stoics would suggest, we can only govern our reaction to how the universe unfolds. We don't need to look back through the rearview mirror in misery, wishing for a past that will not return. With an open mind, we can engage with the new tools with a reasonable amount of guardedness. It's not to suggest that new technology doesn't pose actual harm. Digital media can negatively impact your relationships, your concentration, and many, many other things you love. Social media and gamification can lead to unhealthy addictions.

The many forms of digital media can wreak havoc on your well-being, and every generation needs to take that seriously. But we can thoughtfully navigate these potential harms. There's still happiness to be found in a brave new world, and Generation Alpha is capable of finding it.