I went back to school amid the pandemic. It's been nice; online learning has generally suited me, as tiring as it is to be in front of a screen all day. But taking a climate science course can depress the hell out of you. You should try it sometime. You'll learn about potential global security threats and read about the consequences of global temperature rise. You'll examine the current political moment and wonder how it'll evolve as problems intensify with each subsequent generation. Generation Z already has a lot on their plates, and unlike me, they've been exposed to social media from the time they were young, so they are aware of the world in a way I wasn't, and in a way my parents were not.
After Redditor TinyInfaMouseKid asked the online community, "What unique problems will Generation Z face in the future?" people shared their opinions.
"Everything is public..."
Privacy. Everything is public and there's no going back. All I know is that I don't look forward to my children digging into all the BS I put on the internet.
Their entire lives documented on the internet, in mostly public access.
It starts with their parents posting their infancy, toddlerhood, elementary years in Facebook/IG, then they get social media of their own without any true limits and that continues in high school, college, and the rest of their lives. Only some of that is within their control since friends and family can still post about them.
We've already seen the past come back to haunt every kind of public figure but we're only just now encountering the first generation that has truly always had the internet to document their existence. Will make things like political elections very interesting.
"The line between intellectual property..."
The line between intellectual property will blur to the point that we won't own anything.
"The embarrassing and cringy..."
The embarrassing and cringy stuff they've uploaded on the internet will stay there forever for everyone to see, including their future employers.
"No one will be anonymous..."
Facial recognition will be available to everyone. No one will be anonymous, everyone will be searchable based on their image.
"Lack of control..."
Lack of control of our own images. Everyone is online now, uploading photos of their faces from all angles; it won't be long till we all absentmindedly consent to give total creative control of our image to some website to reproduce, alter, monetize our images to them and all their subsidiaries' liking.
"I'm afraid..."
I'm afraid that we'll have to deal with at least one other pandemic in our lifetime. We will also have to continue to deal with "once in a century" weather events occurring more often thanks to climate change.
"They already exist..."
Algorithms and digital privacy. They already exist and are commonly used in everything from suggesting things to watch on Netflix to targeted adverts and over time they will just get more sophisticated and accurate, something they are already terrifyingly good at.
Our generation will also be the first to have access to the internet from childhood and much of our lives has been documented and stored there with that information being on display for the entire world to see.
At some point, I think both of these will come to a head and we will have to take a serious look at putting limits on or even banning predictive algorithms for monetization and clamping down hard on internet privacy and the information that companies like Google and Facebook have access to along with the information people have access to.
"I think there are so many things..."
I think there are so many things that will trip us up. It's just that we are a lot more aware of the world around us and I think that is definitely leading to higher cases of depression and anxiety. Just waking up and living in a world that you don't really believe in, or even understand is a slow soul-crushing thing. What can we really do about it, we are so indoctrinated into this world that we struggle to see a way out. There's no money, no opportunity, and just no support.
Imagine being born on a spaceship, all you've ever known is the space ship and then finding a book about earth, imagine seeing that and knowing you will never be able to leave those metal walls to see it. That's how we feel, we feel stuck in space, we don't know why we are here or what lead us here, besides what the people before us told us, and we are realising those people had no idea either.
We are a tired generation that looks forward to a lot of pain. I know I can speak to any of my close mates and they will all say they are tired, or depressed, or just really fed up, but what can we do about it? Really? Go up against governments that are way to complacent with the world as it is, because it suits them best, or try to get people to see what these corporations have been doing and will carry on doing if we don't do something about it.
So many people say that it's in our generation's hands to pull together and try get this to work but if you take a close look at what's really in our hands, it's not much.
How do we build a house with a few nails and a tree stump...
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