Gen Z: Three Reasons to be Optimistic
Maybe it's not as bad a we think
I just gave the last lecture of the year to my first year students and I tried to provide some context for what I like to call “The mess we’re in”. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you probably know that the bottom rung of the career ladder is collapsing and generation Z is pretty disillusioned. I’ve been adjacent to design and technology for over 30 years and seen several boom and bust cycles related to “advancements in technology.”
I attempted my first Photoshop class in 1994, a weekend long intro where I didn’t return for the Sunday session. Computers were so confusing, and I was so frustrated, that it took me almost a decade to find my way. I was on the outside, looking in at who I believed were real designers…wondering how did they do that? I’ve witnessed the birth of the internet, the rise and fall of the NASDAQ, Facebook, YouTube, and the iPhone. By 2010, I was teaching similar two day workshops in Web Design and I had students, now in their forties, explaining that they were real designers, and were only doing this because they wanted to remain employed.
Flash forward another decade and a half, and I’ve seen the rise and fall of the UX design era. I started the 2010s by reading books the week before I taught the class and watched my students achieve enormous success throughout the industry. Photoshop gave way to Sketch, then inVision, AdobeXD, and, of course, Figma and the rise of the UX bootcamps. Everything gave way in 2023 when the low interest rates went away and big tech started laying people off.
I think it’s too simple to say that the rise of AI is to blame for the current economic predicament. I’ve seen technical skills rapidly go out of fashion every five years or so for three decades. One thing that has remained constant is that young people have always been early adopters of new technology and I think there is a huge opportunity if you see yourself as an AI Native. I’m not the only one. Mark Cuban, Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn), and Phillip Obrecht (founder of Canva) are all optimistic about the possibilities of young people having a big impact in the workplace of the near future.
The thing is, you have to start playing around with the tools now. With each new design software paradigm, there are some early misses before we all start using the greatest hits. My students, the class of 2026, will be getting much more exposure, and using AI tools every week in an effort to become AI Natives. If you’ve been sitting on the fence and waiting to see what’s going to happen, I think you’re making a big mistake. There will always be work for creative people, the tools will change, the job descriptions will change, and some sort of software will be “the way we do it” for a few years…until it isn’t.
So if you’re in your twenties right now, I suggest you start experimenting with the tools right now. There is literally no barrier to entry and many organizations won’t even care if you have a degree. If you’re curious, you like to build things or solve problems, and you’re willing to learn a new design/technology paradigm, there will be opportunities ahead. You could start with this great article from Fast Company about how to reduce your AI fluency gap.
Are these ‘fun’ or ‘cool’ jobs? Will you get to just play around in Photoshop for a few hours like we did in early 2000s? Probably not, but it’s better than having no job. I’ve heard critics say that Photoshop wasn’t real design, digital cameras weren’t real photography, Web design was for people who couldn’t design, and that UX isn’t even a form of design. Digital tools evolve rapidly, now more than ever, and it’s a lot easier to learn them when young and/or curious.
If you’ve got fifteen minutes and want to go deeper, I highly reccommend this video from Bilawel Sidhu. I found it clarifying and inspiring.
That’s it for today. I hope you’re having a fantastic summer and making every day count!
