How the Attention Economy Is Devouring Gen Z — and the Rest of Us

What It Covers

Kyla Scanlon explains how Gen Z navigates an economy where attention drives capital, predictable career paths have disappeared, and AI threatens entry-level jobs while social media creates nihilism and hollowness among young people.

Key Questions Answered

• •Gen Z Economic Reality: Twenty-three percent of Harvard MBAs were unemployed three months after graduation. The median age to buy a house is now 54 years old versus 34 in the 1980s. College degree wage premiums have eroded, creating legitimate data-backed reasons for generational nihilism beyond social media narratives.
• •Barbell Response Theory: Gen Z splits into two extreme risk responses to economic uncertainty: tool belt pragmatism (becoming plumbers, electricians, avoiding college debt) versus meme coin gambling and sports betting. Both paths reject the traditional college-to-white-collar-job trajectory that no longer delivers predictable returns on investment.
• •AI Job Market Fog: AI creates ambient uncertainty rather than immediate crisis. Companies like Salesforce automate 30-50 percent of workforce while spending billions on AI talent. This slow disruption means society will blame individuals for unemployment rather than deploy emergency policy responses like we would for sudden mass job loss.
• •Attention as Infrastructure: Attention functions as foundational economic input replacing land, labor, and capital. Narrative storytelling inflates attention value, while speculation operationalizes it through prediction markets. Polymarket bettors made $300,000 betting on Mamdani by tracking where attention flows and identifying incorrect narratives to exploit through financial speculation.
• •Trump as Algorithm Embodiment: Trump governs via Truth Social posts and bond market reactions, creating narratives that generate events rather than responding to them. He loses interest before reaching policy outcomes, moving between spectacles without strategy. This represents governance by Twitter algorithm logic rather than intentional distraction tactics.