Gen Z
Article
Gen Z is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 03, 2022 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “call for projects from members of Gen Z with a focus on international and underrepresented voices”; “The Millennial/Gen Z complaint is real”; “People in their 20s are now Gen Z”. It most often appears alongside Aella, Boomers, Boston.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: February 03, 2022
- Last seen: December 31, 2025
Appears In
- ACX Grants ++: The First Half
- Your Book Review: The Pale King
- Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
Related Pages
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- Aella (2 shared issues)
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- Boomers (2 shared issues)
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- Boston (2 shared issues)
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- Germany (2 shared issues)
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- Japan (2 shared issues)
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- Mexico (2 shared issues)
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- OECD (2 shared issues)
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- Scott (2 shared issues)
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- Substack (2 shared issues)
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- Switzerland (2 shared issues)
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- Tyler Cowen (2 shared issues)
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- UK (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
#49: Fund Promising Young People Hello World is a nonprofit that is trying to make it easier to do good in the world. We believe everyone should have access to the relevant skills, networks, and capital that enable them to pursue solutions to the issues of our time - starting with justice, climate change, mental health, and improving education. Our next step is to run a call for projects from members of Gen Z with a focus on international and underrepresented voices – your contribution ($100-$1000) will directly fund promising young people; you'll have the opportunity to allocate your support to specific geos and topics. To learn more email me (Nick Barr, cofounder) at nick@gethello.org and to get to know some of our members, check out https://helloworldnetwork.org/portfolios.
The Millennial/Gen Z complaint is real: the economic conditions are harder than they were in the 50s/70s/90s; the world of our parents no longer exists; starting a family is exorbitant. So why should we subject ourselves to bureaucratic tedium and keep society running, when society doesn’t seem to care much about us?
I think the same principle applies more generally. People are unhappy, and they can easily determine that. But that doesn’t mean they know what would change that fact. Money and material standard of living are easy to point to as things that would make life better, but my understanding of the research is that how much happier people think they will be after making more money is higher than how much happier they actually become. People in their 20s are now Gen Z, i.e. people who were raised after several generations of an increasing trend to shelter children and prevent them from having any independence, and who have been exposed to a constant stream of social media since middle school. One can debate whether these really are the problem, but I certainly wouldn’t expect zoomers to say, “oh yeah, obviously I’m unhappy because I was protected from challenge as a child, had to be driven everywhere, was never allowed to practice being independent until after college, community life has been severely hampered, and I’ve been exposed to brain-rotting forms of media since I was old enough to read, in total contrast to my parents and every previous generation” even if that’s true.
By Zoomers’ metric, about 1.5% of Americans are “financially successful”. Could their high standard for success be related to why they feel like they are unsuccessful, and from there why they think the economy’s bad?
Victor Thorne, responding to a demand that Zoomers to justify themselves, wrote:
Inline links: wrote: