How the Attention Economy Is Devouring Gen Z — and the Rest of Us
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The last few episodes of the show have been about attention, but about attention in terms of something else. Attention in terms of Zoran Mamdani and Donald Trump. Attention in terms of the big, beautiful bill. I wanted to do an episode that was about attention in terms of itself. If we're going to say attention is currency, if we're going to say it's power, well, what kind of currency is it? What kind of power is it? Where is it strongest? And where is it weakest? I'm a pretty loyal reader of this newsletter, Kyla's newsletter by Kyla Scanlon, which often feels to me like it's being sent back in time from some future economy. And in a way, it is. Kyla is very much a member of Gen Z. And the economy she is reporting on, the economy she is theorizing, is one that Gen Z has been turned out into, an economy that works much more digitally, an economy where attention drives capital as opposed to capital driving attention.
And so she has sort of emerged, I think, as a leading theorist of the economics of attention. Not how they work everywhere, but how they work in the part of the economy and the part of the society that is most exposed to attentional dynamics. Kyle is also the author of the book In This Economy, and you might have heard some of her different coinages like Vibe Session. She's a fascinating person to talk about this with. As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.
Kyla Scanlon, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
So what is different about the economy that you live in, that you see, that you feel Gen Z is experiencing from the way us like 40 and 50 year olds described or understood the economy?
So one of my pieces that went far was Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress. And it was based on my research over the past year. I've been traveling like on a quasi book tour, you know, going to a lot of college campuses and going to a lot of conferences. And I've been talking to young people about how they experience the economy and how they think about their future. And so for them, it doesn't feel like there's that quote unquote path of predictable progress that like maybe their parents had or their grandparents had. And of course, every generation has had its own challenges. But for Gen Z, you don't have that predictable return on a college education anymore because of things like AI, because of how expensive college has gotten.
You don't necessarily have a path toward buying a house that feels even remotely approachable anymore. And, you know, if you think about retirement or just moving through a career path, that also feels really far away. And so that whole piece was like, well, what does it look like if this path that everybody has followed has kind of disappeared more or less?
Let me stay on the topic of the feel of it. What does it feel like? If you can't see your way to a house, if you're not sure what the career paths are, if you're not sure what AI will do, like if you had to describe the emotional structure of the conversations you have with people on the tour, what are the dominant emotions?
I think there's a lot of worry. I mean, I think everybody picks up on this. Like there are so many think pieces about like the kids are not all right, right? Like there's a lot of nihilism. There's a lot of concern. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of anxiety. And you sense that when you talk to people because like they don't really know what to do because this path that has sort of been instilled in you from the time that you were little, like go to college, graduate, buy a house.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:39
2
What is the attention economy and why does it matter now?
5:39–13:42
3
How does Kyla Scanlon define the attention economy as a new economic substrate?
13:42–14:43
4
Why do Gen Zers feel a loss of the “predictable progress” path?
14:43–18:56
5
What emotions dominate Gen Z conversations about the future?
18:56–27:22
6
What is the “barbell theory” that explains how young people respond to economic uncertainty?
27:22–48:56
7
How is AI reshaping entry‑level jobs and what fears does it create for new workers?
48:56–1:07:46