Gen Z Feels ‘Doomed’ Watching AI, but Gen Alpha Feels Differently

Over 30 percent of young people feel either "doomed" or "scared" when watching AI-generated content, but a study found notable differences in age groups.

One of the more inexplicably popular sources of AI slop today is “Fruit Love Island,” an AI-generated TikTok parody series in which anthropomorphized fruits with abs and cleavage flirt and mingle in 60-second ripoffs of “Love Island.” It is as mind-numbingly dumb as it sounds, and though TikTok started suppressing and demonetizing the videos due to being low quality AI, per the series’ own website blog posts, it persists and has tens of millions of views.

Suffice it to say, your teenager or pre-teen may very well have come across these videos or could easily be obsessed with them. But depending on just how old your teen is, their mileage may vary.

A new study from UCLA and the Center for Scholars and Storytellers called “Rewrite This! How Gen Z and Gen Alpha are Redefining Modern Storytelling” showed that while a majority of young people actually view artificially generated content and stories positively, there is a noticeable shift in how they feel as today’s kids get older.

The study found that 53.8 percent of people between ages 10 and 24 described emotions of either “fascinated” or “excited,” while only 32.1 percent used the phrases “doomed” or “scared.” However, when asked to complete the sentence, “Watching a story with AI in it makes me feel…,” those who felt “doom” compared to “excitement” went up considerably as the survey participants aged up. 27.4 percent of 18-24 year olds used the emotion “doom” compared to just 9.7 percent of those aged 10-13 and 25.1 percent of those 14-18 years old. Nearly half of those between 10-13 felt “excitement” when watching AI content.

The study notes that many of the respondents’ feelings about AI come from AI-native videos they find on their social media feeds. “Fruit Love Island” was one such example, but turns out there are plenty of other examples of AI fruit littering TikTok. It also mentions brainrot memes like “tung tung tung sahur” (no clue) and AI soap operas via vertical, microdramas from ReelShort, DramaBox, Drama Wave, and Pocket Films.

This all feels significant because the narrative tends to be that Hollywood and tech companies are pushing AI even though a lot of people simply hate it and are even repulsed when they see endless amounts of slop on their feeds or in any sort of film or TV. But while the study doesn’t draw any grand conclusions, it suggests there might be a generation gap between Gen Z and the emerging Generation Alpha, who might feel differently and look more favorably at AI than other young people.

“I’d like to see AI portrayed in a balanced and realistic way, showing both its benefits and potential risks,” one 13-year-old polled for the study said. “It would be interesting to see AI helping people solve problems, learn new things, and improve everyday life while also exploring questions about trust, privacy, creativity, and human control.” Smart kid.

This is the fifth year of the study from UCLA and the Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Last year we covered the study with the takeaway that while many young people still love movies and series, many of them are not watching on TVs or in theaters themselves and instead are viewing through YouTube, on phones and laptops, or unconventionally on social media.

This year’s study touched on some of the same questions and found that more than half of young people still ranked “see a movie at the movie theater” as the top weekend activity with their friends if geography and money were not a constraint. But it also had some other new areas of study including what themes they most prefer to see depicted on screen (hopeful messages over partying and drinking), whether they want to see social media influencers in their movies and shows (surprisingly, no), and even if the movies did a good job depicting neurodivergence on screen (only 22.7 percent said “yes, most of the time”).

Find more from the study here.