Combatting helplessness

I’ve noticed a growing subconscious sense of helplessness in a lot of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, with myself included. My hypothesis is not that the youth is any less intelligent; it’s that they have exclusively lived situations with reliance on powerful tools. Right now, this includes LLM reliance for homework, needing maps to go anywhere, generally shutting the brain off during day-to-day tasks, and feeling helpless when things don’t go as expected.

The good thing is that this helplessness is learned. I think helplessness might not be the best word for it; the traits displayed are apathy, indifference, and, more than anything, disillusionment. For example: a group on a road trip hits a mobile dead-zone and now has “no idea” where they’re going. Why are we so reliant on the mobile map? Even more common right now is the case of ChatGPT not being able to solve a student’s coding assignment, so they give up because it’s too hard.

Ways to combat it

As I noted above, I have noticed some of the helpless thoughts in myself at times. These items below are what I’ve written down to remember that I ultimately control how I solve the problems in my life.

• Metaphorically and literally sometimes, turn off the map. Put it into your head that you can solve problems without assistance.
• Actually think! Try to solve problems yourself and only use tools to aid you on the path you already forged. Aim for optimism about why things could work rather than going straight to skepticism and reaching for a tool.
• Try to remember that the disillusionment is learned. You are just used to instant and thoughtless satisfaction.

Although it can be very beneficial to use powerful tools to speed up problem solving, it’s important to maintain the genuine belief that we are the driver. The danger with these tools is that we outsource our brain, forgetting that the pen does not write the book alone.

Reliance looks a bit different than I had imagined in 2023. I thought of it being more like the reliance on Google, where we ask AI to help us search and understand. Though that is partly true, the reliance has gone a level deeper. I am seeing genuine helplessness and unwillingness to think or continue on a problem if it’s not solved instantly. I find this very intriguing, because the helplessness seems to be due to a loss of efficiency. It’s like, “Well, if I can’t solve it trivially with tools in 5 minutes, I’m not going to give it a shot at all.” I’m hoping that by being more intentional with tool usage, I can remain in control of my own ability to think and solve.