Are we ready for Gen Alpha’s always-on, search-anything mentality?

Aah Goo-goo, paaayh Jimmy Eat Woaw-d! That’s my son Myles, asking our Google Home device to play his favourite song, currently Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle”. He turned two, two weeks ago.

He’s been lobbying “Aah Goo-goo” to play Puffin Rock for months, but this was his first successful interaction with AI. His dopamine surge was palpable. (This is an interesting read about search and reward triggers.)

We excitedly jumped up and down with him, only slightly masking the sense of discombobulation on both our faces.

We can’t begin to comprehend the world view these kids are developing into as they grow.

Our tiny human has been trying to get “Aah Goo-goo” to broadcast episodes of Puffin Rock to our television for more than six months now.

He knows that both my phone and his dad’s phone can play that “tiny train video” (the online world of model toy train videos is vast).

And when we take a video of him, he wants to “see Myles”, asking us to play the clip back to him.

For these tiny Generation Alphas it’s already a world in which media is instantly accessible, anywhere, upon verbal request and where the line is ever-thinner between the media made by others and that made by them (or their parents).