(88) Better than nothing
By Onno Hansen-Staszyński | Last Updated: 16 December 2025
As my wife and I described earlier (e.g. in our booklet and book), a significant number of adolescents lives in a state of partial dislocation: they have withdrawn to little islands of trust while keeping a distance to the vast ocean surrounding their islands. The inhabitants of the little islands, close friends and close relatives, can count on openness and spontaneity. Those not on the island cannot.
We also found that this state is a prime candidate to understand a paradox we found in our research: while most adolescents have someone their own age and an adult with whom they can talk honestly, a majority feels lonely nevertheless. The clash between the real situation and the subjective experience of the situation could be caused by the smallness of the islands. A feeling of being cut off from the world is likely to emerge from their experience of being trapped on a restricted territory.
Support for this hypothesis comes from an overwhelming sense of lack of agency and impact that is common among adolescents, as is noted in research literature on GenZ. This lack of agency both reflects and reinforces a feeling that they have no meaning, a feeling that was expressed by a majority of adolescents in our research.
GAIs
And then came generative AI. GAIs flatter. GAIs are always there, they personalize, and they align as if they are friends (see: blog post eighty-three). They represent the big world, but without costs or judgments. They are external but do not seem to have any of the unpredictability, deceitfulness, cruelty, or demandingness of the real ocean. So, GAIs seem attractive and many adolescents turn to them, for support in school tasks, and for any other kind of support.
But then, as Polish adolescents in fourteen classes made clear in our current pilot (see: blog post seventy-three), GAIs turn out to be frequently unreliable too. They sometimes invent facts, do not check sources, misinterpret commands, and repeat this behavior even when corrected. This can lead adolescents, in their own words, into error, and causes them to lose trust in GAIs. It triggers in them a feeling of permanent irritation. In addition, as a result of the faults of GAIs, they see that their school results suffer seriously – again, according to a majority of students in our pilot.
Hymn
This brings me to the horror described in blog post eighty-five. When describing why they use GAIs, adolescents in our classroom told us: “We take the risk.” “It is better than nothing.”
These words sound like a potential generational anthem of adolescents trapped on their islands and feeling compelled to do anything to make their island bigger; anything but jumping into the ocean. I’m curious which music style will put rhythm to these words. And, I hope I’m wrong.
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