• Jen Hartmann is the founder and CEO of a marketing agency in Louisville, Kentucky.
• She recently hired two Gen Zers to help with social media.
• Hartmann said the workers were eager to get feedback and improve.

Last year, Jen Hartmann found herself hours into a TikTok scroll. The founder and CEO of a marketing agency in Louisville, Kentucky, she was on the hunt for marketing trends. That night, she realized she needed a Gen Z employee. She’s since hired two and says it’s dramatically helped her brand.

This is an as-told-to essay based on an interview with Hartmann about hiring young employees. 

The interview process surprised me

I started interviewing Gen Z candidates for our roles in public-relations coordination because I was spending too much time on TikTok. As a CEO, I wanted to take a step back from client strategy. I thought Gen Z could bring a fresh perspective.

How the interview process shook out was totally unexpected.

I came to the table thinking: “They’re just looking for a job or a paycheck. They’ll be in and out the door in a month or two.”

That was not true: They came to the interviews dressed better than we were. They were prepared, had listened to relevant podcasts, and had looked at our website. And they emailed and messaged us on LinkedIn after the interviews to thank us. 

Their level of professionalism blew my mind. They were more professional than some of the millennials we had spoken with. 

My Gen Z employees take ownership of tasks and are open to feedback

Our Gen Zers were onboarded very quickly; they didn’t need as much hand-holding as I expected.

They also asked a lot of questions. As a founder, I appreciated that they were eager to learn and get feedback — not just on what they did well but also on what they could improve.  

I was also surprised by their willingness to take ownership. They contribute good ideas during client calls without even being asked. 

And if they make a mistake, they’re willing to take responsibility and fix it.

Prioritization, however, can be a little difficult for them. When you’re a new employee, it’s hard to figure out where to start if you have 15 things on your to-do list. I’ve had to work on that with them.

And when it comes to communication, we have to deliver feedback differently. I have to be gentler so it doesn’t get miscommunicated that I’m mad at them or going to fire them.

Gen Z seems to be a little more feelings-centric than millennials. Millennials have a harder outer shell. That’s not a bad thing. It’s great that Gen Z is in touch with and open about their emotions.

But because of that, millennial bosses need to be careful not to send the wrong message, especially if it’s all done over Slack or email.

Gen Z’s knowledge of social media is critical for businesses today

Gen Zers are constantly on TikTok. They’re very in the know, very in the loop. To keep up with our clients, we needed to bring on some Gen Zers who knew the trends and what influencers were up to.

It has made the biggest difference during client conversations. Half of their timely pitches are angles directly from TikTok. Our pitches are standing out because of this, and they’re getting picked up a lot more than they were in the past. 

Their knowledge of social also helps when building media lists, something that can take a long time for other generations. Many Gen Zers read major publications and keep up with the journalists and their work by following them on social media. That makes the lists much more effective and quicker than ever before.

Since hiring Gen Z employees, I’ve been able to take that step back that I was looking for, and their work has truly benefited the business.

With its recent API access cost increases causing much angst within the developer community, Twitter has come back with a new API access tier, which will provide more tweet access for a more reasonable price.

As highlighted above, the new ‘Pro’ tweet API offering provides developers with access to a million tweets per month, at the low, low price of $5k per month – or $60k per annum. Which, for some, will be an improvement than the existing access points, which have already priced many developers and academics out of their various projects. But still, $5k per month for a million tweets is a lot – especially when Twitter’s free API access, up till February this year, provided developers with similar access to this, free of cost.

Twitter’s new API access charges, which it’s implemented to combat the creation of bot armies, are a significant jump on the previous costs, with Elon and Co. also looking to do all that they can to bring in more revenue for the company.

The updated pricing immediately saw many public service tools, like transport alerts, announce that they’d be canceling their automated Twitter updates – though Twitter has since announced that approved services like these will still be able to access the API for free.

But that doesn’t cover many other bot tools and services that also provide value, and the risk in Twitter’s approach is that it could become a less valuable utility as a result, which may eventually impact usage.

But as noted, Musk sees the API as a potential vector for bot swarms. And as with Twitter Blue, Elon’s hoping that by tacking on extra charges to such access, that’ll effectively make it cost-prohibitive for bot creators to keep running their schemes.

Though there is another potential consideration in Musk’s API and access price rises, which is more aligned with his own personal grievances.

Twitter’s also taking on Microsoft over its use of Twitter data, via API access, which it claims is beyond the limitations imposed within Microsoft’s approved usage. Microsoft is now partnered with OpenAI, a company that Elon once had a significant investment in, and Musk’s view is that OpenAI has essentially stolen Twitter data to train its LLM systems, in order to fuel generative AI tools like ChatGPT.

The brief summary is that Elon gave OpenAI millions of dollars to assist in its development, then sought to take over as CEO of the company in 2018, in order to hasten its progress. OpenAI rebutted Musk’s offer, which then saw Elon turn his back on it, and pull all of his future funding pledges. But OpenAI had already taken some millions from Musk – and now that OpenAI is making big money from its generative AI tools, Elon is apparently not happy that he isn’t going to get a dime of that intake, despite his early involvement.

This could be another factor in his decision to hike up the price of Twitter API access, in order to restrict other companies from taking Twitter’s proprietary data, and profiting off of his content in a similar way.

Elon’s also building his own generative AI model, which will be free of ‘woke bias’, and everything considered, it’s not beyond the scope of possibility that Elon’s pushing up the costs of Twitter API access in order to fend off his various business rivals.

(Note that Twitter is also asking API subscribers to remove any previously downloaded data, or face further legal recourse)

Though the main impetus seems to be Twitter’s need to diversify its income, with subscriptions, API access and advertising ideally settling into a more equal share of the company’s revenue pie.

Vilket verkar osannolikt att bli slutresultatet, men Elon försöker nya saker – och kanske finns det tillräckligt många potentiella indikatorer där för att fortsätta driva, för att maximera Twitters möjligheter. Eller så kanske det inte finns det, och så småningom kommer Twitter att behöva gå tillbaka till dessa förändringar. Det tillvägagångssättet är till synes en del av det som har gjort Musk framgångsrik, hans vilja att försöka misslyckas offentligt, och kanske kommer det att presentera potentiella nya möjligheter för verksamheten.

Twitter är nytt API-prissättningssystem är nu i kraft.  

Amerikas högsta hälsotjänsteman sa att det finns växande bevis för att användning av sociala medier är förknippad med skada på unga människors mentala hälsa – Copyright AFP/Arkiv DENIS CHARLET

Den högsta amerikanska hälsotjänstemannen utfärdade på tisdagen en skarp varning till föräldrar, teknikföretag och tillsynsmyndigheter och sa att bevisen växer för att användning av sociala medier kan skada barn allvarligt.

I en lång rådgivning sa den amerikanske kirurggeneralen Vivek Murthy att även om det inte är utan fördelar, "finns det gott om indikatorer på att sociala medier också kan ha en djup risk för skada på barns och ungdomars psykiska hälsa och välbefinnande."

Användningen av sociala medier av unga människor i USA är nästan universell, med upp till 95 procent av ungdomarna som rapporterar att de använder en social plattform och mer än en tredjedel säger att de gör det "nästan konstant", enligt Department of Health and Human Services.

Murthys rapport sa att sociala medier kan hjälpa barn och ungdomar att hitta en gemenskap att ansluta, men att den också innehåller "extremt, olämpligt och skadligt innehåll", som kan "normalisera" självskada och självmord.

Det kan vidmakthålla kroppsmissnöje, ätstörningar och depression och utsätta barn för onlinemobbning medan de genomgår ett kritiskt skede i hjärnans utveckling, varnade rapporten.

Murthy uppmanade beslutsfattare att stärka säkerhetsstandarderna kring sociala medier och uppmanade teknikföretag att ansvarsfullt bedöma effekten av deras produkter på barn och dela data med forskare.

Han rådde också föräldrar att skapa teknikfria zoner hemma för att främja personlig kommunikation och att utbilda barn genom att modellera ett sunt, ansvarsfullt beteende online.

Rapporten kommer vid en tidpunkt då myndigheter över hela USA letar efter sätt att reglera användningen av sociala medier och stävja dess negativa effekter på särskilt unga människor.

Tidigare denna månad förbjöd den amerikanska delstaten Montana användningen av TikTok på dess territorium. Den kinesiskägda videodelningsjätten ifrågasätter beslutet i domstol. Och i mars blev Utah den första amerikanska delstaten att kräva att sociala medier ska få föräldrarnas samtycke för konton som används av minderåriga.

"Vi är mitt i en nationell psykisk kris för ungdomar, och jag är oroad över att sociala medier är en viktig drivkraft för den krisen - en som vi snarast måste ta itu med," sa Murthy.