• Apple is developing software for users to create custom emojis using generative AI.
• Siri will get a generative AI upgrade to improve natural speech and new task capabilities.
• New AI features for iOS 18 and macOS 15 include transcribing voice memos and retouching photos.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But that was before we had emojis. And before emojis had AI.

Apple is developing software for users to create customized emojis on the go as part of a new spate of generative AI features, according to Bloomberg. These features go beyond the catalog of emojis Apple offers by creating a special emoji for each situation.

Siri is also getting a generative AI makeover. With the help of Apple's own large language models, its virtual assistant will should sound more natural, and the Apple Watch will get a more advanced version of Siri to assist with tasks on the go, Bloombeg reported. Apple hopes the technology will also help Siri improve upon the tasks it already does, like responding to questions, and take on new tasks like summarizing text messages.

Apple also aims to release new AI features for iOS 18 and macOS 15 to transcribe voice memos, retouch photos, and speed up and improve search results.

Next month, Apple will likely discuss some of these features at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The company has been pretty quiet about its generative AI strategy — especially compared to other tech giants like Google and Microsoft — but that doesn't mean you should count it out of the AI arms race. CEO Tim Cook promised in February that "AI "will affect every product and service we have."

It's par for the course for Apple to be a little late to the announcement game.

"Apple is very rarely first to market," Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, a tech consulting firm, previously told Business Insider. "They prefer to come in and disrupt the market — take anything from wearables to smartphones to tablets. They've never been first."

• Hillary Clinton said that Democrats didn't do enough to stop the demise of Roe.
• "We didn't take it seriously, and we didn't understand the threat," she told The New York Times.
• Ahead of November, abortion and reproductive rights are top of mind for many voters.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview for a forthcoming book, made some of her strongest remarks to date about the fall of Roe v. Wade, arguing that the Democratic Party underestimated the anti-abortion movement.

In advance of the June release of the book, "The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America," Clinton told The New York Times that Democrats believed that the court system and legal precedents would protect abortion rights — until the US Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that those rights were not protected by the Constitution.

"We didn't take it seriously, and we didn't understand the threat," Clinton, the party's 2016 presidential nominee, told the Times. "Most Democrats, most Americans, did not realize we are in an existential struggle for the future of this country."

"We could have done more to fight," she added.

The book, written by Times journalists Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, explores the decadeslong push to dismantle Roe v. Wade and the ramifications of its demise.

During the interview, Clinton lamented that Democrats were "taken by surprise" by the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. She argued that she never became complacent over the potential for a conservative-led Supreme Court to reverse Roe.

"One thing I give the right credit for is they never give up," she told the Times. "They are relentless. You know, they take a loss. They get back up. They regroup. They raise more money."

"It's tremendously impressive the way that they operate," she continued. "And we have nothing like it on our side."

Since the fall of Roe, Democrats have benefited in elections across the country, with many independents and even some Republicans backing ballot measures protecting abortion rights. And Democratic candidates fared much better than predicted in the 2022 midterms in part because they supported abortion rights, a position largely in line with suburban voters who have dramatically moved away from a GOP now controlled by former President Donald Trump.

Democrats plan to use the issue against Trump this year, telling voters that it was his Supreme Court appointments that have now caused a patchwork of abortion laws across the country — with some states enacting near-total abortion bans and others expanding access.

Trump has sought to moderate his views on the issue. He criticized a near-total abortion ban in Arizona that has since been repealed by the legislature.

But Clinton is warning that the conservative push to restrict abortion further will not abate.

"More people have got to wake up because this is the beginning," she told the Times. "They really want us to just shut up and go home. That's their goal."

• Bette Nash, the world's longest-serving flight attendant, has died from cancer at age 88.
• Nash started her career in 1957 with Eastern Airlines. 
• She witnessed major changes in air travel, from the jet age to post-9/11 security measures.

The world's longest-serving flight attendant has died from cancer at the age of 88.

In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, American Airlines said: "We mourn the passing of Bette Nash, who spent nearly seven decades warmly caring for our customers in the air."

"She started in 1957 and held the Guinness World Record for longest-serving flight attendant. Bette inspired generations of flight attendants. Fly high, Bette," the post continues.

Nash never officially retired from her role with American Airlines. She died in hospice after a recent breast cancer diagnosis.

Nash got her first job as a flight attendant with Eastern Airlines — which later became American Airlines — in 1957, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House.

"You had to be a certain height, you had to be a certain weight. It used to be horrible. You put on a few pounds and you had to keep weighing yourself, and then if you stayed that way, they would take you off the payroll," Nash previously told ABC affiliate WJLA about the early days of her career.

She told ABC News in 2022 that a ticket for a flight between New York and Washington, DC, cost just $12 at the time, adding that passengers could even purchase life insurance from a vending machine before boarding their plane.

Over the course of her career, Nash saw huge changes to the aviation industry, including the effects of deregulation, the computer revolution, and the heightened security measures that came into effect following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

She also saw flying become increasingly accessible following a boom in commercial air travel in the 1950s.

By 1955, more people in the US traveled by air than by train, and by 1957, airplanes had also replaced ocean liners as the preferred means of crossing the Atlantic, according to the National Air and Space Museum.

Just as Nash was starting out, jet passenger service also began in the US with the arrival of the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 airliners.

"The jet engine revolutionized air travel. Powerful and durable, jets enabled aircraft manufacturers to build bigger, faster, and more productive airliners," the National Air and Space Museum says on its website, adding that almost half of all Americans had flown by 1972.

In an X statement, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants said Nash "touched many with her warmth, dedication, and service."

"RIP, Bette. You won't be forgotten," it added.

• The baby-boomer "time bomb" is finally upon us, economists say.
• All boomers will be at least 65 soon, the generation's point of "peak burden" on the economy.
• Future generations can take solace in the fact that no boomer-size generations are in the making.

A time bomb has been ticking in the US.

It's the baby boomers, who as they age are approaching their "peak burden" years in regard to their drag on the economy and the resources of younger generations.

Boomers have already gotten tons of flak from younger people over the economy they've left Gen Zers, millennials, and Generation X to inherit. By the end of this year, all boomers — defined by the US Census Bureau as being born from 1946 to 1964 — will be 60 or older.

This means the youngest boomers are rapidly approaching retirement, and a bigger retirement population means more of a drag on the US economy, a burden that Barclays senior economist Jonathan Millar expects to stretch on for the next 20 years. 

"The peak burden," Millar told Business Insider, is when essentially all living baby boomers have hit retirement. "And we're getting there."

The date could fall sometime around 2029, when the youngest boomers will be 65, according to a Census Bureau report.

A population time bomb

It isn't the boomers' fault they were born. They didn't choose to be a mammoth-size generation that's left the US with a big and probably expensive retirement-age population.

And it isn't the case that baby boomers will derail economic growth nearly as much as, say, a full-blown recession, according to Dean Baker, an economist who described the baby boomers as a "time bomb" in a 1998 paper.

"Yes, it does create strains, but the idea was just some horrible catastrophe that loomed on the horizon," he said of the public dialogue on aging boomers. "It was really just craziness."

Still, the consequences of an aging population are real — and it's expected to weigh on the US over the coming decades. Older people are just one of the many factors weighing on Japan's economy, for instance, with people over 65 making up more than 25% of the overall population.

Baby boomers have already weighed on the US economy, and the cohort risks being a bigger drag in the coming years, Millar said.

Boomers are taking up the housing supply

Boomers are taking up a disproportionately large share of the housing supply compared with previous generations. That has been a pain for other homebuyers, as lower housing inventory has helped push up home prices.

The housing market saw its worst year of sales since 1995 in 2023, according to the National Association of Realtors. Existing homeowners have had little incentive to downsize their homes, many of which are fully paid off or financed at ultralow rates.

"It probably means we're headed for five or six years where baby boomers contribute to very strong housing demand, and we're going to have high house prices as a result," Millar warned.

Boomers also appear to be hogging the larger homes that millennials would otherwise be flocking to as they start families. In 2022, empty-nester baby boomers owned 28% of large homes in the US, a Redfin analysis found, double the share of millennial families.

Boomers are contributing to the labor shortage

The US has more open jobs than available workers. That gap is likely to widen as more boomers leave the workforce.

As of January, the Chamber of Commerce estimated that the economy was still down about 1.7 million workers compared with before the coronavirus pandemic. The labor market, meanwhile, is staring at 9.5 million job openings.

The labor shortage could eventually spell trouble for the economy, as a low supply of workers pushes up wages, which can stoke inflation.

Boomer retirees are also still demanding goods and services in the economy. If they aren't contributing anything in labor, that demand is also inherently inflationary, Millar added.

Boomers are a risk to the stock market

Retirees, who are less tolerant of stock-market volatility, also pose a downside risk to stocks. Boomers are more likely to sell if the US economy tips into a recession. That's a problem, considering that analysis by Rosenberg Research found people 55 and older account for 80% of stock-market ownership in the US.

"Retirees don't have the luxury to buy and hold through a market downturn," the economist David Rosenberg said in a recent note. "If a downturn does materialize, demographically induced selling is a force that could exacerbate the spiral powerfully, with the effects ricocheting into consumer spending."

Boomers will drain Social Security

Finally, boomers are set to collect a large amount in Social Security payments. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is expected to be depleted in 2033, a year earlier than previously expected, the Social Security Administration said in a new report.

Politicians are averse to raising taxes or slashing spending on social programs, Millar noted, and are unlikely to let payments lapse. Instead, they'll most likely pay for the program by taking on more debt to keep funding retirees through old age.

"Any way you slice it, this is a burden on current and future generations of taxpayers," Millar added.

The silver lining is that there doesn't appear to be a baby-boomer redux in the making, Baker said. Millennials are a large generation, but after that, Gen Z and Alpha look to be much smaller, meaning there won't be a similar time bomb ticking for the economy.

"I think it's very unlikely that we're going to see another population boom like we had in the post-World War II years," Baker said. "If there's some set of events that lead to that, it's nothing I can see on the horizon."

Correction: February 5, 2024 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly described data from the National Association of Realtors. It found the housing market to have had its worst sales in 2023 since 1995, not ever.

This story was originally published in February 2024.

• Trump vowed to commute Ross Ulbricht's sentence at the Libertarian National Convention.
• Libertarians view Ulbricht's life sentence as a symbol of government overreach.
• Trump also promised to include a Libertarian in his cabinet if elected.

Donald Trump made an address at the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday, promising to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the jailed founder of the infamous online drug marketplace Silk Road.

"If you vote for me, on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht," Trump declared to enthusiastic applause from the crowd in Washington, DC. 

The move to highlight Ulbricht was strategically catered to Libertarian voters.

Ulbricht, now 40, who was imprisoned for life in 2015, is an unjustly imprisoned hero of the US libertarian movement.

The Libertarian Party, with its long-standing advocacy for drug legalization and criminal justice reform, has consistently lobbied for Ulbricht's release, viewing his life sentence as a symbol of government overreach.

Ulbricht became interested in libertarian values at university, according to a Wired report, where he discovered the ideas of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, an advocate of the moral purpose of free-market capitalism and staunch opponent of interventionism. Ulbricht embraced these ideas of uncompromised freedom, per Wired.

"When I created Silk Road, I wasn't seeking financial gain," Ulbricht's wrote in a heartfelt letter to his trial judge in 2015.

"I created Silk Road because I believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren't hurting anyone else," he wrote.

In 2015, he was given life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was also fined $183,961,921.

Ulbricht is being held at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson.

The majority of goods sold on Silk Road were illegal hardcore drugs, said the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York at his trial.

"Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness," wrote Ulbricht. "While I still don't think people should be denied this right, I never sought to create a site that would provide another avenue for people to feed their addictions."

Trump, who was loudly booed and heckled during much of his speech at the Libertarian National Convention, did manage to partially win the audience around by committing to free Ulbricht.

Katherine Yeniscavich, a Libertarian Party national committee member, told Politico, "It's one of the things we wanted from his first term."

In addition to the Ulbricht pledge, Trump made further pledges, promising to include a Libertarian in his cabinet and others in senior administrative positions if elected.

• The Federal Reserve published its Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking this week.
• The percentage of parents with children under 18 who felt "financially okay" declined.
• It's the lowest percentage since 2015. Skyrocketing childcare costs are likely to blame.

The financial well-being of American parents with young children is plummeting, highlighting how unaffordable childcare costs have become.

The Federal Reserve published its annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking on May 21. The survey, which collected answers from 11,000 people in October 2023, examines the economic well-being of US households and potential financial risks.

While the report said people's overall financial well-being was "nearly unchanged" between 2022 and 2023, some groups "continued to experience financial stress at higher rates than others."

That included parents with children under 18.

The percentage of parents with children under 18 who felt "okay financially" dropped from 69% in 2022 to 64% in 2023.

The 2023 data point is a stark decline from 2021 when 75% of parents said they felt comfortable financially. Data from the Federal Reserve shows that parents haven't felt this financially insecure since 2015, when it recorded 65%.

Comparatively, the percentage of adults who don't have children under 18 and feel "okay financially" hasn't dipped below 70% in the last eight years.

The report doesn't give specific reasons for the growing financial concern, but the rising cost of childcare has been a national concern for years.

The cost of childcare has skyrocketed in the United States, making it difficult for families to maneuver the current economy.

"Childcare costs can be significant for parents," the Federal Reserve report says. "The median monthly amount that parents using paid care paid for childcare was $800. For those who paid for 20 or more hours of childcare each week, the median cost was $1,100."

Business Insider estimated that it could cost parents nearly $26,000 a year to care for one child in 2024 — a 41.5% increase from 2016. A 2024 Bank of America analysis also found that the United States has the second most expensive childcare system among developed countries.

That analysis, which ranked New Zealand No. 1, found that the average couple with two children spent more than 30% of their combined wages on childcare.

• Benjamin Netanyahu's son shared a video of an alleged masked reservist, reports said.
• His speech appears to threaten a mutiny of IDF soldiers in Gaza. 
• The IDF has opened a criminal investigation into the incident.

The son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a video appearing to show an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservist threatening a mutiny if the Israeli government did not push for "complete victory" over Hamas, The Times of Israel reported.

The IDF has since announced that it is opening a criminal investigation into the video, which was shared on Telegram by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Yair, saying in a statement that it represents a "serious violation of IDF orders and IDF values, and constitutes a suspicion of criminal offences," per NBC News.

The man identifying himself as an Israel Defense Forces reservist is masked, holding a weapon, and standing in what appears to be ruins of a building with Hebrew graffiti on the wall nearby. It could not be verified where the video was filmed.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the video is for you," said the alleged soldier.

"We reservist soldiers do not intend to hand the keys over to any Palestinian authority," the man says in the video, per The Times of Israel. "We do not intend to give the keys to Gaza to any entity — Hamas, Fatah, or any other Arab entity. Reservist soldiers are behind you, and we want to win."

The alleged reservist also demanded that Yoav Gallant, Israel's defense minister, resign.

"Yoav Gallant, you can't win the war. Quit," the man said, adding that 100,000 reservists would place themselves at the border and refuse to move, per reports.

We will show you what a victory is, and we will show you how real Jews win," he said.

Benjamin Netanyahu's office issued a statement:: "The Prime Minister is consistent in this position; he completely rejects any display of refusal to serve from any side whatsoever and expects all official agencies to deal with it uniformly."

The release of the 'mutiny" footage follows another video that circulated on social media earlier this week that appeared to show an Israeli soldier in Gaza burning a copy of the Quran, Islam's holiest book. The IDF said on Friday it was investigating the alleged incident, said The Times of Israel.

Netanyahu's son, Yair, 32, who is believed to live in a luxury apartment near Miami, Florida, is a controversial figure in Israel.

The Times of Israel described him as "a prolific right-wing agitator on social media." He was alleged to have sway over his father and had once influenced his decision to sack a minister in Netanyahu's government.

The video furor comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor formally requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant earlier this month.

Karim Khan said he had "reasonable grounds to believe" that the two men, who have been in charge of Israel's offensive in Gaza since Hamas' October 7 attacks, "bear criminal responsibility" for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Khan also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders.

Business Insider contacted the IDF for comment.

• Elisa moved from Paris into a luxury communal house with 15 other people in New York City.
• For $2,000 a month, she gets a fully furnished room and common spaces in a three-floor townhouse.
• She loves the sense of community with her roommates and doesn't plan to leave anytime soon.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Elisa, a partnership manager and business developer living in New York City who asked to be identified by only her first name to protect her employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved from Paris to New York in 2022 when I was headhunted for my job at a French startup. It wasn't planned, and everything happened quickly.

I tried to look for an apartment while still in Paris, but deep diving into Facebook groups didn't fill me with confidence, and I was worried about being scammed.

I heard about Cohabs from one of my best friends from France, who lived in one of the houses. Cohabs are share houses in cities around the world, and there are a few houses each in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

My friend offered for me to stay with her for two weeks so I could look for apartments, but then I fell in love with other people who lived there. It helped me make friends straight away.

There was an opening, so I moved into the same three-floor townhouse as my friend in Harlem. I love it.

You're screened before you can move in

The Cohabs team ensures you have the right vibe and are there for the right reasons before you can sign a lease.

The questions were fairly straightforward: They asked my age, the reason I moved to New York, how I heard about Cohabs, what are my previous experiences with flatmates, and what are my hobbies.

You can sign a lease for six months or one year, and I chose one year.

House rules are written into the lease

The lease has some things you have to agree to that are above and beyond a typical lease agreement.

We agree to pay our rent on time, be respectful of others, clean our room when we move out to receive our deposit back, keep common spaces organized, wash our dishes, organize for the team of housekeepers, respect each other, let our housemates know when we invite people over, take out the trash, and reduce, reuse, and recycle.

The rent is fair to me for what I get

I pay $2,000 a month for my 135-square-foot fully-furnished room, which includes all utility costs.

I feel it's fair when you consider that you're renting a room plus the huge common spaces. Each floor has its own furnished open kitchen and living room. I share a bathroom with one flatmate, but there are different bathroom arrangement options based on your room.

The house feels super homey — it's clean, and the furniture is vintage and really nice. A housekeeping team comes once a week.

There's also an app to submit repair requests, so if you have a problem with the coffee machine, for example, you can create a ticket, and a member of the Cohabs team will come and help you fix it.

The shared spaces are big: We have a huge backyard with a barbecue, a rooftop with tables, a huge television room with sofas, a gym, and a laundry room.

16 of us live in the house

It sounds wild when I say I have 15 roommates, but it feels like I'm on "Friends" the TV show. I love having a little family in New York and friends I can count on.

Many of us are very far from our loved ones and are fairly new to New York. We have Americans, Spanish, English, and French among our nationalities. The age range is 23 to 32, which sounds like a lot but works well.

Every night when I come home from work, people are in the kitchen making food and having meals together. That makes me really happy.

This feels better than a typical share house

I was super nervous when I moved to New York because I only knew one person, so moving into the house was a relief. My number one fear was feeling lonely, so this was the perfect solution.

I've lived in shared flats and houses before, but the sense of community here is much stronger. The Cohabs team really emphasizes this — on the first Sunday of every month, they send us a brunch for everyone to bond over. They also organize events like going rock climbing together.

The bottom line is respect

We're adults, so we know how to live in a community and respect each other. I haven't seen any weird fights or drama.

Living together has been easy, as we have similar lifestyles, but if you want to have people over, you do need to warn everyone else.

My family came to visit from Europe, and my parents were impressed with the house. They stayed in a hotel, but if my brother came alone, he probably would've stayed with me in the house.

We've started some of our own traditions

Last Christmas, we put up a tree and hung pictures of our heads instead of ornaments.

For New Year's Eve, we all bought a tiny bottle of Champagne and told each other our goals for the year. Every time one of us achieves that goal, they get to pop their bottle of Champagne.

My family and friends have asked me if at some point I want to go and live in a more conventional place. The truth is I really don't.

• Calli Nguyen, 24, was fired from her job as a director of digital marketing after less than a week.
• Nguyen says mental health and employee respect in the workplace is important.
• She emphasizes Gen Z's unwillingness to settle for toxic work environments.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Calli Nguyen, a 24-year-old social media marketer from Baton Rouge, LA, about getting fired after less than one week of work. It's been edited for length and clarity.

Before I started as the director of digital marketing for a medical spa, I gave my boss the benefit of the doubt because I just wanted a job. What could go wrong?

Turns out, everything.

While I've worked many jobs, this director role was my first paid full-time position in digital marketing. I rationalized that maybe I was going through a learning curve; or that I just had the jitters. But on the third day of work, when I left my desk for a quick mental health break, I was fired on the spot. To be fair, I saw the red flags but ignored them.

I read the negative Glassdoor and Google reviews left by former clients and employees. One review said that five employees quit within two weeks. The review underscored that employers should not mistreat their employees regardless of their age. Also, before I even started the job, I agreed to change my role from client care coordinator to director of digital marketing without changing my hourly pay of $16. Yet, immediately after I was fired, I felt like a failure.

I now feel that getting fired after less than a week of employment was a blessing in disguise. The experience taught me that not every opportunity is a good opportunity. But more importantly, protecting my mental health and having employers see the value in me is more important than earning money.

My boss refused to take my advice

I didn't think it was a big deal that my former boss wanted me to switch gears to social media marketing after I applied on Indeed for an office coordinator role. Afterall, I did list my social media marketing skills on my résumé.

After I accepted the new role over the phone with her general manager, I looked forward to honing in on my creative skills while helping a small, independent business grow and gain more customers. But how can I help someone who refuses to listen to my advice?

My boss wanted her social media marketing to look a certain way: showcasing stock photos of attractive women with outdated fonts.

I showed her the analytics on the low-performing social media posts and that I knew how to update her online presence to gain more customers, but she refused to absorb anything I had to say. So I followed her creative lead — until I became overwhelmed by her demands.

I was shocked to find out that my boss wanted more from me than what I produced

On my third day, I started a project to build posts for the company's social media accounts and research her competitors' special offers. I presented everything she asked for. While she seemed happy with my social posts and the offers that I found, she needed more from me.

Without warning, she asked which products the other medical spas used. I spiraled into a tailspin.

I didn't know anything about specific products in the medical spa industry. I didn't even know what she wanted me to research. She never brought up my level of product knowledge in our initial interview, nor did anyone ask me to find out about the competitors' products when explaining the project to me.

She said I should've known to research the different products used by our competitors. Then, she launched into a list of other deliverables that I should've done. After a few minutes of her feedback, I felt overwhelmed.

Mental health and respect at work are mandatory

I stood up and told her I needed to take a break. So, I walked toward the front door.

She tried stopping me. I didn't give in. I already vowed to never let anyone disrespect me at work. I said, "Ma'am, respectfully, I need to step outside and take a breather. I'll be back in a few minutes."

She fired me, saying that I wasn't going to work out for her. I thought to myself, "Oh, awesome," as I tried to keep my demeanor professional. I was so pissed off.

To be fair, I wanted to quit, so she got me before I got her. As I approached the front desk, I looked at the general manager and trainer and told them that I was fired. The general manager offered me a recommendation letter despite all the drama.

I said goodbye to my coworkers after 2.5 days

I felt like a failure after two days and about six hours of work on day three. I said goodbye to my coworkers and told them that I was fired as I walked out the door for the last time. But I really felt depressed too.

I texted "9-1-1" to my mom while she was at work and started sobbing on the phone with her in the parking lot. I kept apologizing to her for being a failure, even though I knew I worked in a toxic environment.

Afterward, I spent a month in bed while working remotely for another company.

I've been in the workforce since I was about 16 or 17 years old and have worked with various age groups. That said, some Gen Z workers are lazy and unreliable, and I've seen the TikToks that say that Gen Z is rude, too. At the same time, we want what everyone else wants: for our employers to value us, to enjoy our jobs and work environment, and to receive proper training so that we'll thrive.

Gen Z knows that there's somewhere better for us

While the older generations might have put up with toxic work environments, we're speaking up for ourselves and not settling.

I'm more than happy to receive constructive criticism, as long as the feedback does not cross the line into degradation and disrespect. The workforce continuously changes, and employers must be open to flexibility, growth, and change.

Gen Z knows that there's somewhere better for us if we don't get what we want out of a job — that's why I'm working at a reputable advertising agency that respects me, advocates for mental health, and cultivates a fun and enjoyable work environment.

As an employee, it's not on me if a boss doesn't want to learn or be flexible. I can't help a boss to grow, and I can't grow in a toxic environment, right?

If you're a Gen Z worker and want to share your story, email Manseen Logan at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

Updated May 7, 2024 — An earlier version of this story did not clarify that the director role was Calli Nguyen's first paid full-time digital marketing job, not her first time working in digital marketing.