How Gen Z could shape the ‘internet of things’

How will Gen Z use this network in the future?

Right now, market research suggests that Gen Z mostly uses the Internet of Things platform for social media, music, and personal communication. Cortana and Alexa are popular in households, and classrooms are using instant connectivity between laptops, projectors, and interactive whiteboards to create unique educational experiences.

Most crucially, Gen Z will be completely fluent with the idea of communication between devices, and will have grown up surrounded by smart objects. As this generation develops further into adulthood, this embrace of responsive and informative savvy technology will only increase, leading to greater use of smart objects as a whole.

We should expect smart devices to become more intrinsically involved in the workplace and home within the next decade. According to Business Insider, the US is expected to surpass 1 billion smart home devices by 2023, spending a total of over $90 billion.

There are numerous benefits to using smart devices that will become even more important in the future too. For one, adding sensors to products can allow companies to better understand where they’re failing or falling short, increasing efficiency and cutting down on waste. Connectivity and precise data measurements will allow for greener, more cost effective solutions – an ever pressing issue even now, in 2020.

Wider reaching data with more reliable numbers can also help to quicken the pace of change and progress, particularly where travel is concerned. Understanding which model cars or planes perform best and identifying how to move forward faster will allow for new advancements at much speedier rates. Our travel and opportunities in the future could become much more streamlined, which is an exciting prospect

Gen Z will be the ones to adopt these technologies and implement them into real, daily life throughout this decade, and thanks to a generational understanding of smart products, this may all come to fruition quicker than you expect.

Are there any risks with the Internet of Things?

While it’s all well and good that our gadgets will be able to communicate in the future, privacy and security issues are a main concern going forward.

We’ve already seen how large networks and data sharing have caused massive breaches of personal information in the past – such as email leaks for websites including Amazon and Tumblr. More sensitive information in even more places will ultimately be a higher safety risk, and our security systems will have to keep up. Samsung has echoed this concern in the past, stating that it’s ‘critical’ to secure every smart device by the end of this year, especially considering it’s still early days for the Internet of Things.

Gen Z will be moving into a market that’s in its infancy and will need to prioritise safety procedures that are still currently being worked out. It’s an exciting time for objects to begin sharing information with one another, but we’ve still got to ensure that our privacy, data, and security isn’t being compromised.

Any chance that your fridge might be spying on you needs to be ironed out; nobody wants to worry about their privacy while they’re cooking.