About 54.4 percent of young Taiwanese experience high anxiety about their economic future, reflecting widespread fears over the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workforce, a 104 Job Bank survey found yesterday.
The poll conducted from April 1 to 29 interviewed Taiwanese jobseekers aged 18 to 30, collecting 1,114 valid samples, with a 95 percent confidence level and a 2.94 point margin of error, the company said in a statement.
Anxiety about job prospects is pervasive, as only 8.5 percent of respondents said they are free of stress about finding work or keeping their job.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, AFP
About 32.3 percent of respondents said they were very worried that they would be replaced by AI and felt powerless, with workers in fields related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and new jobseekers reporting the most stress, followed by food, hospitality and tourism workers.
It said that 74.6 percent of respondents who were very worried about AI reported feeling pessimistic about their future and wanting to opt out of the workforce altogether.
The figure suggests that AI shock is propagating from the technical to psychological, and affecting career plans, the job bank said.
The poll showed that nearly half of respondents confided in friends or spouses when feeling sad, 35.1 percent interacted with AI chatbots and just 22.4 percent sought help from parents or elders.
Another 30 percent said that they dealt with negative feelings on their own without seeking any help, implying that close to one-third of young Taiwanese are essentially living alone, it said.
Social media use is also prevalent, with the average respondent spending 3.95 hours a day on platforms, including 38.5 percent who reported feeling inferior after seeing the online lives of others, the poll found.
Another 37.5 percent said they used social media to manage their public image and do not share their private selves online.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents felt inferior and unqualified compared with their peers, and 48.3 percent reported having avoided submitting a job application out of fears that they were not good enough.
The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents identified themselves as being prone to anxiety and low on motivation, saying that they would more likely feel anxious than inspired facing the achievements of their peers.
An analysis of the poll revealed that people who scroll social media for more than five hours a day were more likely to feel inferior and be afraid of submitting resumes than those who do so for less than three hours a day.
Young people are facing a fiercely conspicuous, online-culture-based lifestyle and uncertainty stemming from rapid technological change, 104 Job Bank head of career sustainability Spring Wang (王榮春) said.
These stresses are an unwelcome addition to the age-old anxieties surrounding completing in higher education and finding a job, resulting in low confidence in people who are in fact qualified, he said.
“The anxiety of the ‘scroller generation’ has less to do with individual psychology than broader society, educational environment and online culture,” Wang said. “Families, schools and workplaces need to build a support network to help young people, instead of stigmatizing them.”
NATIONAL SECURITY: Authorities are working to confirm the identities of the military personnel involved and investigating possible illegal conduct and regulatory violations Authorities are probing possible national security implications after Kinmen police and immigration officers on Sunday found a Chinese woman allegedly posing as a tourist while engaging in prostitution involving more than 10 military personnel. The woman, surnamed Chen (陳), has since been deported, authorities said, adding that investigators are still working to confirm the identities of those implicated, as the records only listed code names and aliases. The case stemmed from a report received by the Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday last week from the Jinhu Precinct of the Kinmen County Police Bureau. On Sunday, police, along with the National Immigration
GLOBALGIVING: ‘ Caving to external pressure is not acceptable for an organization that has cultivated justice reform and human rights for 30 years,’ one NGO said A slew of non-government organizations (NGOs) have withdrawn from the GlobalGiving fundraising platform after it announced it would use “Chinese Taipei” instead of “Taiwan” from next month. The Taiwan Good Rice Association wrote on Facebook on Friday that it was informed on April 28 via a teleconference call of the change, which was made because the platform wanted to operate in China. Taiwan Good Rice is to terminate all cooperative relationships with GlobalGiving in response to the platform’s “unilateral and non-negotiable” decision to remove references to Taiwan, the NGO said. “Taiwan is in the official name of Taiwan Good Rice Association and the
HEAVY WEATHER: Typhoon Jangmi is due to crash straight into the Ryukyus as airlines look to shift flights to larger aircraft or cancel flights to Okinawa entirely Taiwan’s international air carriers announced flight adjustments over the weekend as Typhoon Jangmi is forecast to hit the Ryukyu Islands today and tomorrow. The Central Weather Administration (CWA) upgraded Jangmi from a tropical storm to a typhoon at 8am yesterday, with the eye located 580km south of Naha city. It was moving north at 19kph. Today, China Airlines’ CI-120, CI-121, CI-122 and CI-123 flights between Taoyuan and Naha, Okinawa, have been canceled as well as CI-132 and CI-133 between Kaohsiung and Naha. EVA Air’s BR-112, BR-113, BR-186 and BR-185 flights between Taoyuan and Naha are also canceled. Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan canceled IT-230,
REASONS FOR TRAVEL: An assistant professor said that proposed amendments to penalize drivers if they used drugs overseas would not deter people from traveling People who operate a motor vehicle under the influence of marijuana would have their driver’s license revoked, even if they used the substance while overseas, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday, citing proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act (道路交通管理處罰條例). The amendments would also authorize the government to revoke the licenses of people determined to have used Category 1 or Category 2 narcotics, even if they were not operating a vehicle while under the influence of drugs, as well as ban them from taking the license test for three years, the ministry said. People aged 18 or
RSS