When AI Becomes Santa: What Black Friday Just Told Us About the Next Generation

This year’s Black Friday broke records—$11.8 billion spent online in a single day—but the real story isn’t the number. It’s how we spent it.

In this episode of The Ryan Vet Show, Ryan reads his latest essay from his newsletter, Collide, exploring a fascinating new shift in consumer behavior: the moment AI quietly became the world’s most influential holiday shopper.

From AI gift-finding agents like Amazon’s Rufus and Walmart’s Sparky…
to the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later…to Gen Z and Gen Alpha shaping family purchases before they can even spell “algorithm”…this holiday season revealed something deeper: every generation is rewriting what it means to shop, give, and celebrate.

In this episode, Ryan unpacks:

📌 What Black Friday 2025 Really Revealed

• AI-driven retail traffic up 805% year over year
• Why we’re buying fewer items at higher prices
• How algorithms, not aisles, are now shaping gift discovery

📌 The Generational Pendulum of Gift-Giving

• Silent Generation thrift and homemade gifts
• Boomer abundance and “the overflowing tree” era
• Gen X caught between stuff and experiences
• Millennials pushing gifting toward memory-making
• Gen Z and Gen Alpha: the experience-first, algorithm-shaped generations

📌 Gen Z and Gen Alpha: The New Holiday Powerhouses

• Why Gen Z plans to cut budgets more than any other generation
• Why same-day delivery is becoming the norm
• Gen Alpha already influencing over $100 billion in household spending
• How targeted ads and platform algorithms shape kids’ gift requests

📌 AI + BNPL + Same-Day Delivery = The New Consumer Formula

• Why AI is now the top discovery engine for holiday shopping
• The psychological shift behind “Buy Now, Pay Later”
• Why this combination creates last-minute shoppers with long-term financial consequences

📌 Where We’re Heading Next

We’re moving into an era where:

• Experiences matter more than merchandise
• Purchasing decisions are mediated by algorithms
• Youngest generations influence spending earlier than ever
• Skepticism toward AI gift recommendations will grow
• The Great Junk Transfer is reshaping how families think about “stuff”

Holiday shopping is no longer driven by catalogs, commercials, or store aisles.
It’s driven by prompts… algorithms… and kids who swipe long before they shop.

This episode offers a fascinating look at how the holidays—and generations—are changing right before our eyes.

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About Ryan Vet

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

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