Youth polling company hopes Gen Z will embrace a new side hustle: selling data

Generation Lab, a youth polling company, yesterday launched Verb.AI, a new product that offers people $50 or more per month (depending on use and other factors) to download a tracker onto their phones.

The tracker will collect data on things like Amazon purchases, Netflix binging habits, how long you stay on Zillow looking at aspirational homes—basically anything you do online outside of moving money between bank accounts, for example.

The use case: Instead of relying solely on user surveys, Generation Lab hopes to offer companies access to this data via an AI chatbot portal—where organizations can ask specific questions like “where do young people get their news?” or “does Gen Z actually use Instagram or is it just millennials?” and receive more accurate answers.

It could work. Survey data shows younger Americans are more comfortable with the tradeoffs of being online than older generations.

• 88% of Gen Z is open to sharing personal information with social media companies, 20% higher than older generations, according to eMarketer.
• 33% of Gen Z agrees or strongly agrees with the statement “I don’t mind being tracked by websites or apps,” compared with 22% of older adults, per a 2023 survey.

But…Gen Z is also the most skeptical of all generations when it comes to companies’ ability to keep their info safe, and more likely to pay for increased security or delete data after they're done using a service.