Juuling, Trap Phones, and Apple Watches — How Gen Z is Heading into 2019

What teens are really getting up to.

2018 had a lot going on, and I feel like I spent most of it on Stan Twitter. This year I was able to dive into far more research on Gen Z than previous years thanks to it now being part of my day job. I’ve compiled a few key trends I’ve seen and heard about from teens this year.

Data Driven Social

With likes, comments, and retweets dictating how validated some teens feel, it’s no wonder that many teens are becoming more data driven when it comes to putting out content. A teen I know with 6k Instagram followers explained that she started posting mostly natural-looking face selfies after she realized that those consistently generated the most likes. She deduced that particular stories got more screenshots because they were being texted to groups of friends.

But how are Instagram users able to capture this level of insight? Business accounts. One just has to declare themselves a ‘Public Figure,’ in their profile settings, to immediately unlock deeper metrics helping to understand more about their audience and how people are really interacting with their content. Almost all of the girls I spoke to about this had heard of the ‘hack,’ but one boy also said he discovered it when he…