Gen Z’s Social Media Shift Towards “Being Real”
Millennials take photos where everything looks perfect; Gen Z takes photos where everyone looks bad
It takes me 2 seconds to look at someone’s Instagram or TikTok feed to figure out how old they are.
I was born at the end of 1996. I fall perfectly between Gen Z and Millennials. As a result, I’ve never really felt at home with either group. This gives the perspective to look at both generations objectively and I’ve noticed something interesting. It seems each generation follows a very standardized way of taking pictures.
Millennials are the children of Instagram. Not the OG Instagram where everyone used gnarly filters like this:
Millennials were the first to capitalize on social media, posting the perfect picture of their life. Nailing the “phone eats first” shot of avocado toast.
This generation had IG feeds where the best picture of you comes first. Everything feels very edited without making it look like you used too many filters.
It was all about the right angles and perfect lighting.
BUT all this is changing. Gen Z is obsessed with showing a more real version of yourself. Half of Tiktok is people oversharing their lives in “story times”, showing how real and relatable they are.
The new social media post is a bunch of blurry/poorly lit photos that are reminiscent of 90s disposable cameras.
Everything kinda looks like this…
or this…
The new social currency is about being relatable. Not being perfect.
This is exacerbated by the rise of platforms such as BeReal. Where you have a minute to take an impromptu photo of yourself at a random time of the day. The intent is to show what your life looks like in an uncurated social media context.
(As an adult this is kinda funny because 99% of the photos are people just working on their laptops. Lol; I guess everyone’s life isn’t their IG feeds.)
With authenticity being a trend on social media, does that mean people are just being authentic because that goes viral? Is it fake to try and be authentic?
