In Defense of Social Media’s Self-Obsession
Millennials and Generation Z have made a habit of nitpicking our differences: side parts versus middle parts, high-waisted versus low-rise jeans — we can’t even agree on what the the smiley-face emoji means. But whether your online footprint is made up of TikTok dances or Facebook albums, there is one commonality that links us all: We are constantly posting online.
I was in eighth grade when my older sister helped me make my own Facebook page. I technically wasn’t supposed to be on the platform until high school, but Tara was home from college and mom was at work, and somehow that was enough to convince me to go online. In that first day on Facebook, I remember answering questions about my favorite books and quotes, “becoming a fan” of pages like, “When your pencil flies out of your hand randomly during class,” and strategically blocking my Aunt Susie in an effort to hide my profile from my mom (spoiler alert: this did not work). This was in December of 2009, predating even the existence of Instagram.
Thirteen years later, I am still scrubbing my page of cringey statuses and unflattering photos. I sometimes look back on old messages with people I haven’t spoken to in years, horrified by my adolescent opinions and ill-advised use of slang words that were totally cool at the time. There are dozens of photos of me in braces or in my emo phase, all heavily edited using Picnik, a site that dominated online culture in the early 2010s. In many ways, my Facebook page serves as a relic of my own growth.
For someone like my sister Erin, who is four years younger than me and a bona fide member of Generation Z, Facebook is completely irrelevant. However, you could sit for hours scrolling through her Instagram, and for those lucky enough to have access to her Finsta, you can get an inside perspective on her thoughts, fears, and emotional life — one she wouldn’t dare to post so freely as my gut-wrenching Facebook status quoting Journey.
I often think about the many ways in which social media impacts, but also archives our lives. Past relationships, friendships, jobs, and hobbies are heavily documented among a series of profiles. I like to imagine a historian hundreds of years from now that will need to sit with someone’s Instagram, Finsta, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn to make sense of someone’s life. Our children and our grandchildren will have the opportunity to know us more intimately than it was ever possible to know previous generations — no matter how many photos your mother took, no matter how many good hair days your dad experienced before going bald, we will simply never have access to the plethora of information that exists in our online profiles.
Before I made my infamous Facebook page, I watched my grandfather suffer through Alzheimer's disease. He lived with us as we watched his once brilliant mind deteriorate. He forgot where he lived, who we were, and why it’s important to wear pants in a house full of young children. I never really got to know what he was like at my age, and I was too young at the time to really care enough to ask. How I wish there was some online archive of his existence. I would give anything to see heavily-edited photos of him and his friends, or memes about what it was like to live through The Great Depression.
Alzheimer’s is a genetic disease, and I live with the constant awareness that my experiences will likely also be erased from my own mind with time. I like to imagine myself sitting in a nursing home scrolling through my archived Instagram stories, reliving my adolescence and early twenties, simply remembering my life in a way that was impossible for someone like my grandfather.
On TikTok, a new generation shares ideas, jokes, stories, but mostly dance moves in short-form videos that have become the zeitgeist of the 2020s. While older generations, Millenials included, are sometimes quick to dismiss the platform’s popularity as just the latest fad, this mindset completely misses the significance of these movements. These videos compile the history and development of a generation. And frankly, most TikTok dances are far less embarrassing than anything you could dig up from my old Facebook page. While it’s true, the world will someday move past TikTok — perhaps to the metaverse, or perhaps onto a new platform that saves you the trouble of posting and just sends Mark Zuckerberg an archive of your thoughts that day.
Social media is one of the most powerful tools that each generation has to create a legacy. Whether you’re posting a stylish selfie of your middle part, or a “cheugy” photo of your honeymoon in Disneyworld, you will have access to these documented moments for the rest of your life. Generations to come will have unprecedented access to our archived lives. For the first time in history, you don’t need to start a Fortune 500 company or overthrow the British government to be remembered — you just have to hit the post button.
And while you’re here, you should follow Kindred Media on TikTok
