Gen Z is Shaping the Next Generation of the Internet, and Fast
Beyond simply being digital-native, here’s how Gen Z behavior is fueling internet innovations.
From NFTs and remote work, to niche communities like r/WallStreetBets — these phenomena form just the tip of the iceberg of an internet revolution.
In many ways, the pandemic has compelled us to rethink how we interface with technology. Yet this is a shift that has been systematically underway for while, and was only accelerated by COVID.
What fascinates me the most, though, is how Gen Z is leading this change. Our generation has risen as the ambassadors of an upcoming, futuristic digital age. A digital age that serves as the pathway to e-commerce, e-banking, essentially, e-everything.
We take the online world in our pockets with us as we navigate our physical landscape. Gen Z has become the traverse of human and technology.
Let’s break down a few of the many compelling changes happening right before us.
1. The Creator & Passion Economy
Without a doubt, we have seen an explosion in the creator economy. 45% of Gen Z follows more than ten influencers on social media and 10% follow 50 or more, according to the Center for Generation Kinetics.
Also coined the passion economy, the creator economy is defined by SignalFire as “the class of businesses centered around independent content creators, curators, and community builders…plus the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetization.”
Despite the creator economy being born only a decade ago, fifty million people around the globe consider themselves a “creator.” It has become the fastest growing type of small business. More children in America want to become a YouTuber than an astronaut.
Essentially, creators are the new brands, as they tap into their existing fanbase for free distribution. They know how to authentically promote products and fine-tune them with the support of their audience. Influence is synonymous with success.
And don’t forget to consider the micro-influencers.
These everyday creators are more connected to a specific niche, with direct channels to communicate with their audience. They are traditionally seen as more genuine, authentic, and trustworthy, which is almost everything you need in a marketing campaign.
This group of influencers can also provide a more seamless integration of brands than traditional, large influencers.
Generally, micro-influencers are considered experts in their niche and have brands that they use, love, and believe others should also know as well. Brands find their way into their social activity naturally and in a genuine way.
We are seeing the line between commerce and creator continue to blur, as brands discover new ways to reach audiences and sway purchasing decisions.
2. NFTs & DeFi
Before delving deeper into the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi), here is an example worth illustrating.
For Gen Z, we are inseparable from our phones — but not the device itself. The photos, messages, and contacts on the phone are what drive our phone’s value.
I bring this up because it illustrates how value and assets are defined differently for Gen Z compared to older generations.
Gen Z is motivated less by material acquisition, equating the piling up of physical items with greed. We were old enough to remember the financial crisis of 2008 and the stock market’s impact on our parents way of life.
Grow Your Base reports that the majority of Gen Z say the stock market makes them feel uneasy and intimidated, but there is a lot more comfort in gaming, the virtual world, and the idea of investing time instead of money.
NFTs represent unique assets that are rare and cryptographically secure, backed by non-traditional assets. “Fungible” refers to the fact that NFTs are not interchangeable. This scarcity introduces seemingly artificial, but very real value.
That is similar to saying, I can’t trade my messages with someone else’s set of messages, even though they are technically of the same composition. But, I can trade five $1 bills with one $5 bill because that is fungible.
Digital assets provide choices, flexibility, and alignment with Gen Z values. In combination with DeFi products like Rarible (decentralized exchange for NFTs), these tokens can create unique financial products & services.
A new path upheaving traditional careers, retirement, and income will emerge — managing highly individualized portfolios of NFTs.
It is a highly unpredictable future — with improved UX trends and digital wallet products, there is substantial potential for Gen Z to form diverse models of funding, ownership, and transfer.
“Perhaps our children’s generation won’t own the roof over their heads, but they’ll own a wealth of digital assets instead,” says Maya Middlemiss, author & journalist.
3. Remote Work
While we are a generation that grew up entirely native to the internet and technology, we have not taken the transition to virtual easily.
We are the first to stress test remote learning and not by choice. Zebra IQ’s research reports 35% of Gen Z feel like their mental health has worsened since this shift and 29% feel like maintaining relationships has been the hardest part about isolation.
The same is true for work from home. The oldest Gen Z are just becoming young adults embarking their careers.
According to a study by Ten Spot, Gen Z has faced huge challenges in the transition, especially in the areas of productivity, boredom, mental health, and skill development. Only 13% say they have no remote-work challenges and love their work-from-home life.
Gen Z are social creatures. One of the exciting perks of a job is the ability to socialize and engage with coworkers, which has significantly dwindled as a result of the pandemic.
The statistics might seem dispiriting, but what this does mean is that Gen Z will discover new ways to embrace a remote lifestyle.
Physical locations will matter less (e.g. the exit & death of California) and Gen Z will exercise their freedom via digital communities, new experiments of co-living, and content-oriented houses. There will be new forms of cohort-based learning.
This transposition indicates that getting a university degree may no longer be a gatekeeper to career success. Additionally, employers are now urged to consider their flexibility and policies post-COVID.
4. Social Media 3.0
Here is the part I personally find the most invigorating.
The social media space has long been dominated by platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. They possess real estate on almost every Gen Z’s phone.
Yet, what this has taught Gen Z is that each social platform is different.
The fragmentation across multiple apps and accounts has created “personas” for Gen Z — we show different sides of our personalities on each platform, chiseled by each platform’s subcultures and subrules.
This creates a non-exclusive relationship between Gen Z and existing social media platforms. And equally, this breeds new opportunities to push the boundaries of our online social connection and introduce new social experiences — social media 3.0.
While long standing social media was built on mimicking our existing social networks offline to online, Gen Z will flock to playful, casual, and gamified ways of meeting new people.
Apps like Alter (an app to make friends through avatars and private islands) and Itsme (video chat as your avatar) merge social and gaming to create a new immersive means for meeting new friends.
Social media is also becoming more live and spontaneous. Liking, commenting, or posting are substituted now with hanging out and connecting with others through audio & video.
Clubhouse cues us to listen live, join rooms with zero expectations of who you’ll meet or what you’ll hear, and form communities around ephemeral events & rooms.
Honk delivers a messaging experience that is raw, unedited, in the moment, and a peek into your friends’ brains.
Dispo draws out the friendliness and authenticity of photo-sharing that Instagram buried.
Being in the moment herds excitement and spontaneity. The pandemic reminds us of how these elements of humanity are vital to how we feel connected to others.
These spaces are becoming more and more critical to our social lives and how we use digital platforms to find common interests. I am optimistic that we will represent our genuine selves through democratized access to opportunities and communities historically reserved to specific city dwellers.
A new age of social is coming, and I could not be more thrilled.
So, what does this mean?
Gen Z didn’t have to learn technology — we were born with it as an external organ. It’s inevitable that we will be the generation to re-write the playbook of internet innovation and beyond.
This is just the start to an exhilarating period of change. The opportunity to create a more unifying and joyful internet is awaiting.
What do you think about this new digital era? Let me know, and thank you for reading!
