For example, TikTok, the supposed apex of Gen Z internet culture, has a US userbase that is almost 40% people in their 30s and 40s. These Millennial users are more likely to post videos than those aged 18 to 34, and are a faster-growing userbase, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center last year. Per journalist Ryan Broderick, these numbers are in stark contrast to the rise of Instagram, another visual platform, in the early 2010s, on which ages 30 to 49 only accounted for 20% of users and with users being more predominantly young people than even on TikTok today.
Still, the reaction of Gen Z is less an arrogance of youth than an anxiety to distance themselves from an idea of the generation that came before. The aforementioned cringe compilations despair at a desperation to seem ‘random’ and entertaining. Even the most subtle of generational differences in content creation get scrutinized, as with the identification of the “Millennial pause”—when a person waits a small but noticeable amount of time to check they are recording before they start speaking, and they don’t edit it out.
The paradox is that, in some instances, Gen Z can be seen doubling down on attitudes once pegged as solidly Millennial. Neil Howe, the author who helped to coin the term “Millennial” in the early 90s, suggests that the generation grew up in the midst of a moral panic surrounding parenting and children that led to a drastic increase in safety measures in parenting and, crucially, increased surveillance of the children themselves. Millennials welcomed this as “They understood the logic. They were special and therefore worthy of protection.”
This supposed preciousness was infamous as a common criticism of Millennials in their youth. Although it is a conversation that has changed shape, it is still present with Gen Z. The legacy of infamous celebrity callout blog Your Fave Is Problematic and the battle between the Tumblr social justice warrior and 4chan sh*tposter lives on in the continued argument surrounding the concepts of “wokeness,” “cancel culture,” and the freedom to espouse or disavow them.
More abstract but still related is the idea of the “Puriteen,” which is a term that describes a young person with a strong opposition to the inclusion of intimate scenes in movies and even parents being intimate under the same roof as their children for reasons of protecting from situations perceived as either harmful or unnecessary.
Yet more incriminating evidence comes in the form of creating and adhering to a personal brand, both on social media and more generally as a member of a hyper-individualistic society.
This is something Howe also identifies as an “optimizing, menu-driven” Millennial trait, albeit with the wordier reasoning related to “the struggle to achieve, behave, fit in, risk manage, and please others.”
While a decade ago, this may have been considered the preserve of influencers, its growth was championed by a far wider pool of “Zillennial” (those who border the years between what is commonly seen as the end of Millennial and the start of Gen Z) social media users in a way that is on occasion referenced directly by a Gen Z cohort. The ways in which the aesthetics of, for example, 2014 Tumblr are romanticized or some participate in the roleplay of a day in the life of a 2010s teen underline that this self-conscious image building was already in the works before Zoomers reached posting age.
Generational relevance can only last for so long, and as the oldest Zoomers become primed to establish themselves beyond their youthful soul-searching, the criticism of their behaviors and mannerisms becomes more set in stone, too. Gen Z may be the generation most closely associated with the “digital native” label so beloved by marketers trying to strategize their way into the wallets of another age group, but it’s Alpha who are the first generation all born post-smartphone.
Suggesting that all things Zoomer may have reached a saturation point, discourse has begun to emerge about slang and behaviors associated with the generation reaching the point of embarrassment that Millennial quirks have done already. Comparisons between the two have become acceptable comedy skit material, acknowledging a shared performativity that is all too simple to reduce to catchphrases.
While many Zoomers try to define themselves in opposition to the more embarrassing facets of Millennialism, it’s likely that their worldview was shaped by the framework established by chronically online Millennials. It’s easy to acknowledge Gen Z as willing participants in the 20-year trend cycle that is most often attributed to fashion, but it takes a little more scrutiny to see their relationship to what was immediately before them on a social level.
Many of the stereotypes that surround them build upon Millennial foundations, from an increasing preoccupation with the meritocracy of personal image to an adherence or opposition to so-called wokeness, depending on political inclinations. The iPad kid and the child that grew up with a computer room are on the same continuum, it’s just that one is working from a rulebook established by the other.
