This essay will hardly present an argument in the traditional sense. I recognize that I cannot remove myself completely from my own perspective, and while I could attempt to make an omniscient response to the topics at hand, I would feel rather foolish pretending I understand all sides of the story. I have decided to take advantage of my own inconvenient perspective by accentuating it as much as I can in the hopes that this will help other generations better understand what is happening with my own generation. Why do we all seem to follow the same trends and understand each other? On the other hand, why are we so polarized and seemingly blind to it?
There are people who seem baffled by our generation; to clarify, I am not a millenial. I am part of Generation Z; the generation of people who have more in common with their peers in Tokyo and Guadalajara than their own 30-year-old neighbors. For a world that is accustomed to the idea of language locality, nationality, or familiarity by physical proximity, this seems problematic — chaotic, even. But to address the idea of inconvenient perspectives and in turn understand the workings of the coming generations, we cannot approach the nature of Generation Z from a purely social, economic, or even digital perspective. We have to recognize that the phenomenon of attention economy has redefined the workings of “tribalism” for the younger, connected generation while further separating those who fit into the “otherness” category: in this case, those who are unable to observe the changes in their digital proximity.
We are a murmuration of mismatched feathers.
THE MURMURATION
If you were to ask any thirteen-year-old what their favorite TikTok trend is, you would almost certainly get an answer. In Tiktok, there is no single majority language, music genre, or country that prevails. A trend can start in London and be replicated by thousands of teenagers in Tokyo, Lima, and Mexico City by the end of the day. Seemingly obscure memes or tweets will pop up in reference to the trend as other generations are left to simply observe the apparent incoherence. By the time it starts to make sense, we have already forgotten it. That video from Manila took over. Then dancers in Hong Kong. Then there was that cat-kissing trend from who-knows-where. Like a murmuration of birds, we move together. It just never seems to make much sense to an outsider.
THE FLOCK
People are grouped by algorithms. While much of the content is similar, in older platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, there is a clear division. If you are liberal, you see liberal posts. If you are a physics nerd, you see a lot of news about the LHC, NASA, and dark matter experiments. If you are concerned about racism, you see racism. The flock is composed of subdivisions created by computer algorithms. We are fed what we already believe to be true. To participate is to belong and to belong is to understand. If you don’t understand, you can’t participate, and the cycle begins again. To leave would be to renounce the community, and given the fast pace of online society, not leaving means being constantly connected.
This leads to the misconception of addiction.
Do not confuse short-term attention with addiction. Many of the top YouTube channels have videos averaging 10–20 minutes, with some often reaching the 40 minute mark. We still sit through 2-hour lectures; and contrary to popular belief, a lot of the short content we consume isn’t varied. Opening my TikTok at this very moment, these are the first 5 videos I see:
- girls dancing
- girl dancing
- a jumping dog
- girls dancing
- boys dancing
and this is on the public page, meaning that this is not what is tailored to me specifically. This is as random of a content sample as you can possibly get on the platform. As I said, not exactly varied nor indicative of a short attention span given that we are essentially watching the same thing over and over again.
What has been called addiction is simply a quest for the inherent need to belong. These platforms are not only a collection of “feeds.” They are our methods of interaction.
Like humans of any era, Generation Z seeks a group to belong to; except that unlike humans of any other era, this generation has developed in such a way that said group cannot be found locally, and to be disconnected is to be cut off from your people. The tribe has been redefined. It is an establishment that cannot be disregarded.
Imagine a town suddenly split in half by a fault after an earthquake. The town speaks its own language, distinct from other towns around it; when it is split, it has no interest in forming a new community. Instead, it decides to build bridges to glue itself back together. The town is a generation across an ocean. Once someone sets root in the community, they grow with it, often finding an interconnected, niche home-base (memes, makeup gurus, startup forums). This is the neighborhood within the town-an arm of the murmuration, a subsection of the tribe. In fairly codependent behavior, the tribe stays together.
Now that we have established the new definition of “tribe,” we have to recognize how this helps create the illusion of an attention economy.
Yes, advertisements and messages have to be delivered in a shorter time span, but it isn’t necessarily due to a change in human nature. The problem with deliverables is that they are one-sided conversations in a very social space. The messages are thrown at us, and we can’t throw anything back. This wouldn’t normally be a problem. After all, TV ads succeeded for decades. But this…this feels like a home invasion. In a sense, whoever chooses to throw a message at an audience without accepting immediate feedback is the equivalent of an impolite outsider with a horrible sense of grandiosity walking up to townspeople in the middle of a conversation. Now multiply that by hundreds. People might listen to a word or two before choosing to turn away to interact with people from the town who understand them and can hold a conversation. Does this seem harsh? It is. Imagine having a conversation and suddenly being startled by “YOU CAN SAVE 13% OR MORE ON CAR INSURANCE…”(This is why many upcoming companies turn to affiliations with influencers. The product is included in non-abrasive conversation.) As a result of people’s reactions, from the perspective of long-established businesses, it seems that catching the attention of people within the first few words (or visuals) is the only logical solution to the attention problem. Oftentimes, this is poorly executed, leading to lower quality content which in turn leads to less consumer engagement and increases worry in the industry, starting the desperate cycle all over again.
We should consider what implications this overall idea holds for traditional human groupings and those who are unable to participate. As stated before, a tribe is now defined by a digitally connected generation and-to some extent-by interest categories. What happens to those who cannot or will not participate? In theory, they should simply continue following the established ideas of tribes. They can be defined by their locality, race, religion, etc. as has been the custom for human history. It isn’t that omission from the current definition of tribe leaves you tribeless, it simply redirects you to a previous definition of the group idea until a condition matches. Individually, this is all fine. However, when it comes to outside perception, the idea of “otherness” can come as a shock. In historically established definitions of a “tribe,” everyone at least knew what to ask in order to group people.
“Are you from the south side?”
“Do you go to St. Paul’s Catholic Church?”
While these still hold up in general, everyone in the younger generation expects everyone else to have the online identity in common, and this is the difference. There is an expectation that despite obvious differences that would traditionally group people in different “tribes,” everyone is still somehow the same. Everyone should know what a dab is or be able to see vine references and understand the meaning. Even if you don’t know BTS, you should still have seen some “interesting” videos posted by their fans whether you speak Russian or Chinese or Spanish. I can’t name a single one of their songs, yet I know they hold the record for most Twitter engagements and have the fastest music video ever to reach 1m likes (about half an hour on YouTube) simply because their followers permeate every section of the internet.
Imagine small facts like this defined your generation. In a rural community without internet access, you would be okay within your locality, but belonging anywhere else would be difficult; not only because you are part of a different tribe in the traditional sense, but because people expect you to have specific similarities despite your differences, and you would not meet this expectation. This goes beyond the polarization on Twitter and Facebook. When we divide ourselves online, it is by interest and choice of opinions (note that this does not mean we decide to have a divided feed, simply that we can choose what we think about a specific topic and whether or not we talk about it). When we are divided because of connectivity, the problem runs deeper. It means that the disconnected “others” are disregarded as far as society as a whole is concerned. These are the people everyone forgets about without meaning to. At some point things could even out, but this can’t happen until everyone has a base minimal level of connectivity.
If other groups could share their side of the story as I have, maybe businesses would stop throwing away money on ineffective advertisements. Maybe there would be less polarization. Maybe we’re simply changing as a society in the way we perceive humanity, but the road will be difficult. I should note that the algorithms mentioned in the “THE FLOCK” section were written by humans; and in reality, these divisions within the flock were created by people who don’t belong to it. Maybe when everyone has base connectivity and a new generation runs the media (I mean truly, through algorithms and large corporations, not through pretty faces on the screen), these trends of polarization will change. Maybe not. We have been raised to see only those who think like ourselves, and although we are fully aware of it, we have little control over it — all in the name of money.
References
https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/100/mostsubscribed
Jayson DeMers, Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2017/06/22/how-social-media-is-polarizing-your-audience-and-what-to-do-about-it/#860b2bb77137
Libby Kane, Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/generation-z-profile-2017-9/ ; — implies lack of nationalism
Adriana Ramic, NYTimes
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/generation-z.html
https://kr-asia.com/bytedance-general-manager-zhang-nan-tik-tok-meshes-with-chinas-consumption-upgrade-trends/
Julia Alexander, The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/15/18095446/tiktok-jimmy-fallon-tony-hawk-downloads-revenue
