Back to the Future: Myspace and Gen Z Digital Identity

Gen Alpha is growing up in this space from a much younger age. Their online selves are, to them, even more directly tied to their physical selves than they were for us growing up. What happens when they think growing and experimenting in a certain direction isn’t right for them because their TikTok algorithm keeps pushing them another way? Their fr... See more

Still, I think something more fundamental has been lost for all of us as social media has evolved. It’s harder to find the spark of discovery, or the sense that the Web offers an alternate world of possibilities. Instead of each forging our own idiosyncratic paths online, we are caught in the grooves that a few giant companies have carved for us al... See more

This underscores a major difference between Millennials and Gen Zs: the former group was taught to burnish their online presence, using every opportunity to stand out and look perfect; the latter group, which has never known a world without social media, prefers blending in and trying on new identities.