The peak of my influence was also the peak of my misery. Famous people say that a lot. I wasn’t famous, I just posted drawings of baby animals. I posted captions like, Which is your favorite? 1-10. I posed with pen packs and got paid for it. I spent all day with my phone, partly out of professional duty—I needed not only validation, but income—and ... See more

The oldest members of Gen Z began puberty around 2009, when several tech trends converged: the rapid spread of high-speed broadband in the 2000s, the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, and the new age of hyper-viralized social media. The last of these was kicked off in 2009 by the arrival of the “like” and “retweet” (or “share”) buttons, which transfor

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