Social Media is Killing the Individual
Lindsey Botkin | April 18, 2024
Bows. Pomegranates as a metaphor for cannibalism. Lana Del Rey. Coquette core. The Barbie Movie. Noah Kahn. The Eras Tour. “Girl dinner.” Eclectic grandpa. Heatless curls. Sephora-nine-year-olds. Colleen Hover. Old Money Aesthetic.
Social media is killing our individualism.
Chances are, you have heard of one or more of the abovementioned things as you lay in bed scrolling before snatching a few hours of sleep. Maybe you donned bows in your hair in December and January before they became the equivalent of the millennial mustache. Maybe you referred to all of your meals as “girl dinner” for some time.
Each of these things is a micro-trend — some sort of aesthetic or “-core” that repackages items, looks, ideas and other things that we are already consuming in a bite-sized and easily likable fashion. These trends, music artists and more have been a way for us to easily show “who we are” to the world rather than the complex nature of the human behind the screen.
One of the more dominant trends of 2023 was “girlhood.”
Many have said that this trend was sparked by Taylor Swift's “The Era’s Tour” and was prolonged by the release of “Barbie” in late July. However, we have seen these trends carried throughout the year with things like “girl-math,” “girl-dinner,” and “Barbiecore,” which captivated audiences.
Not only do these things reinforce gender stereotypes, but they are also reinforced under the guise that girls are “taking back” their girlhood. This act of “taking back” girlhood is an idea that marketing companies have sold to us this year, causing us to consume not only more media but also more material goods associated with these trends.
As people get increasingly caught up in these trends, we are collectively more likely to think of something we see online, a trend or a product as “relatable,” like it intimately relates to our lives rather than just something that has been marketed to a specific audience.
Am I saying that each video you watch on TikTok for five seconds is part of a big marketing scheme to get you to buy ribbons from craft stores? No. I am saying that the trends we popularize are influenced by a narrative that has slowly guided us to describe ourselves using the trends we consume and material culture.
The internet and apps like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok started as a way for people to share their lives with one another. Summarized nicely in the 2020 Netflix hit, “The Social Dilemma,” this documentary illustrates not only how the algorithm works but also how it has learned to trap us into the pattern of thinking that has created the micro-trend.
With our attention spans shortened and our brains addicted to the dopamine that the scroll has conditioned us to long for, we are not only consuming media at a rate that is considered unhealthy by psychologists, but we are also literally buying into these trends; the more time we spend on the apps, the more ads we can consume, and the more of our time we are spending if you think in the context of the capitalistic society that we live in. Of course, that is the way that the algorithm works. It slowly feeds us the things that it thinks we will like based on what we interact with and what other people who match our demographic or are in our community also have engaged with.
According to Buffer, this is done by monitoring how long we look at an image, what we like, what we comment on and what we save. Social media has grown exponentially over the past few years, and with new platforms evolving to learn our likes and dislikes, it seems that they know our personalities and what trends we are most likely interested in — or fall victim to — before we even do.
This creates a huge problem.
If these platforms only make money if we sell our time to them, they will make their platform as addicting as possible to get as much of our time as possible. As we saw in “The Social Dilemma,” many individuals who initially worked on the design of some of the most popular apps have come forward with concerns about this exact thing.
Falling prey to these micro-trends has created a culture where users lose their individuality to what these platforms sell.
By following these trends, perfecting different looks and memorizing facts about what certain groups like or dislike, these apps have effectively trained us to consume information at high rates and move on quickly as soon as something better comes along. This has given a new meaning to the phrase “in one ear and out the other.”
As Generation Z, we have had access to these platforms and devices through our adolescence, and because of this, a large portion of our personalities is based on the content we consume. We have learned to associate our identity with “aesthetics” and material items rather than interests, personality traits and more.
Of course, social media is not all bad.
Niche groups have connected globally and found other people who like similar things. This has allowed us to form communities regardless of distance or accessibility. Social media has also allowed for the mass spread of performative activism.
If you are posting about a global issue, sure, it may raise awareness in your community. Still, in the long term, it does nothing to support the cause outside of letting people know that something may be happening — if something can hold our attention for long enough.
Living in a fast-paced and stressful environment perpetuated by the constant need to consume content, it can be easy to give into micro-trends. Keep in mind that the next time you do your nightly scroll or start your next Instagram post, you are not just a concept made real based on the products you consume.