NIVITA CHALIKI.

Excerpt from Iteration #1 of Episode One Article

(a more narrative tone with embedded research, meant to encourage engagment with other information sources and foster conversations with readers)

Social media, as a phenomenon, has become an integrated part of the way we lead our social lives, the connections we make and how they manifest, and the way we form our social personas. It’s webbed together the public and the private, and cemented technology—data, smart devices, AI, AR, etc.—into our everyday lives no matter where we fall onto the spectrum of usage. It’s got its positives and negatives and neither-nors, and we’re here today to explore what all of those are, from where we stand as Gen-Z. 

We’re here to explore what our relationship to social media is now, and discuss what it can be, as futurehuman.

For our inaugural season, we’ve sat down with some members of our Gen-Z research collective, The Loop, to discuss their relationships, thoughts, and perspectives on a wide variety of complex and imperative topics under the co-requisite umbrella of social media and mental health.

“It [started] as a positive experience, that’s now become a negative experience, to be completely honest,” Gigi Walker—currently a senior at the University of Delaware, majoring in psychology and double-minoring in Cognitive Science and Human Development, and Human Sciences—says about growing up alongside the growth of social media. She’s someone who is incredibly passionate about mental health, and has always found interest in the way it intersects with the digital body of social media, through her personal and business pursuits, as well as her academic ones.

“Psychology major? So this is right up your alley, then,” I say as we move through our initial introductions with each other. 

She avidly agrees. “I’m pretty blessed to even have this opportunity to speak about mental health as a psychology major, [and as] a content creator on the side.”

Gigi has had the both unique, and highly universal, experience of navigating social media from a young age, to high school, to college, and through the pandemic, and in its aftermath—both from the perspective of a user and a creator. An experience many of us on the Gen-Z spectrum can relate to. She talks about “hopping onto Instagram” in fifth grade, around the elementary and middle school timeline many of us ended up in, and how she had started using it as a means to just post and connect whatever and with whomever she wanted. “For me, it became: I just want to post all these edits I have, and I wanted to show my friends off, and I wanted to show me off, so I did that first.”

After starting out with a more personal usage, she began to use social media as a business tool into her junior and senior years of college. “Not only am I influencing my friends, I want to get paid to do this.” She laughs and I nod my head in agreement. It’s a practical point. Instagram has become the center stage for many influencers, and many of these influencers make a significant amount of money off of it. Some do it as a passion project and make enough for a side income, and some influence as their full-time job, making millions, if not more. Influencing, and its respective social media platforms, has become the new currency, in many ways. 

“I think that’s a really unique experience to us, too,” I agree, “because I feel like we’ve seen it [grow] from just being a personal platform, to very much being commercial. Like there’s storefronts, you can buy directly off of Instagram, and that was not the case back then.”

“Yeah,” Gigi agrees, “[Like] the tabs, every tab changed, now we have the explore page, and yeah, the storefront page. We have so many things now.”

And in the ever-changing nature of social media, things oscillate frequently between the positive and the negative, as Gigi says. “When you were just joining the app, it was more free, full, not negative. [It was] in the space of ‘I really want to post who I am and I hope I don’t get judged’ and now with beauty standards, and a lot of social concepts that you have to conform to, [it becomes] ‘I don’t know who I can be today’. You start to get that perception of ‘I want to fit that person’s life’. [And then] that creates our own disconnection with [ourselves]. I’ve seen people gain new ideas and create new identities for themselves, but I’ve also seen them losing themselves and becoming too connected to a reality that’s not truly real.”

And that’s the heart of one of Gigi’s main points during our conversation. When it comes to social media, we see snippets and reels and carefully framed moments. And the truth behind all of that is life consists of a lot more than the supercut of it. We each live our daily lives in varyingly different ways than the way we portray them to others, if we do at all. What is portrayed as a life, as a reality, in such curated contexts, becomes a scene, a fiction, but we continue to view it as facts.

Another thought that strikes in this talk of perception and sense of self, unique to Gen-Z, is that for many of us, a majority of our lives and our past has been documented into this nebulous database we call the internet. A memory we consider long-forgotten, can be brought up within an instant—a photo on someone’s iCloud, an archived instagram post from 2014, an old Tumblr account predating the age of stricter digital censorship—and make its way back into our lives like it never left.

An example of this, is the recent uptick in celebrity cancel culture, when a celeb’s past actions—whether direly discriminative, or simply in direct opposition to who they portray themselves to be now—has been brought up to the surface and used against them in the court of public opinion. Celebrities in and of themselves, are an even greater example of the space between reality and fiction.

Gigi’s point about getting lost in the identities curated on social media relates to all of this. When we get so caught up and saturated with social media, we start to treat it as the main source of getting to know someone, making judgements, fact-finding, and more. And as naturally constantly evolving beings, this has direct effects on who we become and how we direct our futures.

Excerpt from Iteration #2 of Episode One Article

(a more simple, dialogue-heavy approach that takes directly from the podcast episodes, meant to encourage engagement with dcdx content and community)

Social media, as a phenomenon, has become an integrated part of the way we lead our social lives, the connections we make and how they manifest, and the way we form our social personas. It’s webbed together the public and the private, and cemented technology—data, smart devices, AI, AR, etc.—into our everyday lives no matter where we fall onto the spectrum of usage. It’s got its positives and negatives and neither-nors, and we’re here today to explore what all of those are, from where we stand as Gen-Z. 

We’re here to explore what our relationship to social media is now, and discuss what it can be, as futurehuman.

For our inaugural season, we’ve sat down with some members of our Gen-Z research collective, The Loop, to discuss their relationships, thoughts, and perspectives on a wide variety of complex and imperative topics under the co-requisite umbrella of social media and mental health.

“It [started] as a positive experience, that’s now become a negative experience, to be completely honest,” Gigi Walker—currently a senior at the University of Delaware, majoring in psychology and double-minoring in Cognitive Science and Human Development, and Human Sciences—says about growing up alongside the growth of social media. She’s someone who is incredibly passionate about mental health, and has always found interest in the way it intersects with the digital body of social media, through her personal and business pursuits, as well as her academic ones.

“I’m pretty blessed to even have this opportunity to speak about mental health as a psychology major, [and as] a content creator on the side.”

She has had the both unique, and highly universal, experience of navigating social media from a young age, to high school, to college, and through the pandemic, and in its aftermath—both from the perspective of a user and a creator. An experience many of us on the Gen-Z spectrum can relate to.

“So you say you’re a content creator, so you’re likely on social media a lot. What would you define social media as, and how do you use it most? Like different platforms, for different means?” I ask.

“Social media is just a wide variety of apps and platforms. I think you can use it just to create content, share and connect with everyone socially and globally. And for me, I would say I use social media passively, [just] scrolling, and actively: content creation and connecting with other[s]. I think [it’s] just become the biggest platform for us just to literally meet anyone from anywhere on just one app. And it’s pretty crazy how we use, like, seven apps to connect with the same people. But it just shows how interconnected we are with technology and how advanced we are going as a generation, too.”

“Yeah! I’ve seen the joke where it’s like, you’re not proper Gen-Z if you don’t have multiple conversations with the same friend on different platforms—but wildly different conversations.”

“So many different conversations with the same people, yes!”

“Do you have any preferences for different platforms?”

“Yes, I love TikTok more than Instagram right now. I feel like TikTok is reminding me a lot of Youtube. A lot of storytelling. And even allowing us to explore our content with more people. And you [see] so much global coverage that you’re not seeing on mainstream TV channels. [For] content creation, I would say [I prefer] Instagram. I think Instagram is still the biggest marketplace platform [to] use. To be honest, when you need to look for a hairstylist, when you need to look for [somewhere] to get your nails done, you go on Instagram or Facebook to connect with someone. Or word of mouth. [With] Tiktok, it’s the storytelling aspect. That’s where you go to see, hey, how do I make a dress out of a t-shirt? Something more in-depth, tutorial-based.”

“I agree, I literally went to get my nails done the other day and it was Instagram that helped me decide where I wanted to go.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you think is the platform most used by Gen-Z or people you know?”

“I think it’s still going to be Instagram, like you gain your own social media presence on there and you gain the inspiration to build your identity. And you kind of form a new identity on Instagram. [It’s] like the creator hub. [If you say] hey, I want to make a friend, [then you] follow them [through] their social media handle. [Or you say] let’s see their other platforms that they use, too.”

“I’ve honestly made a lot of friends on Instagram. How has social media played a role in your life? You said you do content creation, [and that] you use it personally as well as passively.”

“Social media has played an immense role. From starting off, [in] elementary school, I think fifth grade is when we all—well, Gen-Z—literally hopped on Instagram.”