...a goddaughter’s response

The world in which I have grown up, and am still growing up in, is vastly different to that which shaped the generations that came before. My generation has enjoyed many luxuries, conveniences and benefits that they could only have dreamt of, and plenty more that they could not have even imagined.

We live in a world where we can find out information with a quick Google, order food straight to our door in a matter of minutes, even ask ChatGPT to write our exams for us. It is an exciting time to be a young person: the internet has opened so many doors that it can be hard to imagine how people used to live without the opportunities that we see as the norm. However, having the world available to us at the click of a button is a double-edged sword.

Social media is often touted as the crux of many of the issues we face and while the chance to stay constantly in contact with friends and family is great in theory, in practice it often feels very different. I find I am constantly checking Instagram to make sure I am up to date on my friends’ lives, not wanting to be the only person out of the loop. Platforms like this also encourage curated profiles capturing carefully edited versions of life rather than mundane realities. This contrived reality on social media platforms is so widely acknowledged that it prompted the creation of a whole new app, BeReal, supposedly designed to encourage users to present an unfiltered shot of real life at whatever time they get a notification – so they can’t fake their fun to get likes. Yet BeReal is still like other platforms in denying its users the chance to switch off. We are encouraged constantly to check in on our friends, on total strangers, on celebrities we may or may not be interested in.

We might wonder, therefore, why more people don’t simply log off and take a break from it all. Many more young people are choosing to live in a world without social media; Nokia’s reintroduction of the brick phone for the modern day suggests that there is some appetite for a world without the internet constantly at our fingertips. However, while this might be an aspiration for many of us the reality is that refusing to engage with the digital world becomes incredibly isolating. You miss out on news, on invitations, and often on being part of communities formed over social media. The online world has us in its grip and it’s hard to say no.

Not only are we grappling with the possibility of isolation from friends when dealing with our use of social media, but also the expectation of constant, immediate communication. Previous attempts that I’ve made at “taking a break” or “going off grid” have all ended with texts from friends or family members nervous that I had not been in touch. These are not just expectations placed on us by fellow members of Gen Z, but also by parents and grandparents too. Now that there is a chance to stay in touch 24/7 it is no longer acceptable to pause even just for a few days without having to contend with anxious relatives; the “find my phone” apps are not just for working out where you last put your mobile down, but also for anxious parents to monitor their children’s locations.

And yet despite the terrifying trap social media sometimes presents, the benefits of it are also undeniable both to us and to older generations. Like many other twenty- somethings I have become my family’s unofficial tech support, a job which mainly entails selling my mum’s old clothes on Vinted and explaining WhatsApp video calls to my grandparents. It is this ability to engage with selective parts of the online world that separates my generation from our elders. What makes the world that I have grown up in feel so challenging is that we cannot be selective.

The barrage of other challenges – the climate crisis, the housing crisis, inequality, cancel culture – all feel greater because we can’t escape them, constantly amplified as they are through online feeds. If we’re going to span generational divides, we need to recognise that this is where we are coming from.