Now that I am about to turn 30, I am at a very unique point in time. My 20s are officially almost over, and I am creating room for the younger generation. It is the natural cycle of time and life. It’s interesting to me because I am noticing new things, similarities, and differences all the time between 20 year olds in 2012 and 20 year olds now. Even though a decade is not really that long if you think about it in terms of the scale of human history, it’s been interesting to see the changes between what young people were like when I was that age, and what they’re like now.
Something I have noticed regarding younger people in particular is that their romantic vocabulary has changed. Don’t get me wrong, certain things are exactly the same, but I guess now they are a bit more “normalized,” if that makes sense. To give you one example: if a guy and a girl are boyfriend and girlfriend now (or whatever gendered relationship they happen to be, because young people these days have 9 million genders that I cannot keep up with or remember all of, DKM😂), they must acknowledge it on social media or it isn’t “real.” The other day I heard the phrase, “They made their relationship Instagram official,” and I thought that was amusing. When I was 20, Instagram existed, but that phrase did not. I think the most people cared about that type of thing back then, if they did at all, was changing their “relationship status” on Facebook, which was a social network people used to use if you’re not familiar with it😂.
The idea that people would change their “relationship status” was definitely weird to me at the time, but I believe where we are now is even weirder: the entire lexicon surrounding romance has changed. What does it say about a couple’s relationship if they’re not “Instagram official,” does that really mean something significant? To some people, it actually does, which is surreal to me. It’s almost akin to a person in a previous decade getting dressed up and going out to be seen in a fancy outfit: their whole identity is tied to others seeing them in a way they want to be seen. I’m not judging or laughing at anyone, I’m just pointing out observations here.
Another example of the way young people are different is not so much with language specifically, but still pertaining to social media use. I have noticed this pattern more over the last 3 years in particular: a lot of people seem to have both a public and a private account (colloquially referred to as a “priv”). The private account is usually for the purpose of only their “mutuals,” or other folks they deem worthy of seeing all of their meaningless thoughts and posts about life. Presumably, private accounts serve the purpose of not getting fired from one’s job if the person in question happens to enjoy posting risqué jokes. And they also protect the user from their family members potentially seeing any unwanted things they want hidden. Or other people they might be being stalked by. I don’t think I would ever be the kind of person to have multiple profiles on one social media app, but I do understand the need for having both a public and private account. In a society that has become increasingly sensitive and filled with so many people who can’t take a joke or separate dark humour from who a person is in their personal life, you just never know.
However, that being said, just because I understand it does not mean I necessarily approve of it. Because that leads me to another observation I’ve noticed, which is this: the more accounts a person has, the more likely this person is to be mentally unhinged in some way. I know this might sound like an older person failing to understand the younger generation or whatever, but I promise you I’m not, and this is what I mean: when I was 20, if a person had multiple accounts on the same platform, that usually meant they were a bit of a weirdo. They were not seen as engaging in something considered normal behaviour, but someone to watch and possibly be worried about. Because it wasn’t the norm, this person was using the second account to stalk someone they had a crush on, harass someone, or just post insane shit without having to face any consequences (not just for comedic purposes, it could also be to spread rumours about people and cyberbully and generally be a dick). As a brief side note: when I was in high school someone once anonymously started a hate group about someone as a joke on Facebook. You might remember that from my novel, The Lost Generation, if you read it; yes, that was a real thing that happened.
Now, fast forward to 2022: having a private account is seen as less of a weird personality abnormality, and now it’s apparently about self-preservation. I think this is particularly noteworthy because it’s a clear example of just how much things have changed. In the past, people had private accounts they didn’t tell anyone about, out of embarrassment or mental instability or whatever. Now, people openly have private accounts and they literally tell their main followers, “Follow this other one, only some of you.”
Once again, I’d like to make the distinction that I am not attacking younger people for doing this. I don’t think many of them are really to blame, and I see a lot of them as mere pawns in a game they mostly don’t understand the mechanisms of and didn’t ask to be players of. I can’t really fault a person for being born into such shitty and insane times that lead them to act in unhealthy ways. But what I think this is indicative of is not so much self-preservation, but the acceptance of how mentally unhinged people are now allowed to be in general. And I don’t just mean solely young people and the users of these multiple accounts (although they are definitely mentally unhinged), I am making the case societally speaking as well. It’s a sure sign to me that things have gotten much crazier than they were just 10 years ago. From my perspective, you have to appreciate what it seems to say about us as people: in our society now, it is perfectly acceptable to openly have multiple social media accounts when it didn’t used to be. This is something I quite literally lived through.
I think what we can learn from this pattern and the changing attitudes towards privacy and the need for censorship etc, is that these social networks are simply incompatible with who we really are as social creatures. And it also shows us that as social media and technology have advanced, our behaviour has gotten stranger and weirder over time. It’s almost like the longer we have these things, the more we personally adapt to accommodate things that shouldn’t really be part of our lives. One thing that exists online should not define a person forever. That is just common sense: everyone knows this on some level. But the type of person that would take one piece of information about a person and blow it out of proportion is also an insane human being that would not exist 10 years ago either. People are getting crazier and crazier every year, and acting in ways they probably would never have prior to social media.
One thing you can count on: we are collectively such an irrational species that, no matter what, we will continue changing our behaviours to reflect the social media usage in our lives. We will not reflect on how we do stuff, we will just modify our behaviour patterns. Regardless of how dumb, unhinged, or insane that behaviour may seem, it then becomes normalized, accepted, and then continues to get worse over time.