Picture this: It’s a Friday night in your local college town. You’d expect to see a gaggle of students getting ready to hit the closest dive bar or club, right? Wrong. In fact, last year, 15-to-24-year-olds spent 70% less time attending or hosting parties than they once did in 2003. So, what happened, you may ask? Apps like LinkedIn happened.
The cause of decline
Gen Z youth are spending more of their weekends grinding out internship applications, updating their resumes, or posting on LinkedIn. Love it or loathe it, it’s impossible to deny the shift in young people’s focus towards professional success and career development. While LinkedIn isn’t solely to blame, it’s the most easily recognizable symbol that highlights our generation’s switch from nights out to networking events.
Our grandparents had the simple pleasure of separating their work from their personal lives, but with our ever-growing dependence on technology nowadays, it’s easier than ever for your 9-to-5 to follow you home, with 70% of employers using social media to screen candidates. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve had a supervisor or club president tell me I need to have Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Flare, GroupMe, or whatever else downloaded on my personal phone so that I can stay connected to a project even if I leave my laptop.
It’s insane to me that while my grandparents could log out of their desktop computer and leave their office buildings at the end of the day, I am expected to be tethered to my job even within the comfort of my own home. There’s simply no reason my iPhone 13 should have X, Teams, Tumblr, and LinkedIn all on the same page.
A culture of early online professionalism
In the past decade, students have been expected to begin their professional careers as early as high school and continue to further develop them throughout college. But now, sharpening your technical skills alone isn’t enough; you’re also expected to display and promote your growth across the internet for future employers and the world to see because, otherwise, all your hard work becomes meaningless. Gen Z’s obsession with social media has already made life feel like “pictures, or it didn’t happen” is our new national anthem, but now it’s bleeding into the corporate coffin, too.
LinkedIn started as a platform to connect with colleagues and find new professional opportunities. “But for many people,” said Alcove Psychology, “it has quietly become a place that fuels comparison.” Unfortunately, this feeling isn’t reserved solely for LinkedIn. Whether you’re scrolling TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram, social networking sites in general are a breeding ground for the parasite that is insecurity.
the value of a fun night out
I could stand here on my soapbox all day and preach the horrors that exist on LinkedIn, but it’d make me a phony and a hypocrite, not to mention that I, myself, am a self-proclaimed “LinkedIn Warrior.” As a proud member of the 500+ connections club, I also use LinkedIn just as much as the next internship-hungry college student.
However, many college students use LinkedIn less for self-promotion and more for self-preservation. We all fear falling behind our peers, and as a result, we join countless organizations, apply for numerous internships, and post every step of our academic journey online. Because many are so busy chasing the opportunity to flex on LinkedIn, students can find themselves with less time to enjoy going out in the middle of the week.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious or wanting to build a successful career. But when did updating our LinkedIn profiles become more important than making memories? College is supposed to be a time for growth, both professionally and personally, and sometimes that growth happens outside of an internship or networking event.
While I’ll probably never stop being a LinkedIn warrior, maybe it’s time to close the laptop, put down the resume, and enjoy a Friday night for once.
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