The other day, I finished a book and found myself immediately pulling up Goodreads to log it. My follower count on that app is a staggering three people— one of which I know for a fact does not know how to log back in, and another is my sister. Obviously, I’m not posting for them. So why is it so important that I record everything immediately?
I often forget that many of the platforms I use religiously, such as Goodreads and Letterboxd, are technically social platforms. Like many of my peers, I don’t update for the interactions—I use these apps to keep track of the media I have consumed.
I use my Letterboxd history to resolve debates with my mother about which Christmas movies we watched last year. I use Goodreads to measure progress towards my yearly goal, reminding myself to stay on top of my reading, and to finish books before starting new ones. All of my Pinterest boards are private.
The internet has become Gen Z’s journal. Nowadays, it’s quick and easy to file data about our lives away onto our phone to be ported around wherever we go. Even if their offerings are not explicitly defined as social, companies are constantly trying to make everything social media-esque, by boasting features to convince users that aspects of our lives and personalities exist to be shared.
It feels like every platform has begun implementing social elements, including public profiles, friending, and options to share content or updates. For example, even the note-taking app Notability now permits users who create a full user profile to: “Publish your notes and share them with the world.”
This pattern of social-ifying functional programs extends to our health. Apps like MyFitnessPal and Fitbit offer options to share your profile and “friend” others to share your progress. With these apps, users willingly consent to inputting their data in exchange for a service: the ability to track progress and patterns.
I believe we’ve become so used to this that many of us barely consider what companies are collecting before hitting the “agree” button. Yet there seems to have been a natural progression from users being willing to share data with a program to being willing to share it with others, publicly.
Our data has become so impersonal that it’s easy to forget that it’s ours, and there are many reasons we should be trying as hard as possible to keep what we can protected. This data collection has also become increasingly mindless.
Many health-related apps, for example, are connected to technologies like wearable trackers that feed data into the program without us having to think about it. These features can be extremely helpful. However, with any technology, there is always the possibility of overdependence—and, potentially, overconsumption.
Tasks like journaling require an element of self-reflection that trackers can omit the apparent need for. Instead, we need our jewelry to tell us how we slept.
What happened to reflecting on how you feel after a rough night? To thinking about how weird your dreams were, and maybe even scrawling down what you remember before they slipped away for good? You don’t need to do that anymore, with [insert hot new program here]. It will tell you how you feel.
The reality is, oftentimes, we just want to keep track of what we’ve done and are doing with our lives. For Gen Z, we’re so used to our lives being public growing up in this digital age that our phones feel like a reasonable outlet for this, regardless of the risks.
I’ve seen a few iterations of the same joke online. Me stalking my own reposts. Me admiring my own Pinterest boards. Me laughing my own account because of how funny I am. Oftentimes, these jokes refer to public accounts, and there’s a level of how we are being perceived that’s involved.
We can say we want to see what others think of us, but I think it’s more personal than that. When stalking your own TikTok reposts, for example, you can tell yourself how you believe you seem to the outside world. But you’re also, in a weird way, revisiting phases of your life, and literally watching yourself and your interests progress (even in a way that feels silly).
Did you repost that song you love, in part, because you were going through it with your situationship at the time? Wow, remember how much you loved that show when you first watched it? The public doesn’t necessarily know these details, but we do, and it can be fun to swipe a trip down memory lane.
I think we care about our own lives. I think we are, in many ways, proud of our own lives. There are many reasons why you would want to share pieces of yourself with the world, and it’s good to be proud of yourself and your personality.
Things like the books we read, and our Letterboxd Top Four can truly feel like a part of our identity, because they are part of what makes us feel truly ourselves— the fact we have our own preferences.
My issue is, with Gen Z, it feels like too much lies at the intersection of the things that define us and the apparent need for that to be recognized. Gen Z is lonely. Gen Z is sad. Gen Z feels judged. We hear these things all of the time, and there is no shortage of data to back them up. There’s even evidence that social media has been a key contributing factor to the struggles our generation faces.
When we share the entirety of our lives online, we still turn to that which did the damage for validation. Are the books I read giving downtown girl, or more cool girl? Is my workout early enough in the morning to optimize my hormonal something-or-other? Does anyone care about the things that I do?
When we can expect every aspect of our lives to be online, we start to choose every detail based on the image we are trying to curate, which can then be influenced by how we are perceived. Even if you aren’t sharing for the purpose of sharing, the very notion of an online profile can make you more conscious of how it all looks.
My Oma has told me stories about how she used to sit in her father’s car during rainstorms (because she liked the sound of the rain on the metal roof) and just wrote in her journal. Many great authors and other public figures kept consistent diaries which have since been published but were originally kept for personal use.
If you look back throughout time, you will see that humans have always felt the need to express their own stories, and their own lives, but not necessarily always for consumption. There seems to be a very human need to document that we were here, and what we experienced, and what we loved, even if it’s just for ourselves.
In my opinion, not everything needs to be social. I’m not saying that I’m going to totally give up Letterboxd, Goodreads, or Pinterest anytime soon. But I do think that Gen Z could, in many ways, benefit from disconnecting some of our record-keeping from the online world.
A written journal, for example, can help consolidate your story and your feelings into a more secure and more personal “device” that you can still carry around with you wherever you go. Not only that, but it encourages the mindful (and yes, sometimes difficult) self-reflection that we need in order to learn and grow.
I think that journalling allows you to think through what things mean for you and your life in a way that just hitting “post” doesn’t. Even lists or bullet journals are great options if you prefer the specificity of keeping separate sections for the TV you’ve watched versus your current gym routine. The options are endless, and there’s lots of room for creativity.
I believe it’s important to consider where we are putting our data, what we are making public, and which parts of ourselves we can just keep to ourselves. Social media promotes messages like “be yourself,” and “don’t care what other people think,” but it’s hard to do that when every little aspect of life is considered a public representation.
I feel like it’s better to keep some of these things private, so you can develop without input from the world. I encourage you to just think a little but about whether the “data” you publish is actually meant for the internet, or if you’re using those tools to remind yourself how cool and wonderful and interesting you and your life are.
And, if it’s the latter, maybe consider if there are healthier, more personal tools available to you. Because you are cool, but only you need to know that.