Influencer Avery Katherine Wood is just nineteen years old. When she and her boyfriend of four years, Carson Cope, ended their relationship, she took to TikTok to share the update. She faced the camera, eyes red with tears, and poured out her heart about why they split up. The post has over eight million views and two million likes.
While many have correctly noted that Gen Z is emotionally, physically, and spiritually falling apart due to social media, I want to take a step further and ask: why are they flocking online? Russ Greene has captured part of this with his “Total Boomer Luxury Communism”—the shifting of material wealth from younger generations to older generations. As America becomes a retirement community, Gen Z is seeking and finding wealth in other places. In other words, as material wealth becomes less and less attainable, young people are thrusting themselves more and more online in the hopes that they will achieve status. Like the robber barons of the gilded age, the mo…