From steering trends and stoking conversations to even developing new lexicons, GenZs, and social media are a match made in heaven, or the Silicon Valley, if we go by the facts. Hence, it is but crucial for the Silicon Valley barons to take notice of what appeals to their GenZ users, and what resonates with them. In line with keeping this demography on its platform, Meta, at its Delhi edition of the Instagram University session on Thursday, previewed a number of features keeping GenZs in mind, offering them more avenues to express themselves.
The features include:
Birthday’s: As the name might clearly suggest, the Birthday’s feature allows users to share their special day with their followers, who, in turn, can celebrate with elements such as confetti and stickers.
Audio and Selfie Video Notes: Notes itself is a fairly new feature allowing users to express their thoughts, along with music, in a few words. Instagram is now set to come up with Audio and Selfie features. While Audio Notes allow users to share their voice recordings as Notes, the Selfie Video Notes will allow one to share short looping videos that would last for a day.
Multiple Lists in Stories: This will be an update allowing users to create custom lists for stories, such as family and friends. Hence, you could create multiple lists and share stories with more than one.
Notably, the company has, as of now, previewed the features and will start testing them soon. While these will be the newest additions, a series of launches shows how GenZs have influenced features rolled out across social media platforms.
Take the case of Reels, which Instagram launched in 2020. The short-form videos tapped into the popularity of TikTok, which remains massively popular among GenZs and teens. Meta launched the same on Facebook, which is struggling with an ageing user base. Not only Reels, Instagram, and Facebook Stories are borrowed from Snapchat’s feature that allows users to share pictures and videos that last for a day. Snapchat, too, remains highly popular among the GenZs, with 38% of its users being aged between 18 and 24.
Tapping on the short videos’ popularity, Google-owned YouTube, too, unveiled Shorts. Not just that, recently, in August, the video platform unveiled a TikTok-like feature called Samples for its Music platform. Unveiled on YouTube Music, Samples is meant for users to discover new music. These are basically short snippets of music videos, right on the home page, which you can also use to watch the full song.
These clearly reflect the influence this demography has on the digital world, and rightly so, given that they are digital natives. And there are solid numbers to back that, too. Reports suggest that 90% of the GenZs use social media. They are also heavier users compared to Millennials.
Coupled with the sheer numbers is the fact that their purchasing power is rising, giving more impetus for brands to flock to a platform. This brings advertising
“Our research found that 64% of Gen Z and Millennials have made a purchase through social media in the past year — these younger audiences embrace social commerce, and with this report, we sought their input on how we can create a more meaningful and engaging social commerce journey,” said Seema Patel, global managing director, Mx Intelligence, Havas Media Network, as per media reports. The survey also revealed that 94% of Indian social media users had purchased apparel on/via
social media.
It doesn’t stop at that. A report by Google even revealed that a large proportion of GenZs use Instagram and TikTok for internet searches. As per the search engine giant, about 40% of GenZ users use these platforms for searching, giving more impetus to companies to keep the demography in mind when rolling out features.
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