It’s been a long day. You open TikTok, and immediately stumble upon a video of some influencer badly lip syncing to whatever song is most popular at that given moment, accompanied by a text description. You would ordinarily write it off and keep scrolling, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. The app is plagued by this type of low-effort content. Before you can even process what this video is to keep scrolling, you involuntarily read the text selection, which reads “we’re the last kids to not have our baby photos taken on a phone” or something of the like. You’re brought back to scrapbooks, photo books, collages, and polaroids kept in the cellar. Framed photos decorate your living room, surrounding you as the realization is made.
With the technological advancements that have happened over the past century and a half, photo and video have revolutionized the storage of memory. Almost everyone in America has some form of a camera in some capacity, and with the development of audio-visual technology, a moment can quite literally be replayed before one’s very eyes. The internet has created a world where everyone can not only be heard, but immortalized in a broader sense in a way previously reserved for those in positions of power.
The internet, and social media in particular have provided an almost utopic space, at least in theory, regarding the ease of not only accessing, but publishing information. The playing field is leveled in a completely unprecedented way. Internet users are simultaneously producers and consumers of culture, leading to many social and cultural movements both created and propagated by everyday people.
Many internet users, particularly social media users, have been looped into putting their moments or memories online, not only the ones they post but especially the ones they don’t. To gain access to a social media profile is to gain access to a playback of a life, and the countless memories that come with it. It’s fairly common among younger generations to literally have their entire life on a few apps.
Instead of possessing true ownership of memories like previous generations did in the form of film and physical photo copies, Gen Z has been sold into co-lending their lives to these companies, who despite farming their data and profiting off of their livelihoods, have taken no action in preserving the memories they swore to upon their inception. With the fleeting nature of trends, and the relatively short lifespans of profitability for social media sites, a future exists where Gen Z just flat-out won’t have access to these memories that social media companies are actively profiting from.
It’s hard to feel like some form of agency and ownership hasn’t been taken from social media users when all things are considered. The entire point of inventing things like cameras and smartphones was to give everyday people more ownership of their memories, but with the way that social media companies have evolved in their business models, it seems to have had the exact opposite effect. Back in the day, when a photo was taken and printed out, it was yours, and yours only. It was a physical object that you had ownership over. Nowadays, that’s far from the case. Your photos and activity are farmed for data and analytics are taken based upon everything from your location to your hair color, everyone knows this. Why aren’t we more concerned? Our photos are not truly ours anymore. Your wedding photos, graduation photos, prom photos, etc, are just tiny units in the vast database that is the thousands of millions of things posted or saved just that hour.
The intangible nature of photos and memory storage as it relates to the internet presents interesting dilemmas regarding privacy and ownership, as well as the rights of individuals to property that is not physical. How much ownership does someone have over their photos and videos taken and/or saved online, and how much should they have?
This is not to scapegoat Gen Z, or to say that this is in any way our fault, but only to face the reality that we will be the ones most affected. Our role as the “iGen” puts us in a position where we are the first generation to not have the same relationship with physical media as our parents and grandparents. Will our generation have anything left to show for itself? With the unpredictability of the internet, especially given its relative youth, it should be treated with far more skepticism. Ignoring the small movement of film and digital cameras as an aesthetic trend, the rapid shift from physical media to digital seems especially shocking. The purpose of this is not to instill fear or uncertainty, but to raise valid questions not asked often enough.
The internet is often treated like an airtight safe, when in reality it’s far too often proven otherwise. It seems like with every news cycle, more and more tech moguls and CEOs are on trial for gross overreaches of privacy and security. What is often discussed most is the role of the social part, the adverse mental health effects, the changes in our communication and relationships, etc. Not enough attention is placed on the role that these companies have played in completely eclipsing the memory storage that was once revolutionary, over the span of less than a decade.
What gain do we really receive as consumers from these apps aside from caving from engineered social pressure to join them? The whole point was to have more connections and memories than our parents, not less. Why are we allowing ourselves to lose ownership of our own memories more and more with each technological advancement and app update? More work should be done in discussing why we use these apps, and how to meaningfully interact and discuss with our peers how we can receive the benefits advertised to us. We are the consumers, and we drive demand for these platforms, not the other way around. If these platforms are no longer serving us, then changes need to be made.