麻豆约拍

Today, we all live with social media at our fingertips. But not all of us were formed by it. Simone and her friends recognise that they are unique in that they grew up and “evolved” as the world made the transition from flip-up mobiles to the smart phone age.

“Some adults like to call us Generation Z,” says Simone. “You can call us what you like but we know what makes us different to others. When we became teenagers, the online world was growing so fast the adults couldn’t keep up. We had no choice but to teach ourselves.”

They couldn’t ask the adults around them for advice or guidance. “Our parents are starting to get social media now, but when we just started high school, when we were trying to work out who we were, we had to navigate that ourselves.” They had to learn from their mistakes as they made them, because they didn’t know what those mistakes were at the time. It has shaped them as people and shaped the way they learn.

The other fans she met online were predominantly between 14 and 16 years old: young people perhaps looking for community because, in their real lives, they felt slightly on the outside. Social media gave Simone and the people she met a new kind of freedom. “There was no one who knew you apart from how you wanted to portray yourself,” she says.

Simone is mixed-race, which sometimes made growing up in Yorkshire a challenge.

There wasn’t racism, in her view, but there could be a lack of understanding. For instance, everyone was always fascinated by her afro hair. But online, nationality, ethnicity and race all disappeared. “No one could see my hair,” says Simone. “No one could reach out and ask me why it’s oily!” Suddenly, being mixed-race in a predominantly white town wasn’t an issue.

Cyber bullying was rife. People would take videos of each other and post them online. Alice remembers a group of girls looking at a picture of her and her friends on Instagram, then zooming in on her face and laughing.

In Year 7 or 8, Tina was pulled into her Head of Year’s office and accused of sending nasty messages to one of her good friends via Blackberry Messenger. But she hadn’t been on BBM for weeks. “I really wanted to prove that it wasn’t me but all evidence showed that it was,” says Tina. “Somebody had replicated my BBM profile.”

Eventually, her mum was able to verify that it wasn’t her and she was let off the hook but, even though she was innocent, the friendship in question faltered and they drifted apart. The experience has stayed with her: “To this day, still don’t know who did it. Still don’t know what the reasons or the motives were.”

Before, if you were interested in someone you asked for their number. “Now, it’s ‘can I add you on Snapchat?’” says Simone.

For Generation Z, starting a relationship with someone starts online.

First comes online flirting and following each other on social media. The “casual like” of one of their posts that is far enough back that they know you’ve looked through their account. Next comes the stage where you talk online, and this can be hard to navigate. A delay between replies can result in panic and insecurity.