I'm probably not the best person to be talking about how the internet has affected the world we live in because I haven't lived through the days when the internet didn't exist, but I'm 19 and already I'm feeling a great disconnect with people 3 years younger, particularly in terms of the entertainment content we consume.
As a child of the early 2000s, my meme category would fall into "Only 90s kids would know..." and old-school Disney movies. Recently, the YouTube algorithm has been pushing throwbacks to old Disney movies (and when I mean old, I mean High School Musical and Camp Rock and the likes, which isn't that long ago, really) and there's been a surge of content bringing about nostalgia of our younger days - I call it the collective quarter-life crisis of the Generation Z.
A few days ago, a video titled "Zoe Valentine | SEASON 1 | Episode 1: "Disappearing Act"" by a channel Brat appeared on my YouTube discovery. Curious, I clicked because I really like web series (PBS Digital's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is my favourite). I found that Brat was actually deemed by many as YouTube's Nickelodeon, which is surprising to me because this series talked about affairs and unemployment and LGBTQ+ and death - hardly a topic a teen channel like Nickelodeon would cover. I also found that most of their actors are musical.ly stars, you know, people from those trending videos of people lipsyncing and dancing.
It got me thinking, is this what younger teens nowadays watch? I sound like a total oldie but I've always thought that there were two categories of teen dramas. You have the Nickelodeon or Disney-type shows catered towards a more 'innocent' audience, high school shows mostly accompanied with songs like Victorious. Then you have more 'mature' shows like Glee or Riverdale with parties and sex and teen pregnancies. What I found about this Zoe Valentine series was that it was almost a mixture of both... Zoe Valentine looks clearly younger than her schoolmates, leading me to think that maybe this was something along the lines of what Nickelodeon would produce. But then came the party scenes and the aforementioned topics and I thought, maybe this was catered to a more mature audience?
Now, how information is spread has changed so much since the development of social media and the sudden onslaught of users, in particular teens and younger children. Nethmi's 10-year-old cousin discovered ASMR and even elementary school students started to curse, which, as much as I hate to say it, I believe is accredited to exposure from social media. I can't really say social media is bad, rather it has accelerated the exposure to PG-13 or R-15 materials for younger children since no censoring measure was adapted. I'm on my instagram 25/8 so I can't blame children much younger than me who are more susceptible to marketing and persuasion than I am for replicating what they see online. It's very much a grey area I'm currently unable to form an opinion about.
For the most part, globalisation and the ease of access have made people more accepting and open-minded. When I was 13 or 14, I didn't care much at all for LGBT or world issues. The children of today do, however, and I think this call for diversity and acceptance has influenced the entertainment industry to use a more racially and sexually diverse cast to cater towards the younger generation. This, I commend.
But then comes the question of, are they being exposed to this too early? What is innocence anymore if all the gruesome details of the world are out in the open like this? Before social media came into play, we had to watch the news or read newspapers for current affairs, something I still find boring to this day. Most of the news I consume are through news channels on YouTube like Philip DeFranco or things that pop up on my Instagram or Facebook feed. I think it's amazing that children are also becoming more aware of what is happening around the world and I find it so inspiring to see conversation amongst people of all ages. However, there's also a minuscule part of me that is sad because that part of me still believes children should be shielded from the evils of the world, fake news and YouTube drama.
Still, it's hard to deny that the current state of the online entertainment industry is breeding critical thinkers, what with all the access of information and the education in digital literacy. The definition of entertainment is now different: it's not a simple pastime anymore; instead, it seeks to educate in this changing times, bring about acceptance and love for diversity.
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