The ‘Whole Social Map’ Of A Teen Girl’s World Is On Instagram

How will Gen Z impact your business today, tomorrow, and in ten years?Teenage girls have a full time job that even their parents might not be aware of. They need to keep their brand "relevant" on Instagram. Their product? Themselves. Via selfies.In a recent "This American Life," Ira Glass talked to a 13-year-old and two 14-year-olds, and they all agreed that they were anxious each time they posted a selfie. How would their female friends would respond? They also had to be careful about how they responded to others' selfies, because they all checked others' comments and likes.Would their picture get a like within 10 minutes of posting? Would other girls comment that they were gorgeous, pretty, stunning, the cutest, or perfect? Were there nuances to the comment that suggested things were not as rosy as they seemed?"It's actually like, you're getting a picture of your entire social world and who's up and who's down and who's close to who, and it's like you're getting a diagram of where everybody stands with everybody else," explained one girl.Like PR agents whose clients are themselves, these teen girls on Instagram are constantly reading their social standing and negotiating it through an image app. Their empathy and psychological acumen will make them experts at navigating sociality in the digital world as adults, but their burn out rate and need for Digital Detox is going to be huge. Subscribe to n2 now and receive daily trends, direct to your pocket