How a Screen Shaped Our Generation Without Our Permission

As much as it pains me to admit this, I do not remember a time when I would come back from school and not log onto a computer. I was addicted, but I was no different from the millions of other teenagers born in the late nineties and early two-thousands who got home and would relax to the tune of their MSN logging in.

If you are one of us, I bet you are hearing the very sound right now.

But before social media was truly around, a lot of my time was spent pressing buttons and hoping I did not hit a landmine, aggressively punching my keyboard whilst playing pinball, or changing my wallpaper to some absurd mosaic photograph of a new television show.

My first taste of online communication was actually the email my father helped me set up, so that I could create an MSN account. MSN was not quite like social media, but an evolution of email into instant messaging and the occasional photo sharing. As a child it was the epitome of fun.

I don't remember hearing about 'screen addiction' in those days. It was not something parents had to discuss or read books about. The argument was not "screens are addictive," but "computers are an adult thing." And so we went, an entire generation procrastinating away our homework, and looking away whenever we heard that all too familiar ping.

The dynamics of what instant messaging and consequently social media changed fast. Whilst adults focused their concerns on children accessing adult content online, us kids began discovering the comfort of screen usernames. For some, it was an accessible, instant rise to popularity. For others, the username was a costume—a way to hide from the real world. I think the internet particularly enthralled the latter.

It was all probably an accumulation of factors that led to us outcasts finding a place to call home built up of HTML and coding. Forbidden to use my real name, I began making up usernames for every website I signed up for, and soon realised I could be whoever I wanted to be. At Club Penguin I was an eighteen-year-old college student. At Barbie World I was sixteen and a singer. At Neopets I was a three-legged blue fur ball. My hiding was by no means intentional, but purely entertaining and I can imagine it must have felt somewhat like having the whole world in my own hands; a rather impressive feat for a young child.

As we grew, so did our online personalities. I ditched the fantasy worlds I had once been so welcomed by, and joined social media—a different type of world. The one that left the most lasting impact on me, and perhaps also the most misunderstood of them all, was Tumblr.

Tumblr attracted every sort of person one could think of, but it was the outcasts that stayed. During the early 2010s, Tumblr was a dark place. On the surface we all had a 'main' url where we re-blogged pretty images of what we aspired to be. This was the url you would show your mother if she dared to ask what on earth were you spending your afternoons doing. It would look impressive—and no wonder, since you spent a good afternoon learning how to tweak your HTML codes for that particular font. It gave your parents and friends the illusion of innocence.

But then you had your secondary links.

Your secondary url was your true self, an artwork that felt too personal to sign. Secondary urls were where the real Tumblr appeared. People spoke without the fear of being judged, shared quotes about how they truly felt, and built up a community of individuals. Fandoms emerged. Fitspo became a thing. Social-justice was spoken about. It was the birth of accepting subcultures, and giving voice to minorities. But it was also a dark space; people made satirical comments about mental health issues or advocated for dangerous lifestyles.

Tumblr translated my innermost thoughts.

I would be foolish to say I thought Tumblr is the reason we millennials are so outspoken and stand up for what we believe in. Regardless, I do believe Tumblr, as well as many social communities that boomed in the early 2010s, have had a large involvement in our generation. They opened so many doors to the taboo and shaped the millennial sarcastic humor into what it is now. We grew to make fun of things that were actually painful as a coping mechanism, and by having had that chance to so freely express our innermost thoughts, we became allies. There was no censorship. No etiquette. No one to impress. All these rules that have for centuries stained our society with norms were abolished.

And what happened?

We flourished.