“CAN WE GET a cute drink and snacks after this?” reads the text on a recent TikTok image of men with machine guns in army gear. It’s intended to depict the attitude of young female US soldiers while storming a building in Gaza. The post, created by a Gen Zer whose popular feed abounds with Taylor Swift lip-syncs and dance videos, is captioned: “I love this trend #thedraft #war #foryou #fyp #funny.”
It’s one of scores of “funny” posts that have collectively racked up hundreds of millions of views on TikTok in the two weeks since the Hamas attacks on Israel triggered a brutal war in the region.
Other posts include self-deprecation (“celebrating because no matter how bad life gets, I can’t be drafted… because I’m on antidepressants”) and songs for the soldiers who make it to the frontlines. The latter is presented like a playlist for a reality these content creators are choosing to treat as fiction. They are in response to an AI-manipulated video of President Joseph R. Biden calling for a draft of American “sons and daughters” and fixate in particular on the futility of drafting young women. This deepfake video of Biden, which went viral on TikTok and Facebook, has since been removed from both platforms. Still, its impact continues to play out in the rash of Gen Z videos spoofing America’s involvement in an increasingly widespread crisis.
The satirical content seems innocuous compared with the atrocities unfolding in the Middle East, and not all young Tik-Tokers are responding with mockery, of course. Some are producing serious citizen journalism. But the popularity of the brazenly unserious online reactions reminds us that our future workforce and leaders are coming of age during back-to-back crises.
In recent conversations with psychologists and youth counselors, I’ve realized that in the face of painful realities, many Gen Zers have become masters of comedic deflection.
Devorah Heitner, author of Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, told me that “satire can be an important form of expression for a generation that has been overexposed and desensitized to shocking events. They can benefit from comedy as a safe and creative way to play at the edge of the outrageous, to test what feelings are appropriate.”
In the past year, TikTok has been teeming with parodies of news events ranging from the Oceangate submarine explosion to the death of Queen Elizabeth to the shooting down of China’s spy balloon.
Heitner isn’t suggesting that making memes about any of these events — least of all a deadly conflict — is appropriate. It isn’t, by conventional standards. But the 26-and-under crowd is experiencing childhood and entering adulthood during unconventional times. Playing in the background of their daily lives are the effects of a global pandemic, successive natural disasters, mass shootings, and acts of police brutality.
Linda Charmaraman, director of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab at Wellesley Centers for Women, agreed that it could be better for Gen Z to have a place for expression (even if it’s irreverent) than to have no outlet at all. “Sarcasm can be a sign of weakened self-esteem, an expression of a lack of control, masking vulnerability. But comedy can also be cathartic. They’ve got to feel the feels.”
And while they’re processing those feelings, perhaps the more pertinent topic we should consider is the responsibility that parents, educators and policymakers have in providing better mental health support and stronger social media guardrails.
Larissa May, the Gen Z founder of Half The Story, an organization that advocates for online safety and what she calls “digital wellbeing,” said that what’s most concerning is not so much that her generation is creating flippant or comedic TikToks. What they’re consuming is the biggest worry. Alongside the satirical draft posts, algorithms are pushing far more potentially damaging content into their feeds: “The most emotionally provocative content on social media travels so much faster than factual or educational content,” says May. “The algorithms force-feed not just misinformation but fear, anger and propaganda.”
The latest attempt to address this issue has come in two forms: a bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general suing Meta for making addictive content for teens, and policymakers scaling up efforts to pass landmark online safety legislation.
It should be obvious why we need such actions and laws. Charmaraman reminded me that most adolescents, especially those under 14, don’t have the cognitive tools to distinguish between what’s real and fake or mitigate the impulse to consume ever more provocative information. They, especially, need better support from parents and educators to make sense of what they see. This could be through conversations at the dinner table and media literacy lessons in schools.
While it can be valuable for kids to have a space to react — even inappropriately — on social media, Heitner emphasized that “they also need a space to reflect.”
The adults in the room are going to have to be there to help create such an environment. It’s where younger generations can process and refine these reactions and do the deeper work of coming to terms with the relentlessly shocking cultural and political landscape that surrounds them.
BLOOMBERG OPINION