For Gen Z, it's all about 'timepass' mode
For Gen Z, it's all about 'timepass' mode
A new study (that I read so you don't have to) digs into Gen Z's non-linear, feel-good online consumption
How ‘bout that generation gap? More like vortex. A new study from Google’s Jigsaw in partnership with Gemic found that the way Gen Z consumes information online is so drastically different from other generations that they may as well be a different species.
Disclaimer: On the good-good side, this study is solely focused on Gen Z – so although other recent media consumption studies have started to track the youngs, they are often lumped in to studies designed to study existing information-seeking frameworks – not the new one they seem to have built while we weren’t looking. On the other hand, this is one study based on 52 participants, so the results are more qualitative than quantitative. This is some interesting qual, but it is my sincere hope that this leads to more – from the same researchers and others. (In fact, if any academic institutions out there want to bring me in to do a 5-year longitudinal study of Gen Z/Alpha news consumption I am ready and willing!).
It’s important to understand, as creator journalists and boosters of said ecosystem, exactly how next gen audiences are interacting with content. It isn’t just about younger audiences trusting individuals more than legacy media brands (although that’s still a thing), it’s also about the intention with which Gen Z is even setting out to experience information.
“I don’t personally seek out news,” said one subject of the study. News is just something that pops into their feeds between Charlie XCX and whatever else is popping on the algorithm on a given day.
The big, new shiny concept to wrap our heads around here is contained in the term Timepass Mode. Timepass mode is a title coined by the researchers to describe the behaviors and motivations driving Gen Zers to do basically the opposite of doomscrolling. Timepass mode, which is the most common of of seven different online consumption modes defined by the study, is characterized by the desire to “assuage boredom and feel good while doing it.”
In timepass mode, the subjects of the study were looking for mindless entertainment and a sense of lightness.
The researches cite scads of studies about the “well-documented phenomenon that young adults are experiencing higher levels of uncertainty, anxiety, and stress compared to previous generations.” Timepass mode offers a way to short-circuit the overwhelming stressors leading to that anxiety: climate change, pandemics, polarized politics, student debt.
In timepass mode, truth and trust don’t really matter. It’s about the vibe.
In fact, that vibe is important in more way than one. First, it’s about the way the consumer wants to feel – unchallenged and entertained. But it goes deeper. Once a Gen Z consumer has watched or read something, the study suggests they are withholding judgment about its trustworthiness and importance until they understand how everyone else feels about it. It’s all about the comments. What conventional wisdom is rising from the primordial soup of group think? There’s an assumption that anything #fakenews won’t make it past the commentariat.
The other big finding from the study: Gen Zers, unlike their predecessors, consume content in a non-linear journey. They don’t go online in search of information about a particular thing. Instead, information about a thing (many things) comes to them in the course of their Timepass-y explorations. So for content creators, this means building an audience around expertise and loyalty may be a bigger job than it has in the past. For instance, if you’ve got a kickass TikTok account with THE BEST political analysis ever, you may be waiting a long time for an audience to find you because they’re seeking out “THE BEST political analysis ever.” Instead, you need to game the alogrithm and hope for a little bit of luck to hope your content surfaces to the right timepass mode scrollers who then like your work and boost its chances of reaching an even wider audience. If you’re a newsletter purveyor, I don’t know what to tell you – yet – but there are some worrying thoughts forming about a looming audience cliff for newsletters as Gen Z continues to come of age.
I tried to think about timepass mode, non-linear journeys and generational acceptance or rejection of something newsy in context of what’s happening right now. Kamala Harris’ new status as the Democratic nominee has caught fire online. Just this week, The Guardian noted Gen Z’s swelling support for Harris. Surely some of that enthusiasm can be chalked up to the reason many others are excited: She’s got a better chance of beating Trump and she is not in her 80s. But in light of this study, I’m wondering if it’s also a little bit because the way her candidacy rolled out in the first 48 hours was a celebratory mix of memes and clips of fun Kamala – making her the perfect content, and candidate, for Timepass mode. (Vox’s Rebecca Jennings has a great piece out this week re: electability and memeability.)
PS. There is a section of the findings devoted to Gen Z’s use of and thoughts about generative AI, too – so even more reason to read the actual study this time.