Am I outgrowing the internet or is the internet outgrowing me?

I’ve existed online for a very long time. Between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Snapchat and LinkedIn it’s actually quite difficult to figure out what about me isn’t floating around in the ether. Social media holds a decade-long catalogue of the music I like, the events I’ve attended, the cities I’ve traveled to and the jobs I’ve held. If you want to know where I went to school there’s a platform for that. A simple Google search will tell you more about me than most of my basic acquaintances would know.

This reality has never troubled me much. Despite early warnings about the dangers of sharing information online, I’ve never felt particularly unsafe or uncomfortable. This is likely due to the fact that the internet was entering its golden era just as I was coming of age, my emergence from the angsty, hormonal cocoon of adolescence coinciding perfectly with the dawn of the age of the Instagram influencer. By the time I entered high school the normal thing to do was to share every aspect of your life with tons of strangers, and in exchange consume all of the information they were sharing as well.

In those early years of social media I never stopped to consider how bizarre it must have been for my parents and even grandparents to watch as young people slowly turned socially inward but technologically outward, refusing to divulge their feelings at family dinner but gleefully Tweeting them out to their 37 followers. My parents had strict rules about Facebook and Instagram while I still lived at home, but I quickly learned how to alter my settings so that they couldn’t see everything I did (the worst of which, for those wondering, was post photos wearing halter top). The internet was a landscape I could control and manipulate and people outside of my generation, at least at the beginning, couldn’t understand how I was doing it.

Throughout my early twenties I’ve continued to keep up with online trends. I downloaded Spotify and made shareable playlists. I slowly stepped back from Facebook because everyone else my age seemed to be doing the same. I uploaded my resume onto LinkedIn. But this year, for the first time since I created a Facebook page at the age of 14, I have finally felt like the internet was pulling ahead of me.

In late November I was scrolling through LinkedIn to see what kinds of infuriatingly impressive things my friends have been up to lately (my preferred method of self-torture). I stumbled across a job opening for a “Content Creator” and, upon closer reading, realized that the position was for a TikTok coordinator. This shouldn’t have been surprising. It has become common in recent years for companies to hire technology-savvy individuals to curate their social media content. These positions help companies to build their brands and attract potential customers through beautifully staged photos and engaging captions. By failing to engage online, companies risk missing out on millions of customers susceptible to smart marketing.

TikTok, a Chinese-owned app that allows users to upload short edited or unedited videos, is a perfect platform for companies trying to expand their consumer base. With hundreds of millions of active users and even more downloads, the company is a gold mine for marketing. What’s unique about TikTok is how much it demands of its users. I’ve been routinely blown away by the creativity of the people on the app, many of them significantly younger than I am. From complex dance routines to fully formed comedy skits to bafflingly brilliant reality television spoofs, TikTok doesn’t rely on simplicity. There is, of course, ridiculous content as you’ll find on any social platform, but TikTok allows for personality and talent to shine through in a way that Instagram and Facebook are already trying to replicate.

TikTok is also addictive. I’ve lost many an hour to the soothing absurdity of strangers lip syncing to Billie Eilish songs. The algorithm floods your feed with exactly the content you crave, whether that’s videos of dogs who communicate using a series of word buttons or real estate videos showcasing multi-million-dollar Toronto penthouses (another beloved form of self-torture). The app knows what you want and is more than ready to give it to you.

I downloaded TikTok in late 2019, curious to know more about the newest iteration of online existence. I expected it to be simple in the way that Instagram and Facebook are, but nothing about it felt straightforward to me. Between complex filters and the often time-consuming filming and editing process, TikTok felt far removed from the easy internet I knew and loved, where the governing maxims decreed that bikini photos equaled “likes”, and that travel pictures reigned supreme. On TikTok you could go viral for something as simple as falling over or something as complex as trying to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in under a minute.

While it has brought me laughter and joy in an undeniably dark year, TikTok has also confirmed a realization in my mind that I had been trying to keep at bay for some time: someday the internet will outpace me and I don’t know what I’ll do then.

For so long I, and many of my friends of a similar age, have clung to the notion that despite a frightening housing market and the looming realities of global warming, at least we are experts when it comes to being online. Entering the job market after graduating from university was intimidating, but I felt secure in the knowledge that I had a skillset that a lot of people outside of my generation didn’t. My digital fluency was something that I could use to bolster my resume and make myself invaluable to my company.

Reading through the TikTok “Content Creator” job posting, I finally came face-to-face with the reality that simply understanding how Instagram ads work won’t always be enough. The internet is going to continue to mutate, and as it does it is going to be harder to keep up. The teenagers who amaze me with their creativity on TikTok have had social media even more engrained into their lives than I have, some of them having been born after Facebook was already founded. In some ways, despite being younger than I am, they are even more prepared for world domination. They’re aware of it, too.

The actor Avan Jogia, known for his roles in the Nickelodeon show Victorious and the film Zombieland: Double Tap, recently created a profile on TikTok. At the age of 28 he is considered positively geriatric on the app, and his younger followers aren’t afraid to tell him so. When he posted a video imitating a popular trend called the “dice walk” (wherein one walks while making a motion like they are rolling dice set to mellow music, and no I’m not joking) a follower commented, “I love it when the elderly do trends.” These comments, while lighthearted and funny, offer a glimpse into the rapidly evolving landscape of the internet. People who literally weren’t alive in the year 2000 are experts. Jogia, for his part, has mastered how to interact with his followers, self-deprecatingly responding to comments on his videos with perfectly employed TikTok lingo and racking up millions of followers in the process.

TikTok has launched teenagers into superstardom. Creators like Charlie D’Amelio, the first user to reach 100 million followers, and her sister Dixie D’Amelio, have used their platforms to launch lucrative brand deals and even musical careers. Just as happened with Instagram and YouTube, TikTok has allowed people to forge high-paying careers for themselves, and the only equipment required was a smartphone. Every time I unlock my phone I see new podcasts and businesses sprouting up based on the success people have found on social media. Groups of young creators have taken over multi-million dollar mansions in Los Angeles and London and branded their abodes as “content houses” with names like The Hype House and The Wave House. They use these shared spaces to collaborate on the creation of viral videos, leveraging each other’s massive platforms to expand their viewership.

The other night as I sat scrolling through my phone I started to think about my parents and teachers and colleagues who grew up and experienced being young before the advent of social media. I wondered what it was like for them when their workplaces started hiring Facebook advertising specialists and collecting data from customers, and when jobs that would have formerly been done in-person started moving online. I can’t imagine how bizarre it must still be for them to hear that someone’s job is vlogging and that it is, in fact, well-paying. Then I wondered how I will feel 10 years from now when there are 500 new social media platforms and I don’t understand any of them.

There’s nothing new about wondering where the internet is headed. It’s been theorized about for years. I fluctuate between feeling like there can’t possibly be anything left that hasn’t already been created and feeling like we are about to be buried by an avalanche of new technologies.

I am a spectator on TikTok, a silent presence absorbing what other people create. Unlike Instagram and Twitter, I do not contribute to growing the archive, but my presence does have an impact. My choices in videos, along with the choices of the hundreds of millions of other people on the app, shape what becomes popular and what flops (TikTok lingo). I wonder if this is what my permanent online role will look like as time goes on, or if I will remove myself from the algorithm altogether.

I guess there’s one alternative to the idea that the internet is spinning out of my control. Maybe as I age I am simply growing apart from cyberspace, the same way I have from old friends and interests. Over the past few years my use of social media for personal sharing has slowed. Instead of posting selfies on Instagram I now use the app to share my book recommendations. I occasionally Tweet, but usually only to share links to the stories I’ve written. It’s hard not to be disillusioned by the idea that a video can launch a multi-million dollar career, particularly in a world where people often have to work multiple jobs just to pay rent. It’s bizarre to think that people who already earn very impressive incomes are being sent thousands of dollars in free products to showcase on their profiles when there are families who struggle to afford food and clothing. But it’s also hard not to be envious of and impressed by the people who figured out early that racking up followers could lead to almost unimaginable financial success. How can I be judgmental of companies and individuals who, in an increasingly expensive and competitive capitalist society, have figured out tactics that really work? Social media notoriety, while potentially lucrative, also comes with the harsher realities of life on the internet; toxic comment sections and relentless abuse from strangers regarding physical appearance and personality. This is one of the internet’s most obvious downsides. So much effort goes in to making our lives beautiful and organized on the internet that it’s easy to forget the very human complexities people deal with outside of it.

I don’t think there’s a future in which I’m not inextricably connected to the internet. In all likelihood it will play an even bigger role in my life in the years to come than it does now. But maybe the problem won’t be that I can’t keep up with it, but instead that I simply won’t want to.

Throughout my teenage years I wanted people to see me in a very particular way. I wanted to seem pretty and popular and interesting, and I manipulated the version of myself that existed online to reflect that. Now, at twenty-five, the things I want to be known for aren’t as easy to translate onto the internet. I’m amazed by the young people who have managed to capture their humuor and charisma in short videos, and I love the shift I’m seeing in which young people are using their platforms to talk about human rights, race, gender, body image and even things as common but difficult as living with acne. I just don’t know that I want to spend any more of my life trying to whittle down the things I am so they can fit into a photo or clip or Tweet. This is the internet’s inescapable double bind. I’m at once exhausted by everything it offers and terrified to fall behind its evolution.

I like TikTok. It’s entertaining in a way that’s overwhelming but inherently palatable. The videos are short and concise, and when they’re done well, they play out like tiny low-budget films. The app is plagued by all of the same wrongdoings as its competitors and predecessors, but like them it functions because data mining and misinformation don’t really seem to matter all that much to people. TikTok is the result of over a decade of technological evolution, and it will be followed by something even more invasive of privacy and life. That next thing will be addictive too, and maybe this generation’s TikTok stars will be baffled by it when it debuts. Maybe I’ll be thirty by then, lounging in whatever the internet version of a retirement home is, but I’m sure I’ll still download it just so I feel included.