DIGITAL STARS OF TOMORROW
This is Gen Viz. They’re the girls poised to take over the world, so of course they’re going to dress the part
They’re the It-girls of generation next: model Inka Williams, blogger Shelby Hamilton and viral sensation-turnedactress Sarah Ellen. Prepare to hit follow.
Meet Sarah Ellen, Inka Williams and Shelby Hamilton: the digital superstars consciously or unconsciously infiltrating your world. With a combined following of more than 3.5 million, together they form a powerful triumvirate of influence in the ELLE studio, with tweets, Instagram posts, Snapchats and group texts flying back and forth in a frenetic cloud of activity amid wall-to-wall agents, iphones and chocolate cake. It’s the tail-end of Australian Fashion Week, and it’s a rare moment when the friends find themselves all in one spot. Excitement levels are high. They’re teenagers, you see, but the kind of super-brand of teenager that not many of us saw coming but now none of us can ignore.
Like many born in the Western world around the turn of the new millennium, Ellen and Hamilton, both 18, and Williams, 16, qualify as digital natives, comfortable with tech, the internet and social media almost from birth. Technically they belong to the generation widely tagged as generation Z – those born after the millennials, debatably starting from the mid-’90s to the early ’00s. Other names that have been thrown around include Net Gen, igen, the Plurals (short for pluralism) or the Mtv-coined Founders. Maks Fus Mickiewicz, a senior journalist at UK trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory who’s been developing a macro-trend around the group for more than a year, refers to today’s tech-savvy 13- to 19-year-olds as Gen Viz (generation visual).
“The number-one thing that defines them is that they’re digital first,” says Mickiewicz. “What’s really incredible about them is that they’re super hyper-connected… There’s no longer that ‘weirdo at the back of the classroom’.” Rather than being confined to the local community, they’re part of the global community, growing up in a diverse, multicultural society that is changing the way they act. “A huge thing that’s come out of this research is that they hate Photoshop. They can see through that. They really value realness, and they value people being authentic about themselves rather than creating these avatars.”
For the impeccably mannered Ellen, that authenticity has come part and parcel of figuring out who she is. “I used to wear all these colourful clothes and smile in every single photo and I was just so cheerful all the time and I felt like I had to be that person on Instagram because that’s why my followers follow me. But I had this realisation that they follow me because of who I am and I shouldn’t try to be the person that I used to be. So, I just started posting however I was feeling that day, even if it was sad, even if it was vulnerable, even if it was stressed. I definitely think people can get caught into this social media world of playing a certain character online and I definitely was caught up in that world for a little bit.”
Ellen’s been living in Melbourne for the better part of three months, acting in “her first gig” playing the daughter of Australian television’s most iconic couple, Scott and Charlene, on
Neighbours. But it’s definitely not her first time in front of the camera. Almost five years ago, Ellen shot to instant internet fame after uploading a 35-second clip of her eyebrow dance to Youtube. “The video was up for about five days and it had about 10 million views, which was insane, and from that I grew about 200,000 Facebook followers within maybe a month. I was 14 years old, I was from Campbelltown [in western Sydney] and I had an iphone.” So, like most teens craving excitement and a measure of independence, she ran with it.
Today, Ellen posts several times a day across her social media channels – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Youtube and Snapchat – and regularly updates her fashion and lifestyle blog, Perks Of Her, of which she is creative director. She’s leveraged her profile and her loyal 2.7 million followers to secure collaborations with brands like YSL Beauté, Prada and Maybelline, and garners tens of thousands of likes for her selfies, fashion posts and positive affirmations. And all from a girl who dreamt of being an air hostess while spending days jigging school and earning $10 an hour at Campbelltown station’s candy store.
Rather than alienating her followers with the unrealistic ideals so frequently touted on filtered platforms like Instagram, Ellen’s somewhat honourable aim is to be relatable. “I guess I’m not afraid to be completely myself. My main message that I try to get across to all my followers, as cliché as it sounds, is just to be super comfortable in your own skin and with who you are. Like, I don’t have the perfect body, but I know a lot of people have the same body frame as I do, like, really little and, you know, no boobs or whatever – I don’t care, I’ll just be comfortable online and hopefully inspire my followers to be comfortable as well.”
In a way, this return to reality is a dramatic shift in thinking. Particularly when traditionally our job as teenagers has been to make stuff up – we pad our bras, we pretend we’ve had sex, we pack away our deepest fears and embarrassments thinking that we’re the only ones in the world experiencing them. “It’s quite empowering,” says Vanessa Zuppicich, creative director of MTV’S #MTVITGIRLS, which champions young female influencers, including this trio, who make an appearance on the mini-series. “A lot of their messaging is about being really authentic in yourself – not trying to copy someone else. It’s just
really about having your own point of view, and I think that’s a great message for young girls out there.”
“I just want to be like a normal teenager,” says Hamilton, the Queensland-born model/blogger who started out in Year 6 at school. “I just want to talk about things I’m doing, funny things, even the struggles.” Her website’s “About me” page proudly declares, “I love glitter and I don’t care what you think of me,” and while she’ll discuss everything from shaving her legs to her rising sign and her dirty laundry (of the laundromat variety) in her Tumblr feed and Youtube videos, she’s firmly in control of what she gives away to her mass audience. “I’m also just very good at making people think I’m being very open,” she admits.
Whether it’s the true fearlessness of a generation born into a culture of over-sharing, or merely the outwards bravado of young women who’ve had to learn to hold their head high, the inevitable negative aspects of living life in the spotlight don’t seem to cut as deep as some of the IRL schoolyard taunts their predecessors were faced with, at least according to Instagram sensation Williams. “It doesn’t really get to me anymore,” she says of the inevitable nasty comments she receives. “In the beginning, of course, I was still getting used to it, but at the end of the day, those people who make negative comments don’t really know me… if it was my family or friends who were saying something bad, I’d take it seriously, but if it’s just someone I don’t know, I don’t really mind. They have their opinion, and that’s fine.”
Williams’ mature attitude crosses over on set. The Bali-based beauty moves between hairstylist, makeup artist and crew on the ELLE shoot, getting to know everyone and making fast friends before the day gets underway. “[That way] I’ll feel more comfortable when I’m shooting, because I feel like it’s not just strangers watching me. I’ve kind of gotten a bit more used to it – when I shoot, I don’t really think about what’s around me, I kind of get in the zone and just focus on what’s happening.”
Asked who she looks to for inspiration and her answer sidesteps high-profile models like Gigi or Kendall, instead pinpointing stars using their mega-profiles to make positive change. “I really like what Leonardo Dicaprio is doing, and how he’s making everyone aware about global issues, and I also really like Angelina Jolie.” Williams is already working closely with a charitable project called Kuta Mums to help make a difference close to home. “That’s something that I really want to do, use my platform for good, to help people.”
While many could, and do, easily write gen Z off as being highly narcissistic or self-involved, in general, Mickiewicz says the opposite is true. Perhaps more than any generation before them, it’s a generation with a keen social conscience. “They care very, very much, but it’s a completely different angle on things. Whereas the previous generation would be like, ‘I really value Obama or I’m a Liberal,’ what’s really important to them is identity politics… the focus is much more on gender, the environment, feminism. Traditional politics aren’t as important to them but you can see once the media starts talking about issues like gender identity they respond and they campaign and they create incredible new social networks.”
Another strong trend that came out of Mickiewicz’s research: a tendency towards a hacker mindset, a concept popularised by then-13-year-old Logan Laplante in his Tedx Talk, “Hackschooling Makes Me Happy” (nine million views on Youtube and counting). “It’s basically about really educating themselves. They’ve had incredible access to not only resources in terms of looking up Youtube tutorials and articles, but also digital tools like electronic bank accounts that they can set up very easily, they’ve found new tools that they can use to create their business or [pursue] whatever sort of passion they want… It seems like every single teenager I’ve spoken to had a start-up or two or three, and a lot of them don’t see the value in school. And the people who did value university or further schooling had very specific aims that they wanted to get out of that course.” It’s interesting to note both Ellen and Hamilton chose to drop out of high school at 17.
For Ellen, who instead enrolled in acting classes and a fashion business course, the decision is paying off. “Definitely. I mean, I support myself and sometimes find myself supporting my family, so yes, I do make a living out of it and I’ve had the opportunity to buy my own car and pay my own rent so it’s going well for me,” she says. “It’s been a real game changer. I don’t know what I would do without social media.”
While it seems likely that generation Z is set for world domination, Mickiewicz says Gen Viz, at least, is something we can all get behind. “Gen Viz is all about the psychographic behaviours, which we feel aren’t limited to that demographic of 13- to 19-year-olds, but can be seen right across a number of generations. From our point of view, we’re living through what we call a Flat Age Society where there’s no longer these set boundaries, so there might be someone who’s actually in their forties who acts like a person who is in Gen Viz. The focus of research is on [teenagers], but what they’re up to now, you’ll start seeing those behaviours in older generations in maybe three to five years.”
If you haven’t already, we suggest you get on Snapchat, now.