Are Young People Lazy and Waste Time Online?: Content Creation and the Politics of Creativity Among Gen Z Creators in the Philippines

One of the common concerns that people post on social media nowadays is that young people are getting lazy because of longer social media use including scrolling online and posting memes and videos. In the Philippines, social media personalities and creators are getting younger and younger as many are getting viral online at a young age. This paper provides an alternative perspective by examining young social media creators engaging in what I will call the politics of creativity. Building from the lens of creativity (Gauntlett 2010) as an affective labor and informed by digital culture studies, I explore how young people creators use social media to their advantage as conduits of knowledge, specifically on social media vernacular and social media logics. This paper is part of a larger PhD project on influencer cultures in the Philippines, and empirical data is culled from digital ethnography, and semi-structured interviews with 30 influencers and 30 audiences. Findings include how many young creators get more viral on platforms like TikTok (Abidin 2020). Because of their understanding on moving “around” platforms, young people creators are becoming more skilled in working around platform governance, earning the status and prestige as content creators. I argue that experience This paper also offers policy recommendations on how platforms can protect young people as they become more popular as creators.