But that’s about it. As someone who, himself, is a part of Generation Z, I don’t really know what life was like back then. It feels impossible to know how the internet is affecting the way I’ve grown up as I’ve only ever known the life and world I have right now. I won’t know what it’s like to lose touch with people as they’re all online alongside me. Even people of the pre-internet generations are being reconnected with long-lost friends and acquaintances. And though I’ve never known a time when the internet didn’t exist, I still remember times when technology wasn’t so streamlined and integrated into our world. Now, with even younger generations, like Generation Alpha, being born into a world revolving around the internet and those in Gen Z beginning to enter adulthood, the world will begin to see differences between the new adults who’ve known this technology for their whole life and those of past generations. But what sort of changes can we expect? Really, what has the internet changed about the way people grow up and what differences can the world expect from people who didn’t know what it was like without the internet?

For starters, the internet has dramatically reshaped how people communicate with each other. You hear about it all the time. Kids nowadays are seemingly always on their phones, even while hanging out in person. We don’t communicate through verbally speaking but now by sending that quick text. We went from exchanging emails to the rise of Facebook and MySpace and finally to more modern social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram.

But with all of this becoming so streamlined into society and being so accessible to young adolescents, there’s a growing fear amongst adults about what kids are exposing themselves to. Before, kids were warned about stranger danger and to not listen or talk to strangers outside. Like many other aspects of our lives, this concept transfers over to the digital world where many potential predators are adding children on social media or direct messaging (DM’ing) them nasty comments.

But does the shift from face-to-face to digital online interaction actually change anything about how people grow up? Kristin Carothers, a psychologist of the Child Mind Institute, argues that it in fact does. In substituting previous interactions for those online, kids are being stripped of “the most personal and sometimes intimidating aspects of communication.” This, consequently, is seemingly causing Gen Z and those onward to “miss social cues” that older generations supposedly would have, which Carothers claims are vital to human interaction and developing relationships.

It’s not just the lack of face-to-face interaction that causes these social deficiencies, but also that face that communicating via technology allows people to socialize whenever and however they want. It’s created a comfort zone that people retreat to. If you don’t feel like talking to someone, you just leave them on unread. If something awkward happens, just ignore it. And that’s not simply something you can do in real life (IRL). It’d be much more difficult to simply stand up and walk away from someone compared to just exiting an app.

Though we seem to be more and more in touch with the world as a result of the internet, we subsequently become more detached at the same time. Going off of what Carothers believes, there might be reason to fear what’s to become of future generations. But, how different are the bonds we develop online from the relationships we form in-person?

Going into quarantine amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, for the most part, has caused me to realize that I can actually substitute IRL interactions with online interactions. Most of how I interact with someone, to my knowledge, is the same over a video call. After all, video calling includes the same face-to-face dynamic that IRL experiences do. Does that then mean that Carothers’s argument is not of younger generations being online too much and is instead an issue concerning a lack of exposure to facial interaction?

But even then it’s an interesting phenomenon in the sense that everything falls under different situations. It honestly feels quite impossible to quantify all facets of relationships under worse or better with it simply being the black and white of online versus offline.

Just this past year, I’ve come to realize how many friends I’ve met online but haven’t met in-person, whether it be through mutual friends or just by chance. And it’s seemingly something more common between people who play games together. And yes, while the majority of the people I play games with live relatively near me in neighboring cities, I’ve still yet to meet some of them IRL.

At least in my own case, it seems that these online friends are interchangeable with IRL friends. But it’s also interesting to look at this from a perspective outside of the gaming world. I don’t feel as close as I do to friends I only keep up with over text. When I stopped seeing some friends IRL when they graduated and left my hometown, I felt like our friendship slowly started to deteriorate. Our interactions gradually decreased and they soon became someone I’d talk on the occasion rather than every day. Of course, we’d still be friends and catch up every now and then but there’d be an obvious rift between us. In truth, missing that IRL connection with someone can be detrimental to maintaining a relationship.

But, was there anything else I could really do? They moved off to some other part of the world and I was stuck in our hometown. It’d honestly be the same for those of older generations. They could keep in touch through writing letters but that’s about it. It’s the same as it was back then and if anything, the internet works as a stopgap of sorts as it allows us to continue communicating, though not on the same level as in-person.

Isolating activities, like gaming and watching television, typically are associated with ideas of loneliness and a declining social life. And following the trend of generational concern, many people have certainly associated these topics with a declining social life, especially during recent years.

Yet, when it comes to online multiplayer games specifically, multiple studies point to them actually as platforms that provide “virtual public spaces that allow people to socialize and develop networks”. But what is it about playing video games with others that allows us to create seemingly meaningful bonds?

It’s the nature of online multiplayer games that facilitates such relationships. Objectives and missions within online games “facilitate collaboration and interdependent social relationships among players,” which ultimately results in the development and maintenance of social capital. Specifically, a report by Zhi-Jin Zhong of Sun Yat-Sen University concludes that cooperative gameplay within a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is correlated “with increased online social capital independently of existing levels of social capital”. In other words, online relationships can replace their IRL counterpart given the right scenario.

This also makes more sense when you view the genre of gaming akin to that of traditional sports. The online variant of professional competitive sports, dubbed Esports, incorporates the same level of collaboration that traditional sports, like basketball and soccer, do. The only difference between the two fields is whether it’s online or offline and in real life.

Reflecting my own experiences, I’d say I do think the struggles my friends and I undergo in these cooperative team environments, whether online or offline do tighten the bond between us. I’ve been playing a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game called League of Legends by Riot Games for eight years. The gameplay involves five players each on two separate teams that must work together to break down the enemy’s base while defending their own and the primary objective of the game is to destroy the enemy’s nexus.

I definitely believe that playing with friends has helped cultivate a greater connection between us. In my freshman year of high school, I didn’t have that many friends my age who played the game, so I mostly played with my brother and his friends. Throughout the year, I’d spend the majority of my free time playing the game with them and as a result, I felt closer to them than to my friends I spent time with at school.

Another factor besides collaboration that factors into why online multiplayer games can benefit our social capital is the passion that players feel towards their games. Like traditional athletes, players in these online games experience the same emotions and undergo the same stress factors, especially when it becomes their profession.

It may seem initially baffling to many that adolescents nowadays are able to make their careers in the Esports industry, however the field has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. The support for the Esports scene continues to grow with each passing year and it’s well on track to becoming an acceptable and legitimate career path for younger generations, despite the stigma surrounding video games.

As an early trailblazer of collegiate Esports, University of California, Irvine pioneered a new esports program for their students in 2016. They developed an entire Esports arena for their student competitors as well as offering up to $6000 in scholarships to their players. Other colleges have begun following suit. This past year, Full Sail University announced and opened their $6 million, 11,200-square-foot Esports facility named the Fortress Esports Arena.

Support for Esports even reaches the high school level as there have been multiple leagues opened for high school students to compete on a competitive level such as High School Star League (HSL) and Youth Esports of America (YEA).

I competed in competitive League of Legends matches hosted by HSL in both my freshman and sophomore years of high school, where we ended up placing 10th across the nation. During my junior year, our high school merged with our rival school to compete in YEA’s first Semester Series, and though I didn’t play in the circuit, my former teammates went on to place first and win a combined total of $5000.

Alongside my teammates, we chartered our high school’s Esports club and began hosting tournaments for students in our area. And though our community was small, we branched off and worked with neighboring schools to form a closely-knit network of people who shared the same passion for the scene.

Amateur leagues aside, the Esports industry has been gaining traction, especially in these past few years. In 2018, the field was on track to creating over $900 million in revenue as many outside sources began investing in teams. From All-Star NBA players like Steph Curry investing in Team SoloMid (TSM) and award-winning Canadian rapper Drake investing in and becoming co-owner of Esports team 100 Thieves in 2018, the industry as a whole has experienced tremendous growth and acknowledgement.

And it’s not just the franchises seeing these big bucks, but players too. In the North American League of Legends Championship (NA LCS), Team Dignitas, who are making their return to the league after failing to be accepted into franchising two years prior, signed a two-year contract with star top-laner Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon for a reported $2.3 million in guaranteed money. Not only that, but long-time franchise Cloud9 had negotiated a buyout with Team Dignitas for support Philippe "Vulcan" Laflamme in return for $1.5 million and Academy AD carry Johnson "Johnsun" Nguyen, who Cloud9 had to buy out from TSM Academy for $250,000, making LaFlamme’s total buyout cost Cloud9 $1.75 million.

The Fortnite World Cup had taken the world by storm in July of 2019, when it was announced that sixteen-year-old American pro player Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf won himself $3 million by becoming the first-ever champion in the solo division. $3 million to a single player for winning a single tournament. It’s not an understatement that there’s serious money to be made in the Esports industry.

Like many of my friends, we grew up saying we wanted to play video games all day long and do it for a living. We didn’t really think much of it ten years ago and quickly moved on from it. But now, if I have a kid who says they want to play video games for a living, I’m taking them out of school and forcing them to play ten hours a day until they come home a millionaire. Just kidding.

But seriously, the internet has reshaped what the professional landscape looks like for newer generations. There’s a demand for jobs that didn’t exist even just ten years ago that are common amongst all companies. From social media managers to millennial experts to freelance content creators, there’s a wide array of innovative career options available as a result of technological advances.

The near future of our professional landscape will be interesting to observe with Gen Zers having just reached the age to begin joining the workforce. With that in mind, is there anything different that can be expected from Gen Zers in the workplace?

In comparison to millennials, Gen Z is 55% more likely to want to start their own business. In fact, 72% of Gen Z teenagers reportedly say that they want to start their own business someday. But why does Gen Z have such an entrepreneurial spirit in comparison to their past cohort? A possible and likely reason is the way technology has revolutionized our current lives. Having grown up alongside technology, Gen Zers chase the success in new fields that “large tech conglomerates have redefined” in terms of resources, people, ideas, and experiences.

An interesting entrepreneurial path that’s becoming increasingly is the influencer lifestyle where you essentially turn yourself into a brand. The rise of new platforms like YouTube and Twitch have created an outlet for people to share parts of their lives and make a career of making content. Other media platforms like Instagram and TikTok create a means for people to become sponsored by companies to promote certain products.

It’s also something I’ve been trying to pursue too. Between livestreaming myself playing games and designing stickers and clothing, I, like many others in Gen Z, am trying to really turn my passions into my careers. The technological advancements and accessibility to open markets via social media honestly opens up opportunities everywhere. Sites like LinkedIn were created for the sole purpose of networking professional relationships, but I’ve even begun seeing job postings on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Whether we like it or not, this is the world we face with all the technological advances that have transpired over the past few decades. Gen Z will undoubtedly be the first of a new generation of adults who grew up in a technological world. As we mature throughout the stages in life, there’s no telling what new discoveries we’ll find or even how future technology will affect us. There’s even more uncertainty in regards to how generations after Gen Z will be affected by growing up in such a digital era.

And what it means to have grown up during this time, all I can say is that it’s what you make of what’s available to you growing up. Whether that makes you inclined to start your own business, become an Instagram influencer, or even play video games professionally, so be it. The world’s changed and so have we.