By Michaela Gordoni
Tumblr is making a comeback, thanks to social-media-exhausted Gen Z.
The young generation is turning back to the old blog-style platform — an oasis of individual expression amid other influencer and algorithm-saturated social media.
Fast Company reported earlier this month that though Tumblr had over 100 million users at its peak, it couldn’t maintain a stable monetization strategy after Yahoo acquired it in 2013. It fell behind competitors until recently.
Gen Z now makes up 50% of Tumblr’s active monthly users and 60% of its new sign-ups, Fast Company reported. Last year, its numbers spiked by 350% when Brazil temporarily banned X, and this year by 395% when it seemed like TikTok would be banned in the U.S., The Hustle reported this month.
As Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have become more prominent in politics, more Meta and X users have lost interest, turning to Tumblr instead.
One Vogue Singapore reporter, Azrin Tan, wrote returning to Tumblr felt like “replaying an old voice in my head: this is where GIFs just hit differently, and where I could find a comrade-in-arms in the downright mental comments section of a grainy…post about kettles. Scrolling further down my following page, I realized that some of the accounts whom I had followed from back then had never left Tumblr behind them; they’ve been blogging consistently over the years.”
“Its very essence and conscience remains clear,” she continued. “In a universe of new social media platforms that pop up every now and then, Tumblr has always been less about the ‘social,’ and more of the…everything else.”
It provides a place where users can dive into and share their niche interests, whether it be gold aesthetics, superhero franchises or unique artwork.
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“It maintains its anonymity,” Tan explained. “You could exist as completely different entities of yourself, the selves you never want to let people in the real world perceive you for — whether you’re 13 and insecure, or well, 27 (and still insecure!).”
Another thing that sets Tumblr apart is that it does not ban nudity. It previously banned nudity in 2018 due to child pornography concerns. Before the ban, Apple banned it from its app store, and Indonesia banned the site, per The Shortcut.
Sadly, Tumblr reversed the nudity ban in 2022. The platform is not safe for teens and kids. It does not allow users 12 and under in most regions and doesn’t allow users 15 and under in the EU, according to its guidelines.
Yet as drama unfolds with other platforms and their founders, Tumblr’s stable rate may persist.
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