By Gavin Boyle
Gen Z has taken to LinkedIn sooner than any group before them, and many high schoolers now use the platform as the younger generation looks to land jobs earlier.
“We’re seeing a lot of Gen Z join the network right now,” LinkedIn Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky told The Wall Street Journal in 2022. “We’re seeing the platform evolve much more to cater to them.”
This evolution became extremely apparent this year when the platform added the ability to post short-form content on the site.
“Across LinkedIn, we’re seeing our members have widespread success when it comes to posting short-form video,” Laura Laurenzetti, executive editor of LinkedIn News told Fast Company. “From small business owners to CEOS to Gen Z creators and more, video on LinkedIn is the new frontier for professional success — which is why we’re excited to be rolling out a new suite of tools that make the video creation and viewing experience on LinkedIn even stronger.”
Related: LinkedIn Rolls Out New Features to Eliminate Political Posts, Attract Gen Z
LinkedIn has also added daily games onto its platform to attract new users and get people logging onto the site every day.
This strategy has worked as more and more young people are creating accounts, and by the time students enter college, they feel behind it they are not already on LinkedIn.
“It’s a very big pressure here,” said Gabe Lunin-Pack, a sophomore at Vanderbilt University. “You’ve got to get to your 500 connections very fast. You’ve got to have everything [on the LinkedIn profile] filled out, whether that’s for job applications or even some club applications.”
While some of the pressure to be on the site comes from Gen Z’s peers, schools also encourages students to get on the platform to get a head start on their future.
“If a student is in college, I always encourage them to make a LinkedIn profile,” Taryn Andrea, a Career Planning Counselor at Bright Horizons College Coach, told Parents. “For high school students, it will really depend. I don’t think that there’s a downside to making a LinkedIn profile in high school. But I usually encourage them to have a specific goal in mind for why they’re doing it.”
Andrea, however, also recognizes that like any other social media, getting on LinkedIn can be negative for some young users.
“It can be an amazing tool if you are informed and you’re going into it with the right perspective,” she explained. “But I encourage them to remember that just like any other social media, the folks that are very active are also in a lot of cases building a brand. And when you build a brand, you’re going to post all your accomplishments. You’re going to post the positives—[the] difficulties that everyone goes through in their lives may not be shared there quite as much.”
Nonetheless, the increasing popularity of LinkedIn with Gen Z not only highlights what the generation values but also reveals how social media is taking over nearly every aspect of our lives.
Read Next: LinkedIn’s Most Popular Feature Came From…TikTok
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