Session Name: Social Media and Autonomy in Indonesia
2 - Turning Back the Panoptic: How Gen Z Navigate Anxiety through Social Media Memes
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)
Presentation Abstract Young people are a very dynamic age group in expressing their emotions. Social media gives them a wider space than physical social space to express their feelings. They actively share their emotions on social media rather than expressing them in real life. When they are happy, they tend to use real photos of conditions that show their happiness. In contrast, when they are sad, anxious, angry, and experiencing problems, they do not express it clearly but visualize it with memes. In this case, Gen Z is voluntarily willing to be seen and watched by its social media followers. This paper examines the surveillance scheme by reversing the perspective of Foucault's panopticon lens. Youth try to negotiate their position as objects of surveillance but also reverse the surveillance situation by becoming subjects who control who can watch them. Through features on social media today, they can see who is watching them and limit the activities they share from being seen by supervisors at work, co-workers, parents, or others to whom they do not have access. The results of this study show that GenZ has reversed the essence of modern life through posts about anxiety on social media. Essentializing anxiety and problems has become the regime of modern life in the current era. In addition, displaying anxiety and problems is a way to obscure their stress because it allows them to show their existence as a part of modern society.
Co-Author 1 Nuzul Solekhah, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN)
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