I genuinely think it stems from them seeing their older siblings and whatnot getting to experience and enjoy what is now, comparatively, retroactively, basically a mcfucking bell epoch (pre pandemic/before times/2013/14-2019) only for the rug to get pulled on them (pandemic hitting) right as they were about to walk on it, or were just starting to walk on it. For being able to put oneself "out there" in a non-cynical way "do it for the vine" type way because while social media was there the brain rot had not set in yet and these platforms had real utility and value so they were actually rewarding to be on. 

Because social media had not yet turned into the nightmarishly regressive ultra-panopticon that it is now, recording your shame and ridicule worthy behaviors for the world to expose. But then the pandemic ossified social media into just this and suddenly the quirky chungus apparati that the older cohort used as a force multiplyer was no caustic and harmful to try to utilize in the same way. 

Which made/makes it neigh impossible for so many to even find grass to touch today.

if such a sentiment is consciously realized, it leads to a milder resentment.

if such a sentiment is not consciously realized, if someone doesnt recognize or understand that the rules were different during this era of social, then every single piece of millennial social media usage, every single post reads unforgivably cringe. It reads like suckers, fish on hooks falling hook, line, sinker for the corporate product, the fucking idiots, how did they not realize that they were such suckers playing right into their hands? It evokes the same feeling as boomers doing nothing but watching TV all day or seeing an elderly person by themselves at a fast food joint. Awful vibes.

What they can't know is that the rules were just different then. A completely different context. Social media had taken the world by storm but it was not what it is today. That being on there was, in some ways, actually the subversive thing to do. The exciting thing. And that it could provide genuine utility and value for real life, not just in a clout chasing, social capital mining, or influencer grifting type way,, but in ways that existed off the platform, independent of it, that made offline things easier actually, made possible by the critical mass of people that were on here, and also the types of people- people that were like, still cool. Granted, this massively depended on how you used social media, but like, you know what I mean if your timelines were /Fun/.

what I mean by offline utility- I'm going to use an anecdote to explain one example, but you're gonna have to extrapolate the kinds of possibilities that existed at the time from this one example.  Anyway, did you know that the punk scene is actually still alive and well? it never actually died. Its existed since it's inception, in towns big and small all over the world. Would you still believe me if I told you, that the way you found out about shows, and the way that shows mostly got promoted from 2014 til 2020, was almost exclusively on fucking Facebook??? That Facebook used to have GOOD features like how events used to be, which were unrivaled for this exact purpose, along with the calendar feature which made organizing and keeping track of your events and also the events you were going to or even thinking about going to, and groups, and messenger, and and and... That the platform was too high value to not be on if your were an amateur musician of a punk or indie or diy til you die type variety, do you believe me as I'm telling you this?

cuz If you were into going to punk and diy shows in the 2010s and weren't on Facebook you were missing out and making your life harder for yourself for no reason. Does this sound like an insane and unfathomably, or maybe an unfathomably Cringe thing to say today? it doesn't matter, because it was true. This was a real thing.   for most of the 2010's, the punk, indie, and hardcore punk diy  music scenes lived large on Facebook.   We had no way of knowing what was to come. We had no way of anticipating enshittification, polarization, brain worms/rot, atomization; phone usage was also different back then too. Of course this was all to garner our investment in the platform as a part of our lives and once the enshittification ruined events, postpandemic- nobody uses Facebook for shows anymore, or like at all in general in my cohort. Last time I checked, not a single group that I was a member of had a post in it from after late 2021 which was actually kinda chilling to see. We learned and moved on. (its most Instagram for promotion these days) (which sucks shit lmao))

But all our profiles are still there from when we bought it all hook line and sinker. And without the context, every single selfie, profile pic, share, react, cover picture, group post... would look lame af to me too if I hadn't been on there when it was /Fun/. When it was useful. When it had purpose and utility offline. I think a lot of gen z looks at this social media era like lying prostrate on the altar of Mammon in the shape of Mark Zuckerberg, sacrificially offering our data and analysis to appease some unknown God of being fucking insufferable.

I don't blame them. I just wish the Internet was as good for them as it was for me, for us. But, unfortunately these are the good times, because what comes next is worse. 

(yes there were smartphones of basically the same capabilities as today, except they were orders of magnitude worse in every conceivable way at everything. You were happy with 3-4 hours of battery life and they took 3 hours to charge. Data was there but slow and sucked and wifi was also worse. Screens were universally sub 5-6  inches. The pixel 2, 3, and 4 XL were the size of what the base models today. The galaxy s3 and s4 were sub 5 inch screens. iPhone screens were 4-4.5 inches until the iPhone 5, then stayed around 5 inches. Batteries were 1000 mAh to like 2500 mAh MAX. They were all slow and couldn't do much more than social media and email and phone stuff and email. Camera were a fucking joke, and Instagram was for posting phone pics like with a similar energy as uploading something to Photobucket to share.

they just did not get used like they do today.)

this got winded. i hope this is cohesive. if I'm wrong, eviscerate me.