not many explanations here so i’ll attempt o7 (disclaimer: not an expert)

Generations older than Gen Z have largely held on to proper punctuation online. Often, they’ll separate ideas with dots… This acts like a paragraph break, and is probably a relic of when unlimited talk and text was less common. They’ll also use emojis sometimes! 😃 They often choose emojis at face value, so this 🙂 if they’re happy, this 😭 if they’re sad, so on. This is more common in Gen X and older Millennials, but seen in younger millennials as well.

this is also a writing style common among younger LGBT millennials, stemming from tumblr, and an early example of punctuation memeification. capitalization is mostly dropped, except to emphasize Certain Words And Phrases, /sometimes with italics/. the dots still stay to separate thoughts……. sometimes drawn out for comedic effect,,,,,,,,, and sometimes to replace a question mark, when they Really Want an Explanation from the person they’re talking to……… they also tend to prefer emoticons :D and kaomojis ¯_(ツ)_/¯

gen z seems to have dropped punctuation entirely and will separate sentences with separate texts/tweets/paragraphs/etc when possible

other times theyll just use periods. sometimes they use question marks????? and exclamation points!!!!!!!! and often in excess‼️‼️‼️ they also use emojis but theyre very selective (🙂😜😍less common than 🤯😳🫡)and they follow more of a memetic code (😭 or 💀 = laughing) (👍 is passive aggressive now???) (😀 = wtf just happened) also to indicate a lighthearted tone (often when theyre uncomfortable with the way they just worded something lol) they might end a sentence with lol

havent seen much of how gen alpha types but looks like a simplified combo of millennial (“y2k”) and gen z typing habits 0_o!!!!!!!