Social media has an ever-growing presence in people’s lives. Especially since quarantine, where we were all locked inside with little variety in entertainment, online spaces became a safe haven to escape from the real world. 

Trends are a normal part of life, even without social media. With all generations there comes a distinct music style, fashion type, etc. that could be considered a trend. Social media amplifies this mindset, speeding it up and creating new trends frequently. Perhaps ideas were not meant to be cycled through and ditched so quickly like this, maybe have more meaning and significance. Now there are weekly trends, some of them cycling not even a few months later. Since we seem to like these ideas enough to repeat them after a short amount of time, why do we ditch them in the first place? For a chance to seem relevant? Even old fashion trends from the 2000s (or even farther back) are already cycling back through trends. It’s a common idea that social media (especially apps like TikTok) have shortened peoples’ attention spans, and this seems to be leaking into other parts of online lives. 

A shared thought is that social media is discouraging uniqueness since trends cause people to follow others with almost no thought behind them. Most of this appears harmless, but it could threaten creativity when everybody seems to be copying or following others. However, the internet is seen as a place for people to share their creativity, and many websites or communities are being created for that very purpose. Plus, everything starts somewhere, so even if influence from other people is what catalyzes people’s creativity, maybe that was the push they needed to begin their own creative journey. Trends, while not very unique, could spark someone’s individual process to make something that is unique, and we should celebrate that.