By Anya Kamenetz | The Cut
Back in 2015, designer Frank Chimero observed on then-Twitter that almost any New Yorker cartoon could be re-captioned with a single phrase: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”
That canned come-on, as cold and dry as a reluctant handshake at a cash-bar, fluorescent-lit networking event, sums up most adults’ experience of the site: You feel like you have to be there, but you’d really rather be anywhere else, so you do the bare minimum and get out fast.
Younger users, though, don’t necessarily feel this way. Lately I’ve met adolescents — some who don’t yet meet the platform’s minimum-age requirement of 16 — who say LinkedIn is their happy place. From across the country and every socioeconomic background, these kids describe the platform as a zero-irony zone — a sanctuary from the angry rants, dark humor, thirst traps, and FOMO characteristic of other social-media networks.
“It’s a place for connection and a place for celebration,” says Zachary Clifton, a high-school senior and unabashed LinkedIn evangelist. “It’s such a celebratory, positive, uplifting environment. I think it’s honestly more wholesome to celebrate people’s professional or academic success on LinkedIn than to post on Facebook, which errs on the side of gossip or speculation.” (In case you need some generational translation: “Wholesome” is high praise from Gen Z.)
