Exploring Gen Z’s love of blogging
It’s 12 o’clock, midnight. In the confines of your room, there are no lights on, not even a lamp. Your phone is the sole source, casting a dim glow over your face as you spend another hour scrolling. After a long day of work, this is how you choose to spend your remaining hours of free time: bedrotting.
This scene was once familiar to Mikaela “Mika” De Castro. As a 23-year-old trade analyst and freelance writer, she used to be caught in an endless doomscroll of mindless, minute-long videos, before finding an unlikely digital refuge in blogsites.
While Gen X and millennials might remember the heyday of LiveJournal and WordPress in the early 2000s, today’s Gen Z are flocking to platforms like Substack, Medium, and even review sites such as Goodreads and Letterboxd to both consume and create long-form content.
For a Gen Z young adult like De Castro, these platforms offer what mainstream social media has increasingly been unable to: authenticity, depth, and the space to think.
“These blogs […], they’re an escape if we want to train our brain to consume content normally [and] at our own pace,” she says in an interview with Lifestyle Inquirer.
A search for safe spaces
De Castro’s experience with blogging started with her pre-teen years on Tumblr, a blogging-slash-social media platform that found popularity among young adults in the mid-2010s. As a niche hub for youth culture, Tumblr served not only as De Castro’s but also many other Gen Z young adults’ initial exposure to the blogosphere.
“There [were] a lot of fandoms and subcultures involved [on Tumblr],” she explains. “You [could] interact with people who [had] the same interests as you… So it became this kind of safe space.”
Even though Tumblr started to decline toward the end of the mid-2010s, blogging would eventually find new life among Gen Z in the 2020s, as the pandemic left them stuck at home and unable to pursue life outside.
In their search for “spaces [of] solace,” many returned to hobbies such as reading and writing, but especially blogging. Whether it was about one’s daily experiences or opinions on a given topic, the blog became a tool for people to connect during a time of isolation.
Among the different platforms to post blogs, De Castro and other Gen Z found themselves on Substack, a multi-publishing platform for everything from newsletters to podcasts.
“[Substack] kind of revived blogging because social media [was] just letting us doomscroll ahead and [feed] us bite-sized content.”
Among Substack’s different content, De Castro found its articles a “breath of fresh air,” as it returned her to the practice of slow yet mindful content consumption amid the fast-paced online world.
“These blogs, they let us think. [They] provide context rather than just quick takes on Facebook or Instagram,” she explains. “They [make us] feel like we’re part of the conversation.”
Broadening the mind, despite “brain rot”
Aside from being a small, tight-knit community where Gen Z can openly speak about their thoughts and interests, blogs can also be a path to lead them away from the confines of their echo chambers and widen their worldview.
“[Gen Z is] really good at researching, exploring, and diving deep into topics we care about,” Mika states. “We follow creators who we resonate with, and after that, we also allow our mindsets to be challenged. If [we] want to satisfy this certain curiosity, [we] can also look at different perspectives, even [when] they’re opposing. I think that’s what makes this generation interesting,” she continued.
Blogging, in its own way, can even be an act of rebellion. A deliberate choice to slow down at a time when fast-paced, mindless online content is at its highest.
Last year, the Oxford University Press announced “brain rot” as “Word of the Year,” citing its widespread use at 230 percent between 2023 and 2024. And while brain rot, being part of the English vocabulary, can be considered humorous, it is also concerning. Brain rot’s existence implies that the public acknowledges the problem yet no one is taking the initiative to present a solution.
In such disconcerting circumstances, De Castro believes that Gen Z’s continued interest in blogging can serve as a “step into erasing our ‘brain rot culture.’”
Even on TikTok, where brain rot content is most prevalent, she revealed that independent writers have also started to publish original content that encourages critical thinking. “They just don’t know where to post their thoughts, or like, they just call it ‘brain rot thoughts,’” De Castro explains.
Nostalgia with checks and balances
For most Gen Z writers, especially young women, blogging also offers an avenue to vicariously channel the glamorous representation of professional writers in the early 2000s film and TV they grew up with.
“[These] stories… they give that feel-good feeling because you get to romanticize [that] aspect of writing; the nitty-gritty of being an editor, writing somewhere in Makati, or writing in a cafe,” De Castro explains.
She mentioned 2009’s “Confessions of a Shopaholic”—a rom-com about an aspiring fashion journalist who has a comical luxury retail addiction—as an example, but not as an inspiration, explaining the need to maintain “checks and balances” as a practicing writer.
“It’s nice to romanticize writing in the wild, but I think if there’s too much [of it], there can be a lack of depth when it comes to your actual writing,” she notes.
She also sees the future representations of the writer in media as “more realistic” and “not necessarily glamorous,” referring to the struggles of insecurity, comparison, and imposter syndrome that every writer eventually faces.
More than fictional writers, De Castro believes in finding inspiration through real-life figures whose writing resonates with her, such as the work of American author and editor Jia Tolentino.
“One of her books, ‘Trick Mirror,’ […] became a springboard for my own ideas when it came to contextualizing the state of femininity [and] feminism in the Philippines, and our culture on social media,” she says.
Blogging for the future
When asked about the popularity of blogging continuing past Gen Z, De Castro remains positive despite current obstacles such as artificial intelligence.
“I think the rise of AI essays will also affect the rise of human-[written] essays, […] but what’s important is we keep writing our own, and we don’t let it die,” she says.
Other than Substack, Gen Z has also been drawn to sites like Goodreads and Letterboxd as a means to express their opinions and form communities around their favorite books, films, and TV shows.
To her, these platforms are their own form of blogging, providing informed content that can be either introspective, critical thought, or witty yet thought-provoking one-liners. And even though big-name social media platforms are here to stay, De Castro believes that platforms such as Substack and others similar to it will continue to stand the test of time.
“There’s a focus on quality over quantity, so it really appeals to these niche readers or watchers who want to escape from big opinions on social media,” she ends.
