Social media arrived just as I, a younger millennial, was on the brink of teenhood. My friends and I signed up for accounts on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, as well as less remembered sites such as the now defunct Bebo. We didn’t know what we were doing; no one did.
We posted indiscreet messages and photos on public feeds that we wouldn’t want any future employer – or really anyone, for that matter – to see. Then gradually we, and our parents and their parents, too, learned what it means to live with that world-changing phenomenon that we term social media. We started to find different ways to adapt, a process that is ongoing.
But what is the experience like for gen Z, the first generation of “digital natives”, for whom the language of the internet is a mother tongue? That is the question that led the Italian photographer Niccolò Rastrelli to embark on the project IRL (the online acronym, of course, for a phrase denoting our offline existences: in real life). Rastrelli has long been interested in the way people construct their identities through self-presentation.
I’m older and don’t have children, so I want to understand their point of view,” says the photographer, who was born in 1977, making him a member of generation X. Past works include a project exploring the rising popularity around the globe of the youth subculture of cosplay. Now he felt it was time to broaden his focus to a more ubiquitous experience: being on the “socials”.
He recruited subjects across the full span of the generation, from 14-year-olds to adults in their late 20s. Most were in Italy, but he also visited the UK, Morocco and France. Each portrait has two paired components.
On one side the subject is photographed in their bedroom, whether in their family home or in a flatshare or university halls. They are intentionally posed, nearly always making eye-contact with the camera. S ome clutch their phones, or sit by a computer.
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