For Gen Z, Social Media Is Part of the Job (Any Job)

Each generation embraces a different set of work norms and values, often tied to the social, economic and political environment around them as they reach peak earning age.

Baby boomers and Gen Xers were eager to climb the corporate ladder in the wake of major global conflict. Meanwhile, millennials — after graduating into a recession — opted for entrepreneurship, ushering in an era of unlimited PTO and lavish perks like in-office beer kegs and dry-cleaning.

A new Morning Consult survey aimed to quantify the extent to which a unique career culture has fully crystallized among Gen Zers, who began entering adulthood amid the digital demands of COVID-19 pandemic. We found that, for many Gen Z adults, sharing their work online is now just as much a part of any job as doing the work itself. 

An ideal Gen Z career often includes content creation 

To better understand how social media — and the still rapidly growing creator economy — is influencing perceptions of work in 2025, we asked respondents (regardless of current employment status) about how it factored into their ideal career.

Nineteen percent of Gen Z adults said they aspire to be full-time content creators, while 25% said they would like to work a traditional job and be a content creator simultaneously, the highest shares of any generation on each account. In contrast, the roughly one-third of Gen Zers (35%) who said they would prefer to only work a traditional job full-time was the lowest of all generational cohorts.

Previous Morning Consult analyses have found that Gen Zers are drawn to content creation as a career path for several reasons, including flexible hours and the fact that, for a group who spends more time online than anyone else, it’s simply quite fun. 

However, financial incentives also consistently rank at or near the top of Gen Z’s motivations for becoming content creators. Our latest survey confirms that the behavior is indeed an accessible source of additional income for this cohort, as roughly 1 in 4 (24%) Gen Z adults said they are currently earning money from posting on social media. With proof of concept now well established, this figure will likely only increase moving forward. 

But an adulation of content creators and generally being online isn’t just informing Gen Z’s future career aspirations; it’s also informing how they approach their present career realities. 

If making content can be work, then doing work can be content 

More than half (52%) of Gen Z adults said they “always” or “sometimes” take on new or additional responsibilities at work because completion of the task(s) would make for good social media content. Only 30% of all U.S. adults said the same.

What’s more, 50% of Gen Z adults said they post video content on social media about their work, and 20% said the same about written content. Among this group, “day-in-the-life” content is the most popular format by a wide margin, followed by content focused on education, mentorship, and personal wins or accomplishments. TikTok (72%), Instagram (65%) and YouTube (49%) are the platforms where the largest shares of Gen Zers are sharing this kind of content, reflecting their strong preference for video. 

For several years now, Morning Consult’s annual State of Worker report has found that Gen Z employees severely lag behind their older counterparts on both engagement and satisfaction at work. That said, companies with a significant portion of young employees, or those looking to attract and retain this demographic, should consider allowing work-focused content creation while on the clock (when and where appropriate). 

In addition to signaling a legitimate acknowledgement of young employees’ interests and priorities, such a policy has the potential to benefit some companies externally. Consumer brands like Poppi and Mejuri have found success in leveraging Gen Z-employee-generated content to build awareness and affinity online. As social media becomes increasingly professionalized, this kind of peer-to-peer messaging stands out.

Posting to the top

Perhaps even greater than Gen Zers’ desire to be content creators is their belief in social media as a tool for personal advancement. 

We asked respondents how important posting work-related content online is to achieving eight different positive career objectives. The share of Gen Z adults who said “very” or “somewhat” important was double digits higher than that of all U.S. adults for every tested item. The gap was largest in relation to receiving a raise or pay increase, further underscoring how intimately Gen Zers associate social media with monetization. 

Collectively, this data makes clear that for many young people, work is now twofold: It’s what you do, and what you post online about what you do. This reality means that employers should get comfortable with the assumption that every employee under a certain age is now public-facing, at least in some capacity.

Brands that go a step further and actively encourage employee self-promotion (again, within reason) through initiatives like dedicated content creation time during the workday or in-office production studios stand to earn major goodwill both with Gen Z, both as potential workers and consumers. 

However, it’s important to note that corporate America’s long-held belief in the importance of recruiting and retaining young talent is itself being challenged. Many major companies have started to embrace a “less is more” mindset, expressing a clear intent to reduce entry-level workforce numbers in the coming years and instead lean on artificial intelligence to execute the rote functions typically performed in early career roles.

This shift has serious, albeit still largely undefined, implications for the long-term future of the employer-employee contract. But in the short-term, expect even more Gen Zers to pursue content creation and other social media work, which, in the current environment, may feel like a more reliable path to success for many.