Where Gen Z and Millennials Stand on Influencers

Sign up for our brand new newsletter: “From A to Gen Z.” This biweekly email will put the biggest headlines about Gen Alpha, Gen Z and millennials into context to help readers better understand these key generations. 

Welcome to Morning Consult’s newsletter on young consumers: We’ll put the headlines you’re reading about Gen Alpha, Gen Z and millennials into context with our high frequency survey data to help you better understand exactly how they’re spending their time — and their dollars. 

Last week, my colleague Claire Tassin and I published the latest edition of Morning Consult’s flagship influencer report, exploring how young people are interacting with online content creators in 2024. We’ll dive deep into this data today. Plus, we explore which generation values honesty the most (and least).

 📲🔥 Influencer temperature check  📲🔥

Overwhelming majorities of both Gen Zers and millennials are influencer followers, and the former is especially prolific in this behavior. More than 8 in 10 Gen Z social media users report following influencers online, with over 50% saying they follow “many” influencers. Overall, these numbers are largely unchanged from 2023, suggesting broad interest in influencers is stable.

That said, there is some variance in where young people prefer to follow influencers. TikTok continues to be the go-to influencer destination for Gen Zers and women, while YouTube reigns supreme among millennials and men.

These results mirror last year’s and are reflective of a broader trend that we’ll be following in close detail moving forward: the increased gendering of the internet. The 2024 presidential election cycle made clear that young men and women have very different experiences online, which will undoubtedly have major impacts on their consumption. 

▶️ Morning Consult Pro subscribers can access our Influencer Report analysis here and Intelligence Clients can explore Gen Zers’ audience profile data here. If you are interested in learning more about our audience profile data, reach out to your Morning Consult contact or email [email protected]. 

🤳➡️ The future of influencing 🤳➡️

Though Gen Z men and women are moving apart on many issues, they are collectively steadfast in their interest in having a career online. 

This year, over half (55%) of Gen Z social media users said they would become an influencer if given the opportunity, on par with the share that said the same in 2019 and 2023.

That being an influencer is still very appealing to Gen Z is significant — but not totally surprising. Additional Morning Consult research conducted earlier this year found that Gen Zers’ are more interested than any other generation in building a personal brand. And they’re also much more likely to share photos and videos of themselves online compared to all U.S. adults.

If employers want to attract young talent, they should be aware of these sentiments and attempt to incorporate some of Gen Zers’ favorite aspects of influencing — like flexible hours and the ability for creative expression — into existing workflows where appropriate. Doing so may also serve to reverse young people’s souring attitudes toward corporate America, which is another trend that has been consistently appearing across our work. 

▶️ To learn more about Gen Zers’ relationship with content creation, head here.

📉👀 The dishonest generation? 👀📉 

Amid ongoing post-election discourse about young people and online mis- and disinformation, our analyst Claire Tassin leveraged Morning Consult Intelligence data to take a broad look at the state of *the truth.* 

Her latest analysis found that, when asked if honesty and authenticity are very important to them, each generation is less likely than the last to say yes. In September 2024, 87% of Gen Z adults said they value honesty, a full 10 percentage points lower than the share of baby boomers who said the same.

The decline of valuing honesty ushers with it a decline in trust — after all, if you don’t value honesty, you’re not only more likely to lie, but also to assume others aren’t consistently trustworthy. It’s logical then that Gen Z trusts brands less than other generations too. In Morning Consult’s Most Trust Brands report, we found that Gen Z’s average net trust score for all brands was more than 10 points lower than any other generation. 

▶️ To get more Gen Z insights straight to your inbox, sign up for generational trend alerts here.  

What Else We’re Reading

• How These Men Left the Mansophere — and Why Some May Never (Teen Vogue)
• Inside Amazon Prime's Sponsorship of Gen Z-Favorite Social Media Series 'Boy Room' (Ad Age)
• How 'Dancing With the Stars' Took Gen Z for a Spin (The New York Times)

Coming Up

12/5  The Fastest Growing Brands of 2024. In this report, we rank the top 20 brands that have seen the biggest rise in purchasing consideration this year and how that is playing out across the general population and other key demographics. Plus, we profile six brands that have made an impression on consumers.