Is Social Media’s Youth Obsession Due a Reality Check?

For decades, marketing’s golden rule has been simple: win over the youth and you’ll win the market. Young consumers are seen as impressionable, culturally influential and worth capturing early for the long-term payoff of brand loyalty.

From soda ads in the 1950s to TikTok collaborations in 2025, the formula has barely changed. But in today’s world, with social media splintered into hundreds of micro-cultures, it’s worth asking if that logic still holds.

Brands once looked to young consumers not just for their spending power, but for the cultural sway they held over everyone else. Marketing theory has long positioned young people as opinion leaders, the ones setting trends that “trickle up” into the mainstream. The logic was that if younger people embraced a brand, older audiences would eventually follow. Whether it was teens introducing parents to new tech, or youth subcultures shaping fashion worn decades later, winning the youth vote was seen as the fastest route to broad cultural relevance.

But that logic isn’t always as relevant now. We no longer need to rely on word of mouth from young people to convince an older person to buy something, we can target those older audiences directly through ad targeting or influencers in their own sphere and on their own devices.

Algorithms are part of the problem. Where trends once spread organically, feeds now keep people in their own lanes. A TikTok trend might dominate a 18-year-old’s scroll but remain completely invisible to a 45-year-old. If your brand is claiming to be for everyone, what happens when you only speak one generation’s language?

Even when youth attention is won, it doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. Trend cycles that once played out over the years now live and die in weeks.

We remember the ’70s and ’80s as defined by single movements like hippies, punk, synth-pop, but culture never stood still for long even then. Disco and glam rock peaked in the ’70s before punk took over mid-decade. The ’80s jumped from New Romantic synth-pop to hip-hop fashion, goth, metal and preppy looks. Those shifts took years; now they happen at hyper speed, often staying trapped in niche corners of social media.

Of course, some brands have pulled it off. UGG and Crocs both managed to flip their image by embedding themselves into youth culture, becoming cool by association via influencers and subculture-led moments.

But they’re global brands with deep pockets. They can saturate channels, try multiple creative routes, and survive the misses. Smaller brands don’t have that luxury. Going all-in on 'brain rot' on TikTok content might deliver likes because it holds the majority share on the platform, but does it shift perception or loyalty with your target audience?

In 2025, 'cool' doesn’t mean 'young' anymore. It can mean authentic, perceptive, in touch with your audience - whoever they are and wherever they’re hanging out. The brands breaking through today aren’t just chasing memes; they’re building genuine connections inside the micro-cultures that matter the most to them.

So maybe it’s time to let go of the obsession. If young consumers are your core, then fine - go all in. But if you’re chasing growth, youth attention alone is no longer the engine it once was. Social media isn’t one big culture anymore; it’s many. And in that reality, relevance doesn’t belong to a single generation.