Finding My Fam
To find out who you are also means finding out where you fit....Finding your fam is intimately connected with finding your identity. As actress and model Cara Delevingne explained: “You need to honour yourself in being confident to speak out about who you are. That’s the only way you will ever be able to find your family. We all have our family who we are born with but we all find our family, our tribe, where we belong. So the only way to do that is to be honest.” (p. 94)
Postmillennials try to balance flexibility with stability, and freedom with security, in this quest for belonging that matches their identity. Just as there is an element of fluidity and flexibility to many aspects of their personal identities, so too with the groups to which they belong. Their art of digital living involves joining and leaving groups as identities become clearer and habits of being change, but with the integrity of the person maintained through the process.
Where Gen Zers feel an affinity, they find out who they are; when they know who they are, they can navigate social life and relationships with greater confidence. As one interviewee put it, “You join the group for a reason, you know” [Andy]. Furthermore, there is a continuous refinement in a group’s identity, driven by the energy of individuals who find a part of their identity to be elided, excluded, or rendered invisible within a group as it stands. To name and honor who they really are, they have to persuade the community to refine its identity or, if there is resistance to such change, they leave altogether to establish a new community of their own. (p.94)
Katz, R., Ogilvie, S., Shaw, J., & Woodhead, L. (2022). Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age. University of Chicago Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=sd-SEAAAQBAJ
