Why Gen Z Is Abandoning Big Social Media | Fortune Daily

Her Campus Media and Facebook both started in Harvard dorm rooms. Fast forward a few decades and the two platforms have taken very different paths. And yet, they are both facing existential questions about their audience and their roles more broadly in society. Windsor Western co-founded Her Campus in 2009 to give college women a platform to write and read about the issues that mattered to them. Today, it's a global media platform, it's a community, and it's a marketing agency created for and by college and Gen Z women. At the MPW Summit, we sat down with Weston to talk about the impact of student journalism today and its future. We also spoke about the big social media platforms and why real connection is becoming more valuable than follower count. And we discussed the issues on young women's minds in 2026, which of course included the Cornell rape case. I'm Ellie Austin in New York, and this is Fortune Daily. Linda, hello. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being here at the Summit. Thank you for having me. I couldn't be more delighted. So depending on your demographic, Her Campus Media is either completely ubiquitous or it's very new to you. So give me a description of Her Campus for someone who's never heard of it, someone who's seeing it for the first time. So Her Campus is the voice of college women on college campuses and beyond. It's a company that I started out of my dorm room at Harvard back in 2009. And it's funny, you talk about it being ubiquitous versus completely unknown. The year is between 2013 and 2015, where if you graduated from college before 2013 to 15, depending on your school, you've probably never heard of us. And if you graduated after that year and you're a woman, you're like, oh, of course her campus. I love her campus. You have a story about a friend who wrote for Her Campus or someone who was in one of our communities. So what we do is we create college content by college women for college women, and we platform women and help amplify their voices. And why was there a need for that? What was the niche in the market that you were trying to fill? So most campuses have had a school newspaper for a long time, right? And newspapers are great. newspapers are incredibly important, but in terms of a women's publication on college campuses, they existed sometimes, and sometimes they would come if there was an editor who really wanted to have a women's publication, and then it would go away when she graduated. So we were running the women's publication at Harvard, and at the time, Facebook had just come about a few years before us and was for college students at the time. You had to have a .edu in order to be on Facebook, and believe it or not, it was very cool to be on Facebook for 18, 19, 20-year-olds. At the time, Condé Nast, Hearst, et cetera, all the internships were unpaid. And if you got an editorial internship, you probably didn't actually get to write anything at all, right? You were getting the coffee, doing the grunt work. I did them. You did them, right? So you remember, you were there. I was putting parking tickets on the editor-in-chief's car so that he didn't get fined. Exactly, right? So that's what you were doing. So you get these amazing internships. You probably were in New York City or in London or major big city, not getting paid, having to subsidize it on your own, also being expected to look the part, right? And so we wanted to create a platform where women could get clips published as journalists during their undergraduate years beyond news, right? So we launched this at Harvard. Friends at other schools said, I want this too. We built a platform. We won the business plan competition. By the time we were graduating, we were at 25 campuses. And so we decided let's not get real jobs for a year, right? There were me and two other women, Annie and Stephanie were my co-founders. Annie actually dropped out of Harvard to do this with us. And the three of us said, let's not get real jobs for a year. Let's see where we go. By the end of that next year, I want to say we were at 80 schools and it just kept taking off. How did you fund yourself in that year when you were not getting a real job? We were completely self-funded and bootstrapped and profitable for the first 15 years of our existence. Were you taking a salary at that point? No. So how were you living? We, the three of us were living paycheck to paycheck, but the business was paycheck to paycheck, right? Stephanie lived with her parents. I lived with my boyfriend who's now my husband and he lived with a roommate. They actually shared a bed in their little room. I mean, it was a very meager existence, but we would get a partnership from, we had New Balance was an early partner. Juicy Couture was an early sponsor and they would pay us and we would pay ourselves. We divide it by three and pay ourselves. What are your main sources of your main revenue streams right now? Yeah. So we have four sources of revenue. Uh, one is going to be your traditional sponsorships, advertising, banner ads, uh, sponsored content, native content. We think of our content as being on our.com on email and on social. Those are the different content platforms, right? Where we speak to our audience. So sponsorships of that, for instance, the 22 under 22 program that we do that elf has now sponsored for the last three years. So that's one example. Then we have our experiential offering. So much like this wonderful conference that we're at, I think media has an obligation and an opportunity to be a culture creator, right? So you can create these experiences like this conference that matter, that really move the needle, that help drive conversations. And brands will come and sponsor that and want to be part of that. So we have a large experiential business. We do women's conferences and campus pop-ups and different events for women. And then we have our community side of the business. So what started as women's journalism on college campuses, which still exists and is our flagship property, evolved when blogging started, right? When Instagram came about, when Pinterest came about, then with TikTok and all of the different platforms, the same women who are interested in being journalists are the same women who are interested in telling their stories on those platforms. So we have the largest college content creator programs in the country, if not in the world. We have 130,000 college content creators that come to us for education. How can I be better at storytelling? How can I be better at my craft? And for community, right? They want to meet other people that are like them. There's this whole thing about it being very embarrassing to be a content creator when you're just getting started. Who does she think she is? Why does she think her story is important to tell? And finding other women who are on that journey with you can be very empowering. So we create these communities of content creators, and then we pair brands with them who want to leverage their voice and their expertise to help them tell their story and that's separate to the journalism or that's that that can coexist with it can coexist with so the creator journalist model is something i think about a lot yeah in many ways i think it's it's really helpful to getting um good information out there and you know people connect now with a face yes um rather than maybe an institution i was leading a conversation about this yesterday on our main stage but there's also a responsibility that comes with calling yourself a journalist which yes um you know not all creators and they'll say themselves kind of are aware of and understand yes so how are you helping the next generation of creator journalists understand that division the responsibility that comes with it so we have the first content creator certification program it's called certified influence it's free for students to take or for any of our content creators to participate in and it's a series of training modules that talk about ethical content creation talk about standing behind your word talk about validating your sources right so really bringing a journalism lens to content creation now it's nuanced because a lot of content creation may be satire right it may be skits it may be we there are some content creators who create an entirely new character that's not even them right and and create content in that vein so it's not a hundred percent overlap of course between a journalist and a content creator but it is important that when you put content out there you can stand behind the content and you can stand behind the story that you're telling so we do that we talk about ftc disclosures we talk about how to disclose when you're working with a brand how to know how much you should charge for your content how to know about usage rights right um and really understanding where brands are going to use your content where they're going to use your image and your likeness and how to negotiate on your behalf what are some of the most sort of popular subjects that your readers are engaging with right now and you know you have this proprietary data on young women what's it telling us about where they're at and what's on their minds well the Cornell story has been i wanted to ask you about that the Cornell story has been incredibly um poignant and relevant right for college women um unfortunately it's not just a Cornell story the fact that it's capturing national attention right now is very important for our audience and for our readers but it's also not something shocking right to them i mean the the number of women startup brands that have a sticker you put on your nail that you can put in your drink to see if your drink has been drugged right the fact that these these tools exist and there are so many um solutions out there to keeping women safe on college campuses it's abhorrent right and what do you think the story is that's being told on her campus that isn't being told in other parts of the media landscape about what happened at Cornell? The fact that it was broken by student journalists, right? So we partnered with the student journalists who first broke that story to talk about the importance of journalism, to talk about the importance of really digging into it, because this happened several years ago, right? And then it just two years ago. Yes. And it's just come to light. So telling the stories of those journalists, really understanding from them, why did you want to tell the story? How did you get engaged in this and platforming them and elevating them as role models right we think is really important um couldn't agree more you a lot of executives watch this show and as i said you have this you know really interesting um viewpoint into the minds and lives of young women what are legacy brands misunderstanding about marketing to that demographic so there's this idea of a millennial pink right uh i love pink i'm a millennial the millennial pink is more of a muted shade and the reason i bring this up versus the the gen z not Brat green was last summer, two summers ago. So it's less Charli XCX lime green, right? But the idea that things need to be polished and perfect, right, is completely wrong. There is this idea where a lot of millennials still think, oh my gosh, we can create this beautiful visual and that's what's really going to be compelling. That's boring. That's snooze fest, right? Gen Z is, I'm waiting for the time not too long from now where if social doesn't change, I'm going to say something kind of wild. If Instagram and TikTok don't change what they're doing, they're quickly going to go the way of Facebook, right? Where they will be for an older generation because of the AI sloppification and the lack of trust. I could talk about that for a very long time. What does Instagram have to do to avoid that happening in your- It needs to flag AI content. It needs to have a very clear filter where you could say, I don't want any AI content to show up in my feed or a very bold way of disclosing that this content was used or was generated with AI because otherwise if you can't trust what you're seeing you're going to stop having any interest in it because it's all just going to be garbage I mean we can talk about dead internet but your your question was what do they not understand it's that messiness is attractive is that things being less polished make them seem real and make them seem trustworthy right because now you can create an AI image or video of anything you can make it look perfect. You can filter yourself to look like an entirely different supermodel person. And Gen Z's experience that and they're over it, right? They want things that are blurry. They want things that are real. They love digital cameras, right? Vinyl is back because they want things that feel real. They're listening to records start to finish, right? Because they're tired of AI curated playlists on Spotify. So pushing the edge of technology is not going to get you further with Gen Z. They want experiences that are real and they crave tangible, trustworthy things. You sit in a really interesting spot between those two worlds. Where does it go in the next five years? So as I said, I think that social media needs to change if it's not going to, when I say go the way of Facebook, I'm not dissing Facebook, but the person who I know who loves Facebook the most is my father, who's 82. He loves Facebook, right? And we don't activate any programs on Facebook whatsoever. The use case for Facebook with college students is Facebook Marketplace, right? It's the new Craigslist, essentially, which is useful. But with Instagram and with TikTok, there's this big pushback, obviously, against the addictive feeds, the addictive algorithms. Then you talk about the dead internet theory, and there's more content being produced by bots than by humans, and there's more engagement with content by bots than by humans. And young people are smart, and young people are sophisticated, and they're savvy, and they know what's new and they know what's next. And over the evolution of her campus over the last 17 years, if you think about our business model, when 25% of our community graduates when they're seniors, we have to replace them with new freshmen. Otherwise we become obsolete. So we have to be on top of what are 18 year olds interested in? How are 18 year olds consuming content? How are 18 year olds communicating? And we're seeing this real pushback to community, to real life relationships to, it is better to have a hundred people who know your name than 10,000 random followers who are judging you on the internet. So for brands, it's going to be a complete shift in dynamics. We're in a post page view world right now on social or not on social, on our websites, right? That business model of driving page views and monthly unique visitors is, is gone. What's your most important metric right now? Right now we look at engagement rate, right? It's no longer even followers doesn't matter on social it's the reach and the engagement mostly shares we love shares that's the number one thing that we track because it means not only did i like this i like this enough that i want to show it to someone that i care about because it's funny or it's important right um so we look at shares as one of the most important metrics windsor thank you so much for joining us and enjoy the rest of the summit thank you for having me really appreciate it. So what has oil companies and clean energy developers on the same side? Well, it's the race to power AI. A bipartisan bill would fast track everything from solar farms to gas pipelines. Supporters say it could ease energy costs, but not everyone is in favor of it. Fortune Energy editor Jordan Bloom walks us through the bill and tells us why it launched a million mountain dew puns. Baja Blast isn't just a Mountain Dew drink. It's apparently the legislation in Congress that's going to expedite power reform and feed the AI boom. Go figure. It's the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, Baja for short. So there's a lot of Baja Blast jokes being made right now in Congress. Congress isn't known for good jokes, let me be clear. So permitting reform legislation sounds really boring on the surface, but it's actually very important in terms of what's going on in the country right now. This legislation essentially would expedite permitting for pipelines, wind farms, solar farms, and maybe most importantly, the transmission lines to carry that electricity that have been particularly onerous to build. So it's a weird mix of allies and enemies, Republicans combining with more centrist Democrats. The oil and gas industry is united with the renewable energy sector. You don't see that often. On the other hand, it's the rare issue where the renewable energy sector is divided with environmental groups for the most part. I'll quote the Earth Justice President, you know, while it's a genuine policy breakthrough on transmission and modernization of our electric grid, it also eviscerates bedrock protections for water, wetlands, endangered species, and the most basic expectations for transparency and responsible environmental analysis. The legislation is not going to come up for a vote, most likely, until after the midterm election results. Democrats are projected to win the House. The Senate's a toss-up. If Democrats win both, they might be tempted to say, hey, let's punt this till the next year, come up with a version that's a little more to our liking and get that through. The problem there, of course, is that you would still need 60 Senate votes. And even if you get 60 Senate votes, which would be difficult, then President Trump is still in office and he could veto it. Right now, President Trump's in support of it. So do you take what you can get now or do you punt and risk losing everything? Spirit Halloween rises from the dead in vacant storefronts every autumn. News editor, Caterina Giorno, I can't do this seriously. News editor, Caterina Giorno spoke to the CEO about how he conjured a 1,500 store empire out of one spooky season. This is the business of boo. Cat, hello. Happy Halloween. I know it is a monumental event for you. We've just had a long conversation. I actually hate Halloween, but thrilled to have you here to bring us all into the spirit. Talking of spirit, Spirit Halloween. It is North America's biggest Halloween retailer. It seems to appear out of thin air every autumn. Tell us how this business operates. Much like a spirit itself, you know? Out of nowhere. Out of nowhere. Listen, eight to 10 weeks it operates and that's how we all know it in the neighborhood at that one store that mysteriously no longer exists but then it does exist as a Spirit Halloween the rest of the time it is actually scouting locations it's planning costumes to order it's planning costumes of what will be the next big hit and they're trying to get all cargo and all merchandise into the United States so for someone who might not be familiar with Spirit Halloween tell us what to expect when you walk in the door of that previously vacated store from a different chain and i won't hold it against you that you don't like Halloween thank you totally fine so i'll explain this to you in a way that, you know, other people will be yelling at the TV here. Essentially, you're walking into a store and there's a whole experience. It's called an in-store experience, ISE, and you get to experience a brand new theatrics in the store as you're shopping for your Halloween costume. Wow, I am blown away by this. You spoke to the CEO of Spirit Halloween. I am actually, sarcasm aside, I am interested in the business model. Does this company make enough money in two months? So say in sort of like October, well, I'm going to say the end of September, October to keep it afloat for the rest of the year. For the rest of the year. And they're also able to, again, pay money towards their charity for Spirit of the Children, their charity. It's now their 20th year. And essentially it operates in every children's hospital of every single place where their stores operate. And Kat, for your piece, you spoke to the CEO of Spirit Halloween. What did he tell you about the business model? Yeah, I spoke to Steven Silverstein. He's the CEO of Spencer Spirits because he also is the CEO of Spencer's. It's a small, well, for us Americans here, it's like the epitome of a teenage lifestyle in the mall. But it's Spencer's, it's Spirit Halloween. It's also Hot Topic recently. What's Hot Topic? Hot Topic, same thing. It's a big box store in the mall, essentially. It's like where every single angsty teenager would love to go to and then they age out of it, unless you don't age out of it, which is no judgment here or there. Anyway, he spoke about, again, operating the store as not a temporary store, not a pop-up, but a hybrid store is what he told me. Essentially, you're operating for eight to ten weeks of the year, consumer side facing, but the rest of the year he's operating in terms of how to get logistics, how to get costumes to go into the country, how to pick the right kinds of places to have our next store. I did a quick ask around of people on our team here where they have bought their Halloween costumes from this year. And unsurprisingly, lots of people have bought them from Amazon because it is cheaper. So how does Spirit Halloween think about competition with an Amazon? And is it facing price hikes from tariffs? Yes, on the tariffs. Yes, they've thought about how people get their Halloween costumes. And thirdly, journalists, we work long hours and we don't get paid that much. So, I mean, I get it too. Amazon does go directly to your door. I mean, for the most part, Spirit Halloween started out when there were plenty of other competitors, right? Think about Party City, probably the biggest example of the biggest competitor. And there were other smaller mom and pop Halloween stores. So what Steven did was really go from the small Halloween costume to a store to Spirit Halloween being like the Kleenex of tissues. Spirit Halloween, you have to say, hey, Spirit Halloween, you're going to Spirit. I'm not going costume shopping, I'm going there. So that's the experience part of it. The biggest question of all, Kat, what are you dressing up as this Halloween? I'm hopefully going to go for a niche, esoteric Twitter joke that only my friends will get. got it that seems very on brand for you thank you thank you that was the business of boo i'm going to keep saying it it was also Fortune Daily, I'm Ellie Austin, we'll see you tomorrow should we go boo spirit halloween okay