Who does Gen Z trust outside the algorithm?

This essay was originally published on The Sidebar, Mozilla's Substack.

When I started my newsletter, as seen on, a little over a year ago, it was because in the absence of early morning commutes, a designated office desk, and the water cooler conversations I'd been told to expect but had yet to experience, my group chats became the default space where I learned about and made sense of the world. Made up mostly of recent graduates like myself, they filled the void of a shared professional context. If I wasn't spending my paid-for hours scrolling TikTok or X, I knew someone who was.

Anecdotes of bad dates and personal drama were interspersed with links from The Times and The Wall Street Journal. TikTok explainers from unknown creators were often given nearly the same weight as bylines from legacy publishers - not because everything was taken at face value, but because nothing was above debate. In hindsight, I realize these chats were doing more than just filling the gap. They were functioning as my second algorithm, reshaping what I paid attention to and how I processed it.

The feed is raw material, the group chat is the filter

It's true that when a Zoomer says, I read this somewhere," they probably mean, I saw it on TikTok." In the U.S., more than half of people under 35 now consider social and video platforms their primary news source, surpassing TV and legacy news websites. Globally, about 44% of people aged 18 to 24 say social and video platforms are their main source of news. Recent data from Pew and the Reuters Institute also show that around 44% of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 cite TikTok as their go-to news source.

If social platforms are the front page of Gen Z's internet, then group chats are the private newsrooms - spaces where algorithm-fed content is interpreted, validated, and repurposed into something more intimate and trusted. A TikTok isn't truly viral until it hits the group chat. Breaking news is hardly relevant unless it sparks debate. In a fragmented information landscape, group chats have become the second algorithm.

The links and conversations circulating in these chats amount to an ongoing, personalized curation - a feed shaped not by tech companies but by people I trust.

As a 26-year-old, college-educated immigrant who's lived in five cities over the past decade, my group chats reflect the many pockets of friends and acquaintances I've gathered along the way. Each one captures a different version of my life, a snapshot of my tastes and worldviews at a specific moment. The links and conversations circulating in these chats amount to an ongoing, personalized curation - a feed shaped not by tech companies but by people I trust.

Trust is peer-to-peer, not platform-based

Legacy media has a trust problem. When Gallup began tracking Americans' views of the news media in the early 1970s, attitudes were overwhelmingly positive. Since then, public confidence has steadily declined. In Gallup's 2024 survey, only 31% of Americans said they had a great deal" or fair amount" of trust in mass media. Meanwhile, 36% said they had no trust at all - the highest level ever recorded.

But when the algorithm replaces the Fourth Estate, we trade institutional scrutiny for viral consensus. And that carries its own risks. Social feeds are flooded with conflicting, contextless information. The more sensational, the more it spreads.

Gen Z, raised on the internet, is aware of this. Contrary to the popular narrative, media literacy isn't dead - it just looks different. Concepts like source layering" or context collapse" aren't theoretical to us, they play out in real time. Much like how consumers now trust friends and influencers over brands, young people don't just trust a source - they trust the person sharing it. For better or worse, credibility has become relational.

Group chats as media infrastructure

It's helpful to consider scale when thinking about how information moves today. In an age of overwhelming information abundance, and in the absence of a collective narrative, taste and trust have become the ultimate social currencies. Social proof isn't mass appeal - it's micro-appeal, measured by how it resonates within your own circles. Unlike public-facing algorithms, group chats operate through collective filtering. What gets boosted in a chat has already been socially vetted and reframed.

Just as a Rolodex once reflected the strength of your network, I've come to see the depth and variety of my group chats as a key tool for making sense of the world. When I drop a link to a TikTok or a news article and type, Did you guys see this?", I'm not just sharing - I'm soliciting context. The responses are as varied as the chats themselves, spanning industries, countries, and personal biases. The links I get in return, whether to debunk or reinforce a claim, offer a window into my peers' algorithms, often refreshingly different from my own.

Take a video of a CEO fumbling a question about worker safety. In one group chat, it sparks a detailed conversation about labor policy. In another, someone shares the full clip to push back on claims of bad faith editing. In a third, it becomes a meme. One video, three interpretations - shaped not by the algorithm, but by the lens of the group watching it.

Group chats have become more than places to gossip or trade memes. They are cultural processors, fact-checking hubs, and micro-editorial boards. In a media ecosystem where traditional institutions have lost authority and algorithms feel increasingly chaotic, it makes sense that Gen Z turns inward. What we trust now isn't just the content - it's the people helping us understand it.

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