Something about Pinterest feels like it wasn’t made for today’s world, and maybe that’s why we’re so drawn to it. It’s more relaxed, quieter. While the rest of the internet spins itself dizzy, saturated with blaring noise and a flashing sense of urgency, Pinterest is drawing in Gen Z like a tide. All you have to do is scroll until you see something that catches your eye and save it; the act alone feels like a kind of intention.
We’re the ones making Pinterest bloom again, gradually and glamorously. More than 42% of Pinterest’s monthly users are Gen Z — 26.1 million of us, to be exact — and we’re not just passing through. We’re carving out a space for ourselves, with searches from Gen Z rising by 30% year over year. We save nearly 2.5 times more pins than any other generation, and we make 66% more boards. That’s not scrolling; that’s collecting and curating. It’s us trying to understand the shape of ourselves by arranging tiny pieces of the world into a mosaic of all the things we love.
For many of us, especially the women aged 18 to 24 who now make up 20% of Pinterest’s global audience, it’s one of the only digital spaces left that feels like a deep breath. 68% of monthly users say that they feel that they can actually be their authentic selves on the platform, which sounds small until you realize how rare it is online to feel understood without the need to explain — to be seen for what’s on the inside rather than the outside.
There’s a difference between feeling seen and being witnessed. Most social media platforms make me feel like I’m walking on a tightrope, attempting the insurmountable task of balancing authenticity with curation. But Pinterest feels like slipping into a warm bath of images that no one asked me to explain. There’s no pressure to post. No fluorescent status updates blinking like a siren. It’s just me and my perpetually evolving collection of things I love. It feels like standing in the middle of a thrift store, sifting through a dusty rack until you find something that fits, something that was waiting for you to find it.
On Pinterest, there’s a stillness that feels subversive. Like stepping into a house where no one expects you to speak, where your absence isn’t punished, where you don’t have to be clever, or correct, or constantly creating a version of yourself that’s digestible to strangers. I go to Pinterest when the absurdly dramatic, self-critical voice in my head becomes too sharp. When the world feels too full of opinions and perfect faces and things you’re supposed to want. Pinterest isn’t like that.
Pinterest isn’t really social media, not in the way we’ve come to understand it at least. There’s no pressure to be seen. There’s no race to be the funniest, or the prettiest, or most “authentically curated.” It’s not about keeping up with your friends or making sure your post tags the right people, about being known by others or garnering likes and comments.
Pinterest is a library of dreams, a digital altar. It’s a drawer that you open alone. Through the obstacles of my teenage years, Pinterest acted as my guide, helping me envision what I could be once the hurdles were overcome. Like a blinding light at the end of a tunnel, I counted on my boards to deliver me from the depths of teenage angst.
And yes, sometimes the beauty portrayed is deeply aestheticized. Like any social media, Pinterest has a way of idealizing life, of flattening it into mood boards that smell like vanilla and look like they live in Paris. But that’s part of the appeal. There’s something undeniably soothing about immersing yourself in a world of your own design, where the lighting is always golden and the air is always fresh.
There’s a ritual that I’ve come to love. I name a new board something descriptive yet cryptic, “spirit science,” “jazz and bossa nova records,” “runway fashion,” and I start pinning. Completely engrossed in my imagination, I build a world tailored to my own predilections with photos of cracked porcelain mugs, girls with flushed cheeks and messy hair, and outfits that I feel like I’ve already worn in a dream. I pin poems I don’t understand yet. Color palettes that ache like old songs.
Sometimes I don’t even know why I choose what I do. But I know it’s right.
And that’s the point. Pinterest lets us choose without explaining. It gives Gen Z what most platforms don’t: space to exist without performance. A place where identity feels like a fog that gathers slowly, takes shape, then becomes something whole. Immaterial and abstract but undoubtedly felt. Even the way it works — visual, fluid, nonlinear — mimics how we think. How we want. How we remember. It’s less like social media and more like dreaming with your eyes open.
People say “that’s so Pinterest” now, like a shorthand for appearing to be effortlessly curated, singular, tasteful in a way that doesn’t scream. It means that you’ve made a life that looks intentional. It means you’ve figured out how to live inside your own taste, something that isn’t copy-pasted from a trending audio that already feels old by the time you film it. Pinterest is where “cool” is born, not the loud or viral kind, but the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself. It seeps into culture over time, where microtrends catch their first breath.
That’s another reason why Gen Z loves it — we care about taste. Not in a snobby way, but in an inexplicably personal one. We want our idealized identities to feel textured. Niche. Specific. Not prepackaged, like trends that are tied neatly with a bow and expire every two weeks. We don’t just want to participate in trends, we want to embody them; to touch the source.
Pinterest bestows us with a far more priceless gift. A feeling of ownership and discovery, intimacy with style before it’s been watered down and sold in bulk.
While the mood boards are what drew us in, we stayed for practical reasons, too. In a world where everything feels increasingly unstable, practicality is its own form of comfort. You can plan an entire dinner party on there, down to the style of napkin folds. You can figure out what haircut best suits your face shape, or where to buy that obscure lamp you saw in the background of a movie. And unlike most platforms, Pinterest doesn’t just assume that you want something just because somebody else does. Apps like TikTok didn’t invent the bandwagon effect, but it encourages it, steamrolling anyone who falls off the collective wagon into obscurity.
For a generation raised on algorithmic hunger, Pinterest feels like a radical relief. No matter how hard you try to fight it, we currently live in a time where you’re expected to always be on. Every app is a stage, and every profile is a brand. We’re taught to post quickly, speak loudly, and respond rapidly. But Pinterest lets you pause. It’s an undercover rebellion against the hyper-social, hyper-surveilled spaces we’ve been pushed into. Pinterest is where Gen Z can go when we’re tired of trying to be interesting, offering a refuge when we don’t feel like broadcasting ourselves anymore.
Pinterest is an antidote, putting the “media” in social media with no obligation to be “chronically online.” It replaces “doomscrolling” with a sense of peaceful wandering. And it feels different; wandering is gentler. Wandering is allowed to be nonlinear. One image leads to another, and suddenly I’m dreaming larger than I ever thought possible. Like a digital shoebox of feelings, like a quilt sewn from pieces you forgot you loved, it’s the place I visit when I feel the need to connect with myself.
I’ve found masterpieces of art that lingered in my bones for weeks and recipes that felt like spells. More than anything, I’ve built and rebuilt myself more times than I can count, covertly reflected in the worlds I’ve constructed. It’s like catching your own eye in a mirror unexpectedly, or like recognizing a version of yourself that you didn’t know you knew.
Gen Z didn’t come to Pinterest looking for peace; we came looking for inspiration. But what we found was a kind of permission. The ability to be messy and not yet entirely whole. To want things that you don’t yet understand. To build digital shrines to people you haven’t met, lives you haven’t lived, and clothes you’re too scared to wear. It’s not only an app, it’s a record of longing, of yearning.
And maybe longing is all we really have, our best compass in a world that changes so fast that we barely have time to name our feelings before they disappear again. But Pinterest lets us name them. Image by image, pin by pin, not for likes. Just to remember who we were trying to become.
It’s the last corner of the internet that still feels sacred, a place where I can gather all my scattered dreams and say gently, Here. This is who I am becoming.
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