TR.BIZ: 5.7.2026

From Gen Z being anti-trend to Hantavirus mania, this is your late-mid-week check-in 💫

Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we’re digging around a fascinating new report on Gen Z’s brand thoughts, Hantavirus mania, key TikTokers to watch, and the end of colleges in America.

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💥 Soft Powers: Anti-trend brands

Having worked with many a brand and corporation who are constantly self-flagellating for not being up-on-trends, resulting in poor agency people being squeezed to death by out-of-touch executives and their trickle-downers, making sure they are always on when the returns aren’t actually needed, I know how miserable the trap of trendiness can be. And it is indeed a trap because it only sometimes performs as everyone hopes it will, which may be for a reason. Enter a super interesting study from the Missouri School of Journalism’s MOJO Ad team, who surveyed 700+ college aged people (18 to 24 year olds) from across the country to find very few of them actually care if a brand is “on trend.” MOJO’s State of the YAYA (youth and young adult) Report found only 5% of the demo prefer brands that are keeping up with trends while 54% make purchases aligned with identity. What’s more — and a key finding I say again and again in Trend Report: Trend Report™, in response to everything from Staples Baddie to the CEO Hamburgergate — is the vast majority value credibility and self-expression: “78% of respondents agreed that in a world without authenticity, individuality is compromised.” Interesting stuff, all to diffuse the corporate bombs of overthinking that literally every brand does to the detriment of all involved.” Juicy food for thought. To help all you poor workers struggling to follow every trend, I spoke with Kelly Ritter, a PR account manager on the (all student) MOJO team, to gather a few learnings as to what this means for young people and beyond.

How do these findings differ from Millennials?
In some ways, it seems Gen Z is beginning to share more values with the generation before them, especially when it comes to identity, values-based consumption and the appeal of “conscious” brands, like the rise of TOMS among Millennials. However, the difference lies in the environment in which those values were formed. Gen Z was the first generation to grow up fully immersed in the digital age, with social media shaping not only how they communicate, but also how they see themselves and others. While technology has made connection more immediate and constant, it has also weakened the need for face-to-face interaction, taking a toll on genuine social connectedness. Current 18- to 24-year-olds often view older generations as lucky, with one respondent noting, “In the 90s, teenagers were bored and had to go seek things out. Nowadays, we are on social media all the time trying to see what the next trend is.” This generation has more opportunities for connection than ever before, yet many do not feel liberated by that access. Instead, they feel trapped by it. For many, posting on social media feels more like performing than sharing, reinforcing the pressure to always be visible, interesting and on-brand. Millennials may have begun curating their identities online in their late teens or early adulthood, but today’s 18- to 24-year-olds often started doing so in childhood. That gap matters because it changes how identity develops in the first place, especially during years when emotional and social development are still taking shape.

It is also important to consider the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted this generation during a crucial developmental period. As young teens already searching for belonging and stability, they were pushed even further away from in-person connection at a moment when they needed it most. In that environment, trends and social media became a kind of substitute for community, offering the appearance of connection without always delivering the real thing. The rise of influencers and fast-moving online culture only deepened that dynamic, encouraging young people to look outward for cues on how to act, dress and present themselves. So while Millennials helped normalize values-driven brands, Gen Z is navigating those same ideas in a far more performative and pressured environment. That makes their relationship with authenticity, identity and trend culture feel not just similar to Millennials, but more complicated.

What’s your advice for brands?
Brands are often the very forces undermining the authenticity they are trying so hard to capture. Many 18- to 24-year-olds recognize that culture has reached a tipping point, where constant performance, over-curation and trend chasing can make the world feel almost dystopian. If brands want to genuinely connect with this audience, and build a stronger future for both young consumers and themselves, they need to stop selling an overly polished or overly safe version of life. Instead, they need to show up in a way that is honest to who they are.

That starts with staying true to a distinct brand personality. When brands operate from a clear sense of self, they are more likely to attract consumers who actually resonate with their values, voice and identity. Suspicion tends to grow when brands overextend themselves, force relevance or insert themselves into spaces that do not feel natural to them. Our research found that 40% of 18- to 24-year-olds still believe authenticity is possible in a trend-driven society, which suggests that young consumers are not rejecting trends altogether. Rather, they are asking brands to participate with more intention. For brands, the goal is not to avoid trends completely, but to know which ones align with who they are and which ones do not. In that sense, authenticity is less about saying more and more about stripping back, staying consistent and making the brand’s core personality impossible to miss.

“Participate with more intention”: music to my ears. But will anyone listen? I hope so! Breathe a little easier, my agency friends, and forward this along to your clients and or bosses and or “stakeholders” in the hopes that they take a god damned chill pill and trust the creative process a bit more. The world is hard enough already! You can download the State of the YAYA Report here.

😋 Eat Me: Butter’s big moment

Have you seen people literally eating balls of butter covered in sugar and cinnamon? Well, it’s a big lil trend that is very interesting because it’s tapping into something I’ve been following for some time: butter is having a moment. Let us count the ways —