@Girls Host: Social Commerce Is Influencing More Personal Content

As consumers increasingly look to social media to inspire their shopping, the social commerce space is becoming more and more about individual creators’ personalities.

Jillian Lenna, content creator at 10PM Curfew and host of the @girls page with more than 12 million TikTok followers and 7 million Instagram followers, said in an interview with PYMNTS that, rather than, say, reposted memes, social commerce is trending toward original, personal photos and videos.

“Original content … is really where everything is moving,” Lenna said. “People want a voice. People want a personality. People want to feel safe when they’re looking at things. Like they know the [creator]. It’s going into more of a personal instead of impersonal [space].”

Many consumers, especially those in younger generations, are turning to social media platforms to inspire their buying if not to actually complete the purchase. The PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media” found that 43% of consumers (roughly 110 million people) search social media to find goods and services to buy. Plus, 14% of consumers (an estimated 36 million individuals) buy those goods and services through social media platforms.

Those shares increase considerably for millennials and Gen Z consumers. Supplemental research from the report revealed that 68% of Gen Z consumers searched for goods and services on social media in the month prior to being surveyed, as did 64% of millennials. Plus, 22% of both Gen Z and millennial consumers ultimately completed a purchase via these platforms in that period.

For @girls, Lenna noted that, to gain build the kind of following needed for social commerce, it was key to offer consumers the chance to get that sense of the personal connection with the brand by providing someone they could latch onto.

“When we first started building the page, it was really important for us to get a voice and have a presence — a face behind the page,” Lenna said, adding that from there, when the page has collaborated with brands, it has felt “more organic” to followers.

Sure enough, PYMNTS Intelligence research bears out that younger shoppers often seek out individual creators to inspire their purchasing. The report “Generation Zillennial: How They Shop” found that 13% of consumers in the country said they had made a purchase in the last month at least partially because of a social media influencer or celebrity. That share grows more than twofold among Gen Z, where 28% said they had done so, as did 22% of millennials.

The shift toward more personal and original content within social commerce illustrates the evolving expectations of consumers, especially among younger generations. As the data show, these shoppers are not just seeking products; they are seeking connections. Against this backdrop, as consumers seek parasocial relationships with creators, 10PM Curfew has been looking to highlight influencers’ lives outside the social media space to create that sense of authenticity.

“We’ve been working on interviewing influencers and really allowing them to have a different voice,” Lenna said, adding that this gives consumers the chance of “seeing them outside of the social media realm that they’re normally in.”