The Impact Instagram Account Was Started By Gen Z, for Gen Z. Here's How It Became a Crucial Source for News.

Yahoo

27-05-2025

Photos by Marissa Alper; collage by Liz Coulbourn
Teen Vogue'
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In 2013, the summer after eighth grade, Tim Chau told Michelle Andrews they wanted to open an Instagram account. Something content-focused, something fun to work on while the cousins, who grew up close together in the Bay Area, were out of school. Thrown into the fits of tweenage boredom together, Andrews had only one recommendation. 'She told me to make a One Direction account,' Chau, now 25, tells Teen Vogue. And so they did. It quickly grew to 30,000 followers.
This story is a familiar one for anyone Gen Z. Chau and Andrews, like most of our generation, have spent much of their lives online: Andrews mainlining the depths of Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, falling down the rabbit hole of One Direction videos; Chau starting and running an increasingly complex network of Instagram accounts focused on different subjects that mattered to them — science, astrology, memes, growing each to millions of followers.
But it wasn't until five years later, in 2018, when they decided to merge their internet prowess and focus on running an account together that covered social issues. Instagram activism was still in its nascent stages, thanks to the invention of the 10-image carousel with users creating pastel-tinged graphics to advocate for causes they believed in. This first account grew quickly to 400,000 followers. And in 2020, in the throes of the first COVID-19 lockdown, mass Black Lives Matter protests, and extreme climate disasters, Chau and Andrews collaborated on a new account, to share even more news and background information about topics they cared deeply about — an account called Impact, which now boasts 2.5 million followers on Instagram and has evolved into a media property in its own right with a team of 12 working on brand partnerships, IRL event appearances, and video, editorial, and social content.
'Impact was really born out of, for me personally, looking at the media landscape and then looking at myself,' Chau says. 'I am a queer person, I'm Asian, my parents are refugees and immigrants. And my stories, and not just my stories, but the way I view the world and the way media companies are reaching me, isn't connecting or resonating with me or my peers. Because of that, we wanted to create a media company that actually reflected the generation that we live in.'
It was important for both Chau and Andrews, who now helm Impact's team as chief executive officer and chief content officer, respectively, to form a space where they could talk about current events in a way that felt true to how they consumed media, that is, online, unpretentious, and well-designed in a way that entices users to hit that repost button. 'I knew that there were people out there like me who wanted to be a part of these conversations in a way that felt accessible to them,' says 24-year-old Andrews. 'Through short-form, bite-sized content on the various topics, we found ways to connect with people and educate them in ways that are different from what we traditionally were taught.'
Impact's coverage is broad, but the content is presented with a cohesive visual identity: bright colors, sans serif text, collaged images, and a moody grain. The account, recognizable for its kaleidoscope of news explainers and commentary-focused coverage, reigns supreme in the media diet for many Gen Zers. Chau says they've begun to think of it as a magazine for the people who never got the chance to enjoy the heyday of print media. With Impact, readers get culture, current events, and commentary all in one tightly designed package, like one would in a teen magazine, just adjusted for the Instagram-bred reader.
'I think a lot of it is informed by the platforms that we were on. Everything had that feeling and visual tied to it, and I think our generation just grew up with that being something ingrained in them,' Andrews says. 'The fact that [our account] grew so quickly really highlighted that this was a type of audience that people weren't reaching, and that's why we were able to grow so fast.'
In the way that outlets like Vice Media and BuzzFeed allowed millennials to share millennial cultural and political coverage in a format that felt true to their generation, Impact is trying to do the same thing for the next age of internet users by letting Gen Zers talk about Gen Z culture. 'I think everyone at Impact is a big 'stan' and I think it's what makes us successful, because we get internet culture,' Chau says. Most of their team, primarily BIPOC women under the age of 30, came up online as Directioner forum personalities, Barbz account moderators, and K-pop alt account followers. This shared history gives the brand an intrinsic metronome to what feels best for their audience, what's cool, what's cringe, what feels more like a repost, infographic, editorial, video, or nothing at all.
Medium is everything, of course. Both founders talk about 'meeting people where they're at,' the North Star of many media brands, who are trying to figure out how to communicate with young readers who are consuming their news on social media feeds. 'I think what differentiates us on social media is that shareability aspect,' Chau says. 'People on social want to perceive others and want to be portrayed in a certain way. We want to control the way that we are viewed, and through certain stories, certain aesthetics, your beliefs, sharing that on your platform that you have control over is how you can shape that.'
For many, this is the code that needs to be hacked: how to approach young readers and their thirst for coolness without an air of, How do you do, fellow kids? But for people who spent their formative years hashtagging #follow4follow #shoutout4shoutout #f4f #s4s on their images of Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, it's a native language. 'Our generation has grown up on very external digital, social-facing platforms like Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, TikTok,' Chau says. 'A part of how you express yourself is through what you share and repost..… And it's the smallest things, right? One word can make or break the corniness level of the piece.'
So right now, Impact is moving with their audience in whatever way feels best for their internal digital compass. Part of that is about bringing in more long-form pieces, simply because Andrews says they are trying to grow up with their audience. 'We now want to help them think more about their everyday interactions and consumption in a different light, rather than solely focusing on helping them understand certain concepts or certain issues,' she explains. 'That's the kind of information that we want to center.'
The other part is that as fatigue over short-form prompts the reentry of long-form content once more (longer TikToks, the rise of Substack), there's also a desire for more nuance, especially as people who have been online for a long time grow up and demand more thoughtful conversations. 'They were first in high school or college, and now they've graduated college,' Chau adds. 'They're a couple of years into their career. They are growing in terms of how they view the world. It's not as cut and dry anymore. There's a lot more nuance to these larger decisions around life, around finances, around the entertainment they consume. And we want to be that launchpad for them to dig deeper into the things they talk about, things they care about, the things they're conversing with their friends about.'
But their core DNA, which is focused on bringing clear, digestible, aesthetic coverage to Gen Z, by Gen Z, remains strongly intact. In a world where subcultures are crackling and shifting by the nanosecond, aesthetics are splintering into fraying threads, and old guard media companies are struggling to define their identity in the internet era, Impact seems to know exactly what voice it wants to have: 'Audiences are evolving, media consumption is always evolving, trends are always evolving, everything is always changing,' Andrews says. 'It's never always the same, and I think that's something that's really fulfilling.'
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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