Lost in the Digital Shuffle

Sometimes I look around the digital landscape and feel like my generation quietly slipped through the cracks. The voices I see on LinkedIn or Twitter (basically any social media) are younger, sharper, louder. They’ve grown up in a world where you share, you brand, you broadcast who you are. For them, it’s second nature. For many of us in our 50s and older it never quite clicked that way. We log in, maybe post a family picture, leave a comment on a friend’s milestone, or share an article that caught our eye. But using these platforms as a stage? As a way to build identity, influence, or even opportunity? Very few of us ever did. And those who tried often felt like they were speaking into a void.

I keep asking myself: why did we miss this wave?

Part of it, I think, is timing. When social media arrived, we were already well into our careers. We didn’t need it to “get noticed”; we already had a desk, a title, a routine. Social media seemed like noise, a toy, a distraction for younger people who had more time on their hands. Another part is how we were raised to think about work. We were taught not to brag, to let results speak for themselves. Self-promotion felt distasteful. You didn’t build a “personal brand.” You just did your job, and people noticed, or they didn’t.

But times shifted. The platforms grew up. Careers and reputations started to be made in public. The younger generations figured it out faster than we did, and suddenly, they weren’t just playing online, they were shaping conversations, building communities, influencing industries.  And here we are; the ones with decades of experience, scars, stories, and lessons; barely visible in the feeds. I won’t lie, it stings. To realise that so much of what we’ve learned may never reach the audiences who could benefit. To watch younger voices get amplified while ours fade quietly into background noise. But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe this isn’t about being left behind. Maybe it’s about catching up differently. We don’t need to compete with the content Gen Z or Millennials put out. What we have is depth. Lived experience. Stories that are richer because they’ve been lived longer. If they treat these platforms as launchpads, maybe we can treat them as archives of wisdom. And maybe personal branding at this stage of life isn’t about reinvention. Maybe it’s about translation; taking what we already know and learning how to tell it in the language of today’s platforms.

I for sure don’t have the answers. I’m still figuring it out myself. But I do know this: silence isn’t neutral anymore. If we don’t tell our stories, they’ll be lost. And that feels like too big a waste. So maybe it’s time. Time to step out of the quiet and into the conversation, not for vanity, but for legacy.

C