Sarah Perl, who goes by the TikTok handle @hothighpriestess, says she has a successful career and relationship because she manifested both. Many of her recent posts focus on showing love, and they are especially aimed at young women who want romantic relationships with men. The 23-year-old Los Angeles resident talks to her viewers about how they can display a message from a guy within 24 hours. Sometimes she even manifests the purpose of her videos: “I’m manifesting that this video only reaches people who are on the verge of the highest level of their lives,” she says in a post that has more than a million views.
She is not just saying this to the universe; she’s feeding the TikTok algorithm, which will likely send her content to other young girls. For him, the manifestation and the code that powers TikTok are inextricably intertwined. “Obviously the algorithm will do its magic,” says Perl, who has amassed 2.5 million followers as of 2020 and also offers paid online courses on manifestation. “I see Manifesto almost like the ‘About You’ page. If people stop at negative content, that’s what they’re going to be fed. But if they like videos with a positive outlook, TikTok can give them more.”
Perl is one of many influencers who specialize in manifestation: the idea that positive thinking and visualization can bring people closer to their goals.Manifestation began in the New Thought movement of the 19th century, and there is a grain of truth in it: our thoughts can partially shape our reality. The latter trend has gained traction since the height of the pandemic, but modern manifestation remains a broad term that covers a variety of practices. It can cover meditation and journaling as part of a spiritual practice, as well as posting memes about achieving great wealth. Pop stars Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande have asserted their beliefs in the power of manifestation.
Online, the trend is largely owned by Gen Z women. They use social media and self-help apps and even artificial intelligence to showcase romance, financial stability, career success and cozy homes. All of these are things that for generations have felt out of reach for many young people, but perhaps none more so than Gen Zers, whose high school and college years were further destabilized by the pandemic. They’re dealing with a slew of algorithm-driven dating apps, a troubled housing market, and a lot of uncertainty about the future. Some faceless TikTok accounts even encourage people to like or share their posts in order to find love, engage in farming, the way millennials once shared email chains threatening bad luck years. For Gen Z, the divide between the divine and the digital may be thin.
Gen Z may be the least religious generation in American history. In a 2021 survey by the Center for American Life Surveys, 34% of Gen Zers said they had no religious affiliation, compared to 29% of millennials and 18% of baby boomers. But Amy Wu, founder of Manifest, an app launched this summer that uses generative AI to send affirmations to its users based on their goals, says that even as more young people are turning their backs on church, they still ” they want to believe in something bigger”.
So far, Wu says, nearly half of the wishes people place on the app are related to love and romance. About 70% of Manifest users are women, and most users are 18 to 35. She envisions Manifest as a tool to help users process sadness, anger, anxiety, loneliness and other feelings that may be exacerbated by the digital world. Instead of scrolling and comparing themselves to others on social media, Manifest users are participating in a private experience where they are encouraged to meditate briefly.
“We’re not a Magic 8 Ball trying to guarantee you a certain outcome or predict the future,” says Wu. “You have to take that real concern that person might have at that moment and then give them reassurance.” For example, if someone expresses uncertainty about a lover’s interest in them, the Manifesto can generate less specific, more evergreen affirmations such as “I honor and trust my feelings and intuition as I navigate this relationship” or “I am worthy of love. and kindness.”
There is a fine line between spreading the power of positive thinking and selling a get-rich-quick scheme.
Young people are also turning to older platforms, revising them as places of manifestation. Gen Zers now make up Pinterest’s largest group, making up about 40% of active users. Searches for “romantic manifestation,” for example, are up seventeen-fold from last year, and posts about “love scrapbooking” are up 250%. Users are also looking for financial empowerment – searches for “big money aesthetic” are up 953% year over year.
Sydney Stanback, a global head of trends and insights at Pinterest, says young people using the internet to imagine their future are “bringing a new level of warmth to these platforms”.
“It’s allowing that kind of spirituality that exists in real life to be transferred into these spaces,” Stanback says. “They’re using Pinterest to create a world they want to live in. And then they’re going to go out and act on it.”
Shanna Watkins sees her manifesting journey in a similar way. “There would be no manifestation for me, the way I do it now which is super effective, without technology,” says Watkins, a 28-year-old from Dallas who works as a public relations and communications manager at AT&T. Raised a Christian, Watkins began to question aspects of the faith and eventually discovered more about the manifestation on YouTube. Now she uses a personal growth app called Mindvalley and writes affirmations in her notes app on her phone. She also says she took notes about her dreams and asked ChatGPT to analyze their content. She says she found the AI-generated chatbot reading believable, summarizing feelings she had that might have been represented in dreams. Such tools, she says, “can be another channel for my inner being and my consciousness to speak to me and send messages.”
The loose definition of manifestation means that there are no rules or standards around it. “The whole buzzword of manifestation and the way it’s being thrown around so freely, I think it can be harmful,” says Emily McDonald, a mentor and coach with a large following on Instagram and TikTok, who has studied neuroscience. For him, manifestation is rooted in neuroscience and about rewiring your brain to perceive a reality that is in line with the things you desire. Doing so means setting goals and visualizing results – not just having a thought and waiting for it to happen.
There is a fine line between sharing the power of positive thinking and visualizing and selling a get-rich-quick scheme. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia found that people who said they practiced manifestation were more likely to see themselves as successful and hopeful that they could succeed in the future – but they were also more likely to seek out risky investments, to think that he could quickly achieve success and even survive bankruptcy.
Whether or not you believe the show of works is not really the point. People who engage with this content on social media or use tools to manifest better futures for themselves are trying to operate in a world where money and love feel out of their control. “They want support at their lowest time and even at their highest time,” says Wu. “In this social media, post-COVID world, people want a sense of control over their lives.” It will take more than one manifestation to achieve it.
Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the technology industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.