Forget Instagram, TikTok or X — for better or for worse, there’s another social media platform Northeastern students are finding themselves increasingly invested in.

In a constant cycle of sharing new achievements and boasting professional developments, this career site has become a one-stop-shop for doomscrolling. Casual morning screen time now includes a barrage of “I am delighted to share…” and “I’m thrilled to announce….”

LinkedIn — yes, LinkedIn — is troubling students campus-wide.

“Constant updates about professional life, I think, are really common and probably not the best for people,” said Ellie Krulwich, a fourth-year public health major.

At an institution as career-oriented as Northeastern, the platform is unavoidable. Northeastern’s Class of 2024 reported that 79.6% of graduates were employed full time nine months after graduation. Of those employed full time, 93% reported having a job related to their major.

Much of Northeastern’s post-grad employment success is attributed to its co-op program, in which 90.4% of the Class of 2024 participated. In many of the required pre-co-op professional development courses, setting up a LinkedIn profile is an assignment that almost all students complete.

Coursework includes “LinkedIn network expansion,” where students are prompted to make three new connections and explain why they selected them, or “LinkedIn learning exercises,” where students identify gaps in their skills and take online courses to fill them. From there, the platform becomes a pressure cooker fueled by self-comparison.

“Somebody drops their co-op on LinkedIn, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” said Eliza Forrest, a second-year political science and communication studies combined major. “It just creates a lot of stress for everybody around them, and seeing what other people are doing kind of makes you feel inferior if you’re not on the same level.”

Christina Roberts has served as a co-op coordinator at Northeastern for almost 13 years, advising students across business, finance, marketing, communications and journalism. She said that anxiety is a common first reaction.

“I think that perspective is warranted, especially when you’re searching for your first co-op,” Roberts said.

Forrest observed that her friends at other institutions table pressures about being a competitive job candidate until closer to graduation, so LinkedIn might not loom as large.

“I think that co-op has everything to do with that,” said Forrest of the LinkedIn fixation at Northeastern. “With other universities, you’re gunning for summer internships … but here, it’s such a part of the culture, because obviously you take a semester off to work,” Forrest said. “So I think [LinkedIn] is definitely more relevant here than at other universities.”

Roberts agreed that students at Northeastern tend to take the platform more seriously than students elsewhere. Roberts’ daughter studied business at Georgia Southern University, where, from her perspective, there wasn’t nearly as much LinkedIn buzz.

“Half the students who graduated with a business degree from Georgia Southern, according to my daughter, had either never heard of LinkedIn or did not see the benefit of using it for career advancement,” Roberts said.

Lucas Harriott, a second-year business administration major, feels that LinkedIn serves as a necessary gauge of his classmates’ professional progress.

“I think it’s honestly helped me realize where my peers are at and also where I should be at,” Harriott said. “I do feel a lot of pressure, I will say that.”

Upwards of 9,500 LinkedIn members apply for jobs on the site every minute, according to LinkedIn’s “About Us” page. Still, some students doubt that the platform gives them any real leverage.

“I don’t think professionals in my field are using LinkedIn as their primary scouting source,” Krulwich said.

Roberts acknowledged that the payoff can vary based on profession.

“From my observations, … students who are in business, communications or journalism utilize LinkedIn more and, I think, benefit from it more because those professional networks are avid users of the platform,” Roberts said.

Under its professional insights page, LinkedIn says people in the technology, financial services and higher education industries use the platform the most.

Marianna Kelly, a fourth-year health science major, only succumbed to the LinkedIn pressure in her third year, she said.

“I wasn’t planning on having one, and I didn’t know much about it, but everyone said that I had to,” Kelly said. “I think everyone is so focused on the number of connections they have, and it can be useful to connect with employers and possible co-ops, but I think everyone makes it out to be really, really important when it’s not actually that crucial.”

Even though LinkedIn can feel like a numbers game among students, Harriott doesn’t make connection requests simply to have a higher connection count.

“There’s really no point in connecting with someone unless you actually want to gain something out of it. Just connecting with a bunch of random people isn’t really going to do anything for you,” Harriott said. “You could have this 500+ connections number, but in reality, if you can’t use those 500 connections, there’s no point of even having them.”

Roberts said that the most important factor for professional success isn’t how many connections a student has but whether they have the drive to network in the first place.

“The students who are active LinkedIn users — they’re natural networkers, who, if there was no LinkedIn, would otherwise find ways to drive themselves forward and reach those competitive levels sooner rather than later,” she said. “If you don’t have that drive, you’re not going to use LinkedIn. But, you’re also not going to make the effort to meet with your professors, and go to the alumni events and go to the informational sessions.”

In college, Kelly argued that most career openings don’t actually arise from LinkedIn. She sees it as a platform for broadcasting accomplishments to an audience whose main role is to offer affirmation rather than professional advancement.

“It’s definitely more of a social media platform where people just go to show what kinds of opportunities they get when they get them,” Kelly said. “But I don’t think people are getting those opportunities from LinkedIn … it’s more of just sharing afterwards or connecting with people once you get a job.”

Still, as Roberts pointed out, LinkedIn can help students and young professionals build a reputation online.

“Being an active participant on the LinkedIn platform can and does support a college student and other professionals in building their brand, their network, their professional reputation, their credibility,” Roberts said. “And that, in turn, can propel your career and your job opportunities — especially if you’ve built your network to a degree that the right people are seeing your posts and your content.”

While students feel that much of the LinkedIn preoccupation at Northeastern stems from co-op culture, Harriott diagnosed it as a more universal anxiety amid economic downturn and heightened stress about finding a job post-graduation.

Research published in June by iCIMS indicated that new graduates are facing a 6.6% unemployment rate, which, excluding the pandemic, is the highest rate in a decade and surpasses the 4% national average.

“Generally, people our age feel, especially with unemployment being quite high, we’re at a time where you really have to start looking for jobs,” Harriott said. “I think that part makes a lot of kids really nervous about what their future is going to look like. So starting earlier and getting your LinkedIn profile set up and stuff like that is kind of more of a pressure, I’d say, globally, than just at Northeastern.”

Permission to use all photos was granted by each LinkedIn account owner.