Two days ago my daughter and I have taken the train form Hamburg to Mannheim to visit my parents and celebrate the 84th birthday of my dad. We took the subway and then an ICE train. While looking around I recognized the usual picture. Everybody is watching head down to her mobile. My daughter also. I also.

Since I work for Digital Blast I started to create four new social media profiles: Instagram, LinkedIN, Twitter and Mastodon. When I think about the time I spend watching bullshit at these channels I need to accept that I throw the time into the trash bin. Why? Because 98% of the posts

I am convinced that watching social media is the modern form of voyeurism. And psychologically this is something we like and seems to be fun.

When I was asked what I do while traveling by train I answered that I will read a book. But what I actually did was looking at Insta and Mastodon (I deleted my Twitter account again and LinkedIN is lame). Around one and a half hours compared to reading the book for thirty minutes. That’s a fucking addiction and a waste of time! Nothing else.

Now - I am 52 and I grew up without any devices we have today. There was no Internet available and I did not start coding BASIC on a C64 like all the other kids did (or better say they inserted a 512 byte floppy disc and waited until Raid over Moscow loaded and played it). I started to write my first lines of code in 1995 when I tried to do something in DOS 7 on a IBM PS/2 386 machine. And in 1998 I wrote the first lines of HTML and JavaScript. How was I able to survive without the Internet and without all these communication channels? Because I was doing music, met friends, read a magazine or the newspaper and when I wanted to speak to someone I simply dialed his number on the installed phone in my flat.

My kids grew up with the iPhone, iPad, WWW and so on. For sure they had a Youtube, Insta, WhatsApp and TikTok account as early as possible. And they have neck problems also. And they watch the same bullshit I watch. And it is simply worth nothing. Quite the opposite is the case. The hype regarding brands clothing (Nike, Air Jordan’s … you name it) stems directly from social media. And they wanted to be a creator also. Funny! Erm … really?

The social behavior of the kids and people is changing over the years. And it always has. We need to accept it and we need to do one important thing: show the kids values that are from our adult point of view good ones and are meaningful. It does not make sense to not let them use social media. Because their friends and the friends of their friends also use and watch it.

Deal with it!