By dint of always calling them the “new media”, we ended up forgetting that they too had become old. The Internet and SMS are now thirty years old, broadband is celebrating its 20th birthday and the smartphone has almost reached the age of majority.
Social networks, meanwhile, have had time to see several generations emerge from MySpace in 2003 to TikTok, “the youngest”, launched in October 2016, which is still going to be seven years old…
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Social networks, meanwhile, have had time to see several generations emerge from MySpace in 2003 to TikTok, “the youngest”, launched in October 2016, which is still going to be seven years old… Not surprising that, for a whole new generation, these “new media” are already the past. Many of them are not or no longer Facebook or Instagram users. They also uninstall TikTok from their smartphone, confessing to an increased distrust of these time-consuming and addictive tools. A kind of digital quiet quitting. But for what new horizon? That of a recovery in hand of their transferred data but also of the value that they generate on their own. From the exit from the current paradigm dominated by Web1 (the traditional Internet with sites) and Web2 (known as participatory, which saw the birth of social networks) which leads straight to a centralized and oppressive digital world. To do this, some join new communities that are formed around the blockchain, NFTs, cryptocurrencies or metaverses. to engage in a decentralized, more autonomous and open approach offered by Web3. However, it seems that others have chosen another ecosystem to take back control of their data and their freedom. Their technological tool? The flip phone, with no touchscreen or apps. A Web0 in this case. Last December, an article in the New York Times by Alex Vadukul painted a portrait of this new community for whom the only thing better than the flip phone is not having a phone at all. A group of teenagers – a little privileged – who meet every week on the steps of the Central Library in Brooklyn. Together they founded the Luddite Club last year, named following Ned Ludd, the 18th century English textile worker who destroyed a power loom, inciting his fellow men to rebel once morest industrialization. In its wake, the young members of the Luddite Club have chosen to abandon their iPhones and experience “real life”, according to their own words. Because according to them, social networks and smartphones are not real life. Their road to Damascus, they had it during the confinement when everyone felt in a state of ultra-dependence to the point of no longer being able not to post a good image if it presented itself to them. So they started by uninstalling apps, then, realizing that that wasn’t enough, put their smartphone in a drawer and opted for a low-tech phone with keys. Then, by their own admission, they discovered for the first time in their existence as teenagers what they had never been able to experience before: a life without a smartphone. A whole new experience. The one that consists of borrowing a book from the library, going to read alone in a park, writing the first pages of a novel on a typewriter, admiring the graffiti in the subway, no longer dozing off at midnight. with the blue light of the screen on the face but with that which pours the Moon or the starry sky which they take the time to admire… In short, a “real life” with the paces of metaverse.