Dear Generation Beta,

You are the future.

I hope your Gen Z parents will raise you well, they’ve had a lot to go through: COVID and the complete inescapability of social media at a young age. We hope for a better future for you Gen Beta, a future without so many screens, a future full of real people. I don’t wish for you to live like we did, or even worse, how Gen Alpha is currently being raised.

I am a young Zoomer, born in the summer of 2009. I have watched YouTube my entire life. I have no memory of a time without YouTube, Vine, or Musically. Social media has always been forced in my life, and it’s even worse for Generation Alpha, they’ve had a worse and more dangerous YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. These social media are ruining their lives, and I fear it’s already too late for them – but you, Gen Beta – you still have a chance to turn things around.

I know that I sound like an old man complaining about how this generation is stupider or weaker than mine, but that has happened since the beginning of time.  No, just hear what I have to say. I remember when I was young, social media was safer – Vine was full of people who made funny videos for fun – they couldn’t make money, and they had no reason to make those except because they wanted to. Musically was full of people lip-syncing to popular songs, there were no
disinformation spreaders to young and vulnerable people, and no women or men were flaunting themselves to young eyes who shouldn’t be seeing things like that.

Today, social media is more damaging than entertaining. It’s just too mainstream -wasn’t that the whole point? That you could make your own content and show it to the world with no budget and no experience, just for fun. I hope this is just a phase on the internet, and that soon you can return the internet to its Golden Age when it was a tool for helping the world, not a drug that addicts the world.

The parents of Gen Alpha have raised them as tablet kids, distracted by a screen their entire lives. They interact with people like they’ve never spoken to a person before in their life. It’s not their fault, but it is their millennial parents’ fault.
Gen Alpha was locked on tablets during COVID, but the screens aren’t needed anymore, they can talk to real people. I have a strong belief that your parents, the Gen Zers who were born with a phone in their hand, will understand that a phone cannot raise a child, and they will do the right thing because they know what is on the internet now, and they will protect you from the harm.

I imagine a world where man lives in peace because technology helps mankind help itself, and I believe that world is your world,  Gen Beta.

With all due respect,
A Zoomer.