17 December 2025 
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A couple of days ago i met the older brother of one of juniors
playmates and one of his friends through his parents, a couple we
know for a while now. They have - somehow, perhaps through my wife
- heard that i do analogue photography and that i am into "weird,
old computer stuff". Well, THIS was an noteworthy encounter.

He is 13 and part of a perhaps growing counter culture / trend,
whatever you want to call it.  Those kids who had to bear the full
impact of growing up during the covid lockdowns, who where remote
schooled through Zoom, who only were allowed to see their friends
through screens, those kids have grown to resent social media, the
developments around AI and to some extend modern technology as a
whole.

Those kids write journals on paper, experiment with old analogue
cameras and write each other handwritten letter when on vacation
or having some friend living further away. It's utterly uncool
among them to text via smartphone or "do social media stuff". And
those kids are not really what you would have called a "nerd" in
the 80s or 90s, they are quiet active in playing sports or doing
stuff in the outdoors. Interestingly also what one might call
retrocomputing is quiet popular among them: Mostly DOS based machines
used to play games, and tinker around.

How big is this trend? Who knows, perhaps its just a couple of kids
trying to rebel against their constantly smartphone bound parents
in the most logical way possible: Doing the exact opposite of what
their "boring parents" are doing by rejecting this addictive
technology. Perhaps they are in the dozens, perhaps in the hundreds
or more, who knows? The interesting thing is, those kids are simply
not online, so its just impossible to estimate the numbers...