009: The Teens Rejecting AI Gimmicks for See-through Plastic Blocks

It used to be that the plastic blocks most teens might be interested in were multicoloured and used for stacking on top of each other. Now they’re transparent and vaguely-phone shaped, designed as addiction aids and symbols of protest. 

Add in to this the growing popularity of Luddite movements across university campuses and charities, signals of democratic legislation banning phones and a proliferation of AI-powered gizmos that seem to distance themselves from the economy and interactions of social media and Radha has an idea that she’s on to something new. Maybe this does mark a new phase in our digital economies but, truly, nothing is new, and everything has happened before..

LInks

• PRX, The Teens Are Offline: https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/478234
• Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces through AI: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2424662122
• The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QkJkT3M-Us
• AskCatGPT, Social Experiments with Methaphones: https://www.tiktok.com/@askcatgpt/video/7504849538209860906
• Rabbit R1: https://www.rabbit.tech/rabbit-r1?srsltid=AfmBOopyARX2j2eXeBcZttRbOb7TyeQr00XRh8hzPQKfMuguf8TRyUfk
• Humane Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Inc.
• Terra Compass: https://modemworks.com/projects/terra/
• The Luddite Club: https://www.theludditeclub.org/about 
• Lamp Club, a Luddite Group, Has Come to Free the ‘IPad Babies’, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/style/lamp-club-luddites.html 
• The Gnomes are Taking Over New York City, The Blue and White: https://www.theblueandwhite.org/post/the-gnomes-are-taking-over-new-york-city
• AI is Reshaping Childhood in China, Rest of World: https://restofworld.org/2025/ai-china-childhood/
• Fighting the smartphone ‘invasion’: the French village that voted to ban scrolling in public, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/fighting-the-smartphone-invasion-the-french-village-that-voted-to-ban-scrolling-in-public
• Australia approves social media ban on under-16s, BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o
• Silicon Valley parents are raising their kids tech-free — and it should be a red flag, The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/tech-free-silicon-valley-parents-raising-children-red-flag-a8256166.html 
• TikTok’s enshitification, Pluralistic: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys 
• ‘It’s Hurting Like Hell’: AI Companion Users Are In Crisis, Reporting Sudden Sexual Rejection, VICE: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ai-companion-replika-erotic-roleplay-updates