From Spelletjes.nl to Social Media

We live in a time and age where everything is online. If you want to read the newspaper, you have to go online. When you are studying, most of the time you will be online. Even if want to, you could do your grocery shopping online. It is completely normal, but there was a time when it was not. Even for me there was a time when I would not do everything online. When I was a kid and I wanted to play football with my friends, I would have to go knock at each door and I would ask their mother: “Is Rick at home? Can he come and play football?” Nowadays kids just sent a text to each other if they are free to do something.

I remember the first time I went online. At my parents’ house we would have one computer in the attic. Me and my little brother would use it to play games in ‘Spelletjes.nl’ and ‘Speeleiland.nl’. It is actually quite nostalgic to write about. After that I would also come in contact with ‘social media’ for the very first time on YouTube. My little brother and I would have one tab open with the games and another tab where we would open YouTube, so we had music in the background. We would then take turns in picking a song.

At first I would only use YouTube for music, but after a while “Youtubers” started to come up, so I would sometimes use YouTube to watch videos to enjoy myself. That would be the start of the end. YouTube became an even bigger platform and I could spend hours on YouTube just watching videos. That is where social media started for me.

The next step

The next step for me was when I left my primary school for another primary school. At my new school people came from different towns, so everybody already had a mobile phone, to contact their parents. I did not have a phone, but my friends and my first “girlfriends” still wanted to contact me when we were not at school. So I would go on the big computer in the attic and I would make my own google-account. This way we could become friends on Gmail and we could chat with each other via the computer.

Looking back, this is where the feeling began that I must always be available. I cannot leave the house with an uncharged phone. I hate it when my girlfriend forgets to charge her phone and I cannot contact her, what if something is wrong? Which is weird, because overall I would say I am a relaxed person who does not worry a lot, except when me or someone close to me cannot be reached. A big difference with how I lived life as a kid without being in the digital world.

I would say I have made quite the journey through the digital world. First starting as a kid who would go from door to door and who sometimes just wanted to play games with his brother on the computer of the house. To this: I have my own laptop, a smartwatch, a smart tv and a mobile phone with YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Spotify and WhatsApp. Maybe deep inside, I sometimes long to the feeling of just going from door to door hoping that my friends would be at home.