I grew up in a different country. Not one defined by borders, but by time. Generation X. A land where the measure of freedom was how long you could disappear after breakfast and still be home before the streetlights hummed awake. The news, every evening, spoke to our parents in a stern tone: ‘Do you know where your children are?‘ But most of us were already accounted for—in the empty lots, the half-built houses, the video arcades that smelled of pizza grease and neon. We roamed, unobserved, not because we were braver, but because no one was watching.
That was the rebellion of our youth: invisibility.
Today, I look at Gen Alpha—children born after 2010—and I recognize something of myself in them. Their invisibility isn’t asphalt and back alleys. It’s not a bike chain snapping as you pedal home before curfew. It is coded in servers, tucked into the folds of Minecraft blocks and TikTok edits. Where we made hideouts in trees, they craft fortresses out of pixels. Where we traded tapes by hand, they build identities in bite-sized loops, on private accounts and in group chats where no parent’s shadow reaches.
To us, their world seems incomprehensible, strange. Yet I understand. They are not merely escaping—they are building. They don’t just watch culture; they quietly become a part of it.
What fascinates me is how subtle their rebellion is. We, Gen X, made noise: we blasted guitars, scrawled graffiti, and declared we didn’t believe in the institutions that had already betrayed us. Gen Alpha, by contrast, resists not through volume, but through withdrawal.
They are slipping through the cracks of algorithmic surveillance. Social media promised them virality; many of them refuse it. The most important cultures of their generation are invisible to adults, uncurated by corporations. Sleepover vlogs on private accounts, Minecraft worlds no adult will ever log into, Roblox servers where their language blooms and evolves without permission.
This is their rebellion: choosing not to be seen on the terms offered to them.
I can’t help but ask myself what we leave them. Generation X, the so-called latchkey kids, had to invent our freedom in the absence of constant eyes. Gen Alpha, born into a world where every step is surveilled, every scroll tracked, is carving out its own absence—making shadow where there is too much light.
What they inherit is a culture that sold rebellion as fashion, commodified outrage, and turned protest into a trend. But what they are reclaiming is the quiet, the unbought space, the ability to belong to each other without an audience.
And perhaps that’s the most radical act of all.
I remember what it felt like to disappear for hours, to create a world for myself that was beyond adult comprehension. When I watch Gen Alpha vanish into their servers and streams, I see the same instinct: to belong to something that cannot be neatly packaged and sold.
And I wonder if their quiet rebellion—against virality, against surveillance, against performance—isn’t just a reflection of ours, but it’s necessary evolution.
Because maybe the most dangerous thing you can do in a world built on watching is to refuse to be watched.
By Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
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