Smart is the new cool. And we're ready for it.

The coolest accessory of 2026 isn't a nice bag or a pair of earrings. It's our brain.

There's a generation that grew up both with and without screens, and that exact generation is now waking up. I'm one of them. One morning in August, I put down my phone and realised I couldn't remember the last time I had really thought about something. Not asked ChatGPT. Not scrolled. Just... thought for myself.

We are the generation that spent its childhood without phones and social media. We knew boredom as a physical feeling. We looked for creativity and excitement in the world outside, simply because there was no alternative. Then, as teenagers and young adults, we welcomed technology with open arms. We learned to live with it, work with it, play with it. We were shaped by both the analogue and the digital world. The best of both worlds, if you ask me. But in recent years, many of us got swept away by social media, by TikTok, by the endless stream of fleeting content that leaves no trace in your memory but swallows your whole evening.

Now we're 25 to 30. Officially adults. Prefrontal cortex fully developed, rent paid, taxes filed. And yet it rarely feels that way. After student life comes a moment of standstill. A moment where everything you pushed ahead of you for years suddenly asks for an answer. Who am I, what do I want, where am I going and how do I get there? That uncertainty, combined with a world that changes faster than we can keep up with, pushes many of us deeper into our screens. As a numbing. As an escape. As the easiest way out.

I noticed it myself when I realised I now reach for my phone faster than for a book. I've always been a big reader. Books were my refuge, my pleasure, my way to relax and understand the world. But slowly, without really noticing, scrolling had become easier than reading. Shorter, quicker, less effort. And that effort, that little bit of extra work, was exactly what my brain needed and wasn't getting anymore. That morning in August, I felt it physically: my brain had switched off. Knowledge I used to have at my fingertips was gone. I picked up my phone to check one thing, and an hour later I was still scrolling without knowing why.

Time for a change, then.

THE PARADOX OF THE SMARTEST ERA EVER

We live in the most information-rich era in history, and yet we think for ourselves less than ever. AI is partly responsible for that, though it deserves a nuanced story. Because AI brings a lot of good. It automates repetitive tasks, removes human error and makes complex processes accessible to everyone. Many jobs and lives become more efficient because of it. That's not a threat. That's progress.

But there's a flip side that's rarely said out loud. AI also takes over our thinking. The effort of searching, comparing, connecting the dots and drawing our own conclusions. That process, however frustrating, is exactly what keeps our brains sharp. I notice it in myself. It's so tempting to type a question into an AI search engine and accept the answer as the truth. No second source. No critical eye. No judgement of my own. We consume information without digesting it, and that difference is bigger than it seems.

“We consume information without digesting it.”

THE COLLECTIVE WAKE‑UP

I quickly felt I wasn't the only one around me feeling this way. Chats with my girlfriends turned into book discussions. Date nights became chess and backgammon nights. Lunch breaks now mean word searches and sudokus. And it isn't an ironic or performative gesture. It's a conscious choice. A counter-reaction.

Because that's what is happening: a quiet revolt against the mental laziness that crept up on us over the past few years. The generation that grew up with the best of both worlds, shaped by the analogue and fluent in the digital, refuses to give up one completely for the other. We miss the carefree feeling of a childhood without screens. The focus. The satisfaction of figuring something out without someone, or something, doing it for us.

SMART AS THE NEW STATUS SYMBOL

Forget the it-bag. The real status symbol of 2026 is intellectual curiosity, and the willingness to spend time on it. Sudokus, puzzles, crosswords, chess, backgammon. Reading texts longer than a caption. Online courses in philosophy, psychology, a new language, or just something you always wanted to understand but never made the time for. They're not hobbies anymore. They're statements.

“They're not hobbies anymore. They're statements.”

BOTH. AND.

This isn't an argument against technology. AI isn't going anywhere, and neither is social media. We don't want them to. The world keeps changing, and moving with that change isn't a weakness. But we're also allowed to keep growing. We can refuse to outsource our thinking completely. We can keep challenging, feeding and surprising our brains.

I went back to what made me curious and happy as a child. The focus of a good book, the frustration of a sudoku that won't work out, the satisfaction of understanding something I didn't understand yesterday. I see it as an addition to the world I live in. Never a replacement.

The generation that grew up with the best of both worlds can also live with the best of both worlds. Scrolling and reading. Using AI and thinking for yourself. Being online and growing offline.

Smart is cool. And honestly, it always was. We just forgot for a while.