Why I’m building Butter

The generation that’s just come through school got handed a phone at eleven, and every app on it was built by people whose job was to keep them on it as long as possible.

We’ve all watched what that did.

Up at two in the morning. Friendship groups living in a group chat where nothing ever gets settled. A constant comparison against everyone they know and plenty of people they don’t.

What bothers me most is what it did to belonging.

Kids ended up connected to hundreds of people and with hardly anyone they could actually sit next to. Friendship turned into something you keep up with rather than something you do.

A lot of them came out of it lonely, and I don’t think anyone meant for that, but it happened anyway.

Now it’s going the other way. The rules are changing, the phones are coming out of schools, and the children coming through next won’t grow up with any of it.

I think that’s right. But taking it away doesn’t put anything back.

What they were getting from it was real, even if the place they got it from wasn’t. They were getting each other.

Schools already have the answer sitting there. Clubs, teams, choirs, productions, every week of term.

It’s the part of school where a child finds their people. Some walk into it easily. Plenty don’t, and nobody is ever quite sure which ones.

So I want to build somewhere for that. Something the school runs, where a kid can find the thing they’d actually like and see that someone they know is already in it.

And nothing else. Nothing to scroll, nothing to chase, no audience, and no reason to still be on it at eleven at night.

It should get a child off it and into something real.

That’s why I’m building Butter.

Simon Seward