Every now and then you have a moment. A proper, stomach-flipping, universe-tilting moment. Mine came when my 10-year-old daughter asked for a phone.

Not shocking, right? Most kids her age already know more about TikTok, filters, likes and online status than any adult would like to admit. Some of them already understand that a photo can be judged in seconds, that popularity can be counted, and that attention has become a kind of currency. And I, a fully grown adult with a background in marketing, decision-making psychology, UX design and a working moral compass that still occasionally ruins my day, found myself looking at the whole thing and thinking: absolutely not.

Because I know what lives behind those apps, and I don’t just mean the obvious dangers people talk about when discussing online safety for children. I mean the design itself.

I have spent years studying how this stuff works: Marketing Management at Harvard, decision-making psychology at the LSE, UX Design with Google, and a long professional life around branding, behavioural economics, digital platforms and why people click, scroll, react, compare and come back for more. This is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, unfortunately, which is much less fun at parties.

Mainstream social media platforms are not broken. They are doing exactly what they were built to do. They extract time, shape habits, monetise attention, rank behaviour, reward performance and sell advertising against the emotional lives of their users. Then, with a straight face and a few pastel-coloured safety settings, they call the whole thing “connection”.

And that is the problem.

We do want to be connected. We want to share photos, talk to friends, follow family updates, discover interesting people, create groups, support artists, read useful things and feel part of something. The need is real. But the dominant social media model has turned that need into an engagement machine, where every like, notification, public follower count and algorithmic feed is designed to keep people inside the loop for as long as possible.

So no, I do not want my daughter growing up inside that circus.

Not because I am against technology, not because I think children should be raised in a cave with wooden toys and suspiciously expensive porridge, but because I think social media should be built around people, not advertisers; around trust, not addiction; around actual relationships, not public performance.

That is why I am building Happentell.

Happentell is a private social network designed to keep the useful parts of social media and remove the machinery that made it toxic. No ads, no algorithmic feed, no likes, no public follower counts, no data selling, no infinite scroll, no engagement traps, and no creepy business model quietly turning your life into behavioural data.

Personal profiles are private by default, and personal networks are capped at 150 friends on purpose, because human connection works better at human scale. You can also organise your network into Friends, Family and Coworkers, because not every post belongs in front of everyone you have ever met, worked with, loved, tolerated or awkwardly accepted online in 2014.

The point is simple: share with the right people, in the right context, without performing for an invisible crowd.

Happentell lets people post updates, share photos, create groups, follow news sources they choose, and connect with creators, organisations and communities without being dragged into a casino of likes, ads, ranking systems and dopamine loops. It is social media without the scoreboard, without the manipulation engine, and without the constant pressure to turn yourself into content.

We are not here to “disrupt the space”, because honestly, that phrase should be taken outside and buried with a tiny pitch deck. We are here to build a calmer, safer, more private social platform for people who still want connection but are tired of the noise, the addiction, the tracking and the performance.

Happentell is being built now, slowly, intentionally, and with enough coffee and side-eye to power a minor rebellion.

Maybe it is ambitious. Maybe it is slightly mad. But if the internet is going to be part of our children’s lives, then we should at least try to build a version that does not train them to crave applause from strangers.

Happentell is live in beta.

Unfollow the herd.
Nicolas – Founder