I watched a few episodes of Smallville over the last couple of days. I remember watching it as a young adult when it first aired on TV about 25 years ago.

The stories and characters are very simple: there’s the good guy, Clark Kent; the monster of the week; and the always-ambivalent Lex Luthor, who wants to be good but is constantly pulled back to the dark side by the world, his family, and his inner demons.

It’s easy to turn you brain off and just relax with a show like this for 40 minutes.

Nowadays, TV shows are very different.

But it’s not just the change in character construction or story development that stood out to me. What struck me the most was how every young person in the show talks about college: They want to go to UCLA, Harvard, MIT, and so on.

It made me wonder: Do today’s 18-year-olds still think this much about going to college?

Social media has exposed countless bubbles in the Western world. Politics, finances, migration… during the pandemic, even healthcare was revealed as one. Colleges are surely another bubble ready to burst.

If I were 18 again, I wouldn’t go to college at all. I’d attend trade school and build an online business in my spare time. As soon as trade school was over, I’d set myself up to start my own electrician, carpenter, or mechanic business in the real world—while my online business generated additional side income.

Right now, that seems like a much better plan than aiming for UCLA to study computer science, going to law school in Princeton, or trying to become a doctor in Harvard.

AI is coming for many jobs that are primarily computer-based. Western governments are running out of money. And constant socio-political upheaval makes many career paths a risky bet. So why go into six-figure debt for a degree that may not make you more employable in the future?

That’s a question that comes to mind when I try to see things from the perspective of today’s youth. And it’s also a question I never asked myself 25 years ago, when I chose college over trade school. Because back then, college was the end all be all. My parents told me it’s all, high schools told me so, culture did it too, and even TV-shows like Smallville told me that college should be the main thing to think about for an 18-year-old.

Times have changed. TV shows have changed. Massively.

Thanks to social media, young people can see these changes much earlier than my generation ever could. I hope they use that advantage to their benefit and make the right decision.