Sustainable Media Center Substack

Maximilian Milovidov is not speaking about social media from a distance. He’s a Columbia freshman, a digital rights advocate, a member of TikTok’s Youth Council, and a NextGen Advisor working at the intersection of young users and the platforms shaping their lives. He sits in a rare position, both inside the system and deeply aware of its consequences.

And it shows up immediately in how he tells his own story.

He doesn’t describe himself as someone who eagerly joined social media. In fact, his instinct was resistance. “I did not enjoy social media platforms,” he explains. “I was kind of the one pushing back against my parents, from getting onto social media… I’d seen documentaries… and I realized the consequences that that could have on me, and I preferred not to engage in that.”

That’s not how we usually talk about Gen Z. The assumption is that they were pulled in before they could understand what they were stepping into. But here is someone who saw the risks early and tried, at least for a while, to stay out.

What changed wasn’t his understanding. It was the environment around him.