There are fewer and fewer skaters! – a market woman, the spirit of the times and the hidden smartphone addiction
It was a Saturday afternoon at the weekly market in Berlin when the market woman behind the flower stall spoke to me kindly: “There are fewer and fewer skaters!” I had just my skateboard in my hand, my daughter was strolling beside me, and we both had to laugh.
Is that really the case? Let’s look at the facts and discuss why the impression can arise that fewer people are standing on a board – and whether in the end that even has to do with our smartphones.
How can the “decline” be quantified?
First we have to back up the statement with numbers – otherwise it remains a feeling. Since official German statistics are rare, it’s worth looking beyond our own nose:
- Participant numbers (example USA): Around 8.9 million active skateboarders (2023), slightly fewer than the previous year. No cliff – but a dent that stands out.
- Long-term trend among young people: In the USA there were in the past clear declines in the youth segment (precisely where one most strongly perceives the “street scene”).
- Competitions and the scene: In contest data you can see falling return rates – fewer people who “stick with it”, less continuity in the youth pipeline.
- Demographic change: At the same time the demographics are shifting. More adults, more women, different entry paths (skate school, social skating, cruising instead of street mission).
This mixture is important: There may be fewer young, “visible” skaters, while skateboarding as an activity overall does not simply disappear, but is being rearranged. The market woman’s sentence is therefore not “wrong”, but it measures a particular kind of skateboarding.
Reasons for the stagnating demand for skating
1. Spirit of the times and lifestyle change
The 1990s and early 2000s were a cultural powerhouse: skateboarding as counterculture, as friction on the sidewalk, as “being outside” without a mission. Today it competes with scooters, parkour, BMX, streaming series, gaming, e-sports and a gigantic leisure buffet that is available at any time.
Skateboarding has not become less beautiful – but it is less exclusive as a youth marker. It is no longer automatically the symbol you put on to be “against everything”.
2. Urbanization and infrastructure
Skateboarding needs friction – literally: space, paths, spots, sometimes also parks. But cities are becoming fuller, more regulated, more expensive. Skateparks are not close by everywhere, and “just step outside and go” becomes much harder if you first have to get through car hells, construction sites and regulation zones.
The consequence is banal but brutal: Less spontaneous skating = fewer skaters you see by chance.
3. Pandemic and safety concerns
The pandemic was a disruptive impulse in routines. Some discovered the board during that time, others lost the thread. And: parents are (after years of general risk discourse) often more cautious. Risk of injury is weighted more heavily – and that naturally affects skateboarding.
Are smartphones and social media the real reason?
Now comes the actual core question: If we subtract the “spirit-of-the-times trend” – is the smartphone then left at the end as the main driver?
I believe: Yes, very often. Not as a moral cudgel (“everything was better in the past”), but as a sober mechanics argument:
- Time is sliced up. Skateboarding needs idle time. It needs “I’m hanging around”. Smartphones fill exactly this gap with micro-rewards.
- Self-regulation becomes harder. Skating is exhausting, frustrating, painful, embarrassing before it becomes awesome. The phone offers the shortcut: immediate stimulation without risk.
- The threshold to go outside rises. The body first has to power up. Shoes, board, out, maybe park. The phone is already there.
And something else: Social media is not only a time killer, it is also a comparison machine. Skating lives from the fact that you are allowed to be bad. That you fall. That nobody films the first 200 attempts. In a world in which every clip looks like a “best of”, your own beginner state more quickly feels like failure instead of like a path.
If that’s true, then skateboarding is an example of the toxicity of digital systems not because “phones are evil”, but because it shows what is being displaced: physical learning, public failure, real boredom, real freedom.
Double responsibility
It would be too easy to just point at technology. We as adults also build the world in which children skate (or don’t skate):
- Are there safe paths and places?
- Do we support being outside – or do we treat it as a disturbance?
- Can children have time that is not immediately “used”?
Digital detox alone is not enough. Children need role models who show: Outside is not the second choice, outside is the original.
Conclusion: The market woman’s sentence is a nudge to think
The market woman had a point: In the street scene there seem to be fewer skaters, especially fewer young, “hard” skaters, fewer groups, less constant presence.
And yes: If you take trend fluctuations and demographic shifts into account, then one factor remains as a surprisingly stable candidate: smartphones and social media as attention absorbers and movement displacers.
For us that does not mean “ban technology”, but: board out, sun in, and show the children that freedom is a bodily feeling – not a feed.
