Behind a screen

What we do next

Deutsche Telekom collaborates with the pop star for its campaign.

In a quietly powerful new ad from Deutsche Telekom AG—the German parent of T-Mobile—Billie Eilish takes on stereotypes about young people in what amounts to a rallying cry for her generation’s passion and potential.

“Look at us,” she says in voiceover as her masterpiece, “When the Party’s Over,” plays. “Just a bunch of kids who are screen-obsessed. Disconnected. Not in the moment, right? Because, like, how can a generation that lives online know anything about the real world?” As she speaks, we see gorgeously shot scenes of, yes, seemingly screen-obsessed kids.

“We’re just clicking and swiping our way through life,” she continues. “Phones in our hands, and our heads in the cloud.” But then we see scenes of kids who absolutely do know about the real world, including a youth activist from the Netherlands speaking before lawmakers. And then Eilish pivots, flipping the script from the clichés: “But you know what? When it comes to what we really care about, the difference we can make means even more now.”

At this point Eilish herself appears on screen—in the form of a vertical-format video-within-the-video—and says, “So maybe next time they see us staring at a screen, and they ask us what we’re doing on it, why don’t we show them what we’re doing with it?”