– credit The Offline Club via InstagramNot everyone pines for the days without cell phones, but what about social media? Would you erase social media from the history books if you could?
If you said yes, you share the feelings of a staggering 46% of teenage respondents to a recent survey from the British Standards Institution (BSI), which also found that 68% of respondents said they felt worse when they spend too much time on their socials.
Despite often being seen as the most vulnerable generation to smartphone addiction and social media use, it appears teens, who in any generation are extremely quick to pick up emerging social trends, are picking up on the negative impact social media has had on their lives, and are enthusiastically looking to cut back.
Enter The Offline Club, (who ironically have 530,000 followers on Instagram) a Dutch social movement looking to create screen-free public spaces and events in cafes to revive the time before phones, when board games, social interaction, and reading were the activities observed in public.
They also host digital detox retreats, where participants unplug from not only their smartphones, but computers too, and experience a life before the internet.
In a time when social media and mass, internet-enabled communication through text and video have allowed psychology and medical professionals to gain celebrity levels of influence, many of those same professionals, be it Jonathan Haidt or Dr. Phil McGraw, are sounding the alarm over the harm which the introduction of handheld internet access has had on the mental wellbeing of the youngest generations.
BSI’s research showed that out of 1,290 individuals aged 16-21, 47% would prefer to be young in a world without the internet, with 50% also saying a social media curfew would improve their lives.
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Some countries, DW reports, are considering age restrictions on social media accounts. Australia has already implemented one at age 16. Cell phone bans at schools is becoming more and more common around the world, especially in the UK.
The Offline Club is taking advantage of this rising cross-cultural awareness and helps its followers replace “screen time with real time.” Their founders envision a world where time spent in public is present and offline.
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It started in Amsterdam, but Club chapters quickly organized in Milan, Berlin, Paris, London, Barcelona, Brussels, Antwerp, Dubai, Copenhagen, and Lisbon. Anyone can start a club in a city. So long as they can register a business entity in their country, the Club provides training and branded material.
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