By love-89.com This Sunday, the Offline Club is launching its inaugural global event, inviting participants to spend 24 hours completely disconnected from their devices.
In the UK, adults are averaging five hours a day on screens, and this event aims to help individuals reclaim their downtime. For participants like Philip, a 33-year-old branding director from Rotterdam, this challenge is not just about unplugging; it’s an opportunity to reconnect with the world around him. “I’m just fed up with them. I thought it might be nice to give it a try and feel a bit more relaxed. I want to live in the moment rather than doomscrolling on social media,” he shares.
More than 1,000 people have committed to this digital detox, as the Offline Club encourages everyone to “swap screen time for real time.” Those who register will join a Zoom call on Saturday to receive tips and strategies for successfully navigating a full day offline.
Fernanda Grace, a 38-year-old community manager from Barcelona, is eagerly participating in the digital detox. She envisions this initiative evolving into a recurring event, similar to Earth Hour, to foster collective participation. “Sometimes I just want to be off my phone. When we do things together, it creates a bigger impact. It’s like having a workout buddy waiting for you at the gym,” she notes.
Since joining the Offline Club, Grace has made small yet meaningful changes, such as leaving her phone in her purse during dinner with friends and using a traditional alarm clock. “An email or WhatsApp message can dictate the tone of my entire day. I’m trying to break that pattern,” she explains. Grace looks forward to reading more books and improving her relationship with social media, expressing, “I want to genuinely not feel guilty about disconnecting.”
The Offline Club previously hosted its first in-person “digital detox hangout” in Amsterdam but has since expanded to cities like Paris, Dubai, and London. These hangouts encourage attendees to lock away their phones for a few hours, allowing them to engage with one another or enjoy reading. This Sunday represents the club’s first significant effort to mobilize a larger audience offline.
Ilya Kneppelhout, co-founder of the Offline Club, has witnessed the positive effects of disconnecting firsthand. He mentioned that participants are often surprised at how just a few hours without screens “made them feel so much less stressed and more connected to themselves and others.” The club even offers a weekend retreat in the Dutch countryside, where attendees leave their phones behind upon arrival. Kneppelhout shares that participants frequently leave feeling mentally refreshed, with some even reevaluating their careers post-retreat.
Kneppelhout’s inspiration for creating the club came after experiencing a phone-free weekend himself. “I realized I wasn’t reading enough, writing enough, or spending enough time in nature. After that weekend, I felt super creative and energized,” he recalls. While the club is still working toward financial sustainability, he believes the digital detox movement is just beginning and envisions a future filled with more phone-free spaces and possibly even phone-free vacations.