Why Are Europe’s Youth Ditching The Screen? All About The Offline Club

Honestly, not everyone’s itching for a throwback to the pre-cell phone era, but let’s talk about social media for a sec. If you had the magic button to just wipe Facebook, Insta, TikTok—poof!—from history, would you do it?

Turns out, almost half of the teens polled by the British Standards Institution (BSI) would smash that button without blinking. Yeah, 46%. And a whopping 68% say they actually feel worse after doomscrolling their feeds for too long. Shocking? Not really.

\Teens might get roasted for being glued to their screens, but they’re not clueless—they’re catching on to how much social media can mess with your head, and a lot of them are straight-up over it.

Growing Popularity of Offline Clubs

Cue The Offline Club. The irony? They’ve got over half a million followers on Instagram. But their whole thing is ditching screens and bringing people together IRL—think board games, reading, actual face-to-face convos in cafes, not just mindless scrolling. They even run digital detox retreats, where you unplug from everything—phones, laptops, all of it—and pretend it’s 1995 again, minus the questionable haircuts.

And get this: in a world where TikTok therapists and Insta-famous doctors are everywhere, some of those same experts (Jonathan Haidt, Dr. Phil—yeah, that Dr. Phil) are waving red flags about what constant internet access is doing to young people’s brains.

What Did The New Study Say? 

BSI’s study found that out of 1,290 folks aged 16-21, nearly half wished they could grow up in a world without the internet. And half would be totally cool with a social media curfew. Wild, right?

Meanwhile, some countries are actually doing stuff about it. Australia’s already slapped an age limit on social media at 16. Schools banning cell phones? Super common now, especially in the UK. It’s like everyone finally realized that letting kids scroll during math class was maybe not the best idea.

Back to The Offline Club—they’re riding this wave of “let’s get our lives back” energy. Their motto? Swap screen time for real time. The dream is a world where hanging out in public doesn’t mean everyone’s hunched over their phones.

Started in Amsterdam, but now you’ll find these clubs popping up everywhere—Milan, Berlin, Paris, London, Dubai, you name it. Anyone can start a chapter if they’re willing to do a bit of paperwork. The Club handles the rest: training, branding, the works.

So, yeah. The rebellion against endless scrolling is real—and it’s kind of catching on.

ALSO READ:  Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour Steps Down After Nearly 40 Years, What Was Her Monthly Salary?