Switch Screen Time for Real Time!
This cool Netherlands club celebrates the connected power of life before digital.
Rather like in A-List get togethers, the events organized by this Netherlands-based club have a leave your phone at the door policy. But that’s where the association ends, as these offline happenings for digital detox fans offer plenty of authentic charm and coziness; what the Dutch call gezellig, as the Guardian details in its focus on The Offline Club.
And this club is more than just one physical space. Its events embrace multiple venues, and even extend to longer digital-free retreats. “Offline events & digital detox hangouts for you to swap screen time for real time. Unplug, connect, relax, have fun,” The Offline’s Club’s Facebook page summarizes.
Take its community-minded recent debut “offline dinner” for 70 people, which saw relaxed visitors enjoy a delicious buffet-style meal in outdoor vineyard surroundings, and each other’s company to “spend quality time with friends and strangers, no scrolling in sight!”
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Piloted by three young founders grappling with digital saturation in 2022, one of them, Ilya Kneppelhout, tells the Guardian that the trio had a lightbulb moment. This was the realization that whenever they go offline, they create mental space for new ideas, and experience bursts of creativity. In other words, they recharge themselves.
The Offline Club has since officially launched in February, ironically gaining attention through social media where it has gone viral. Perhaps, because, as Deseret News observes, the mere act of coming together to hang out without devices, has just become so unusual.
As Forbes points out, The Offline Club shines light on the growing societal urge to reclaim genuine connection with themselves as well as better human interactions. It reflects an important shift toward prioritizing real-world connections.
Head back to the 90s!
Remember when the internet was just for a few early-adopter geeks who made it to internet cafes to explore a much less user-friendly online world, paying by the hour? The Offline Club’s organizers, hark back nostalgically to this time when the “digital revolution” was confined to the periphery, and had not invaded most of our waking hours, and even our sleep. It had also not played havoc with our real-world relationship-building skills through all its distractions including social media as psychologist Vassia Sarantopoulou tells the Guardian. With this in mind, the event organizers are reaching out to an audience open to its message of unplugging and reconnecting in style.
Take one event that took place in May 2024. This offline extravaganza happened on a huge scale, involving hundreds of people who gathered in a massive, iconic Amsterdam church. This setting was transformed into an “XL digital detox hangout,” as the below Instagram post details:
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As this post, with one million views explains, instead of scrolling, the 250 phone-free, largely next-gen participants got calm and creative through reading, journaling and collaborative artwork while enjoying soothing sounds and live music. Helping curate this event was The School of Life program, a global organization working to equip people with a path to mental wellbeing.
Responses have been overwhelmingly positive and include: “Thank you for your amazing fight against the phonedictatorship,” from the_humancontact.
Join an offline getaway
The Offline Club’s Instagram reel showcasing its two-day digital detox weekend makes the idea of unplugging from tech an alluring proposition. Billed as a chance for like-minded people to reconnect with others and themselves, the animated conversations, pastoral settings, yoga, art and country walks instinctively feel like a better alternative.
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In 2024, the weekend retreats are happening in the Netherlands and the South of France.
The talkbacks are enthusiastic. Cmw1362 writes “This is great! We need to start “normalizing” being unplugged and experience and enjoy all that life has to offer, and build healthy human relationships!” Barbaraawtmf adds “USA SERIOUSLY needs this! It makes me want to fly there just to do this! Everyone here is so addicted to technology.”
The Offline Club’s founders hold events in six different cities across the Netherlands, The World reports, and hope to expand the concept of a cool offline lifestyle to multiple cities worldwide.
Ultimately, Kneppelhout says, he would like to delete all their social media apps and for the initiative to still be a success.
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