Why young people are ditching social media
A young woman wearing headphones browses vintage vinyl records in a store.
Mihailomilovanovic | E+ | Getty Images
Account manager Matt Richards, 23, deleted all social media apps from his phone last year and was surprised to find his life changing for the better.
Richards had been using a smartphone since the age of 11 and, like many Gen Zers and Millennials, grew up with the device. But in the last few years, she’s realized that social media doesn’t seem all that fun anymore, with AI dominating the mainstream feed, influencers advertising brands, and constant lifestyle comparisons.
“I think back then, people were taking a break from the real world by using their phones, but now people are taking a break from their phones to spend time in the real world,” Richards told CNBC Make It.
She noticed immediate benefits, from connecting with people in real life to feeling more confident, as did many of her Gen Z friends.
Outgoing chronically offline It’s the latest trend affecting young people and ironically, it’s spreading rapidly on social media. There’s been an increase in people’s TikTok videos promise to delete social media Engage more with apps in 2026 face-to-face and analog hobbies.
When I discovered the trend, I decided Publish on LinkedIn to see if there were any young people who wanted to talk to me about going offline. Surprisingly, I received nearly 100 responses from Gen Z and Millennials sharing stories about social media detoxes and digital burnout.
They talked about ditching their smartphones in favor of flip phones, visiting record stores to buy vinyl, taking up analog hobbies like knitting, and most importantly, connecting with friends face-to-face.
A. 2025 Deloitte consumer trends research More than 4,000 British surveys found that almost a quarter of consumers have deleted a social media app in the last 12 months, rising to almost a third for Gen Z.
Meanwhile, Social media usage has gradually decreased Since time spent on platforms peaked in 2022, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries by the Financial Times and digital audience analysis firm GWI.
According to the report, adults aged 16 and over worldwide spent an average of two hours and 20 minutes a day on social platforms by the end of 2024; This represents a decline of almost 10% since 2022. The decline was especially pronounced among teens and 20s.
Jason Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, said increasing “nastiness and divisiveness” online, including from leaders and politicians, was driving young people away from social media as they sought more control over their lives.
“A group of Generation Z [and millennials] “They are choosing to quit social media altogether, and possibly a larger group are choosing to limit social media as they regain more of what they are trying to find: balance, safety, and security in their lives,” Dorsey said.
‘Pressure platform’
Young people deleting social media platforms, increasing In addition to the pressures of being online, it also causes their mental health to deteriorate.
Deloitte’s consumer survey showed that almost a quarter of respondents who deleted social apps reported that these apps negatively affected their mental health and consumed too much of their time.
“I think social media is now more like a pressure platform… everywhere, everything is for sale,” Richards said, adding that this has affected her own feelings about not having enough or being successful enough in her career.
We’re definitely seeing a trend where they’re offline, they’re unreachable, they have some sort of cool factor around them… This person doesn’t need validation.
Matt Richards
23 year old account manager
Similarly, entrepreneur Lucy Stace, 36, said she limited her use of social media because it was “worsening” her mental health, despite it being essential for her business.
“We are always inundated with so much information… our brains do not have the capacity to process that much information,” he said. “We actually reduce our brain’s capacity to look within ourselves and listen to ourselves, and we value all these things that don’t actually matter to us.”
Dorsey said tech giants face “tremendous pressure” to monetize everything and increase revenue and profits, which he said could be off-putting to younger generations.
“As a result, Generation Z, who are already sensitive to advertising – they are the most advertised generation in the history of the world – are now exposed to much more advertising, and their feed feels fair. [like] “It’s commercial after commercial,” Dorsey said.
Offline is the new ‘cool’
Account manager Richards stated that as the tide turned against social media, offline ones became more interesting. Richards noted that in the past, having a lot of followers was cooler, but that appeal has waned.
“We’re definitely seeing a trend where they’re offline, they’re unreachable, they have some sort of cool factor around them, where this person doesn’t need to be validated by the number of likes or followers they have, and they’re living life like it was in the ’80s,” he said.
Social media manager Julianna Salguero, 31, said social media stopped being cool when politicians and brands started using the platform.
“As you see that brands, government officials, and everyone else as a casual user is online as much as you are, you’re going to want to step back and change it,” Salguero said.
As the digital generation They struggle to make friends and find partners, instead seeking personal activities such as speed dating and professional networking, citing high levels of loneliness and isolation as a key factor.
Ysabel Gerrard, digital media lecturer at the University of Sheffield, said going offline was a way for young people to take back control of their lives. He said social media forces users to go through the “extremely tedious process” of creating an identity and organizing themselves.
“There is now an incredible wealth of literature telling us that the person we are on social media is not and cannot be the same person we are in face-to-face settings,” Gerrard said. “This is much more than a trend.”
GWI analyst Chris Beer said he believes this is a “legitimate post-pandemic correction” as people spend less time at home and therefore less time on social media.
He said this shift was due to “largely structural time allocation”, particularly for younger users, rather than “an attitude-driven wholesale rejection of digital media”. Beer said social media is still very integrated into people’s lives in areas such as shopping, news and education.
Analog is back
In a Substack post in September that received 5,000 likes, Salguero expressed her longing to live in the ’90s, when dating apps and doomscrolling weren’t prerequisites for young adulthood.
article titled “How to achieve analog drop?” It wasn’t about doing a digital detox or setting timers to limit social media use. Instead, Salguero outlined all the hobbies one can have outside of social media, from going on lunch dates to writing physical letters to opting for tangible media like newspapers.
Salguero said the shift to analog has been a “quiet revolution” against social media, streaming and content overload.
Lacy Stace and her boyfriend’s record collection.
“When you spend so much time in that world, it rewires your brain to perceive things algorithmically, and I prefer to perceive things as I encounter them,” he said. “So for me, the analog to all of this isn’t throwing my phone in the ocean, it’s more like, ‘How do I reset my relationship with it?’ It’s about.”
Indeed, young people are increasingly turning to physical media when they want to take a break from digital life. some buy vinyl and record playersOthers are buying flip phones, a relic of the 2000s.
She said Stace and her boyfriend began building a record collection and visited record stores whenever they could.
After deleting all social media apps on his smartphone, Richards said a conversation with CNBC Make It motivated him to buy a “brick phone,” harkening back to a time when phones were primarily used to call people.
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