I’ve turned one of my abiding memories of the year over in my head many times. It was summertime, hot, and I was in a small jazz bar in Brooklyn for an early-evening show. The audience was sparse, typical for a pre-dusk midweek gathering, maybe around a dozen people. A few were much younger than me, in their 20s. A few were older, probably in their 60s.
When the musicians were on a break, I took out a book to read. Two or three of the younger people did the same, sitting in silence, turning pages. Given the same opportunity to amuse themselves during this pause, all of the older people took out their phones and started scrolling. In the bar’s pleasant gloom, their faces were up-lit by an artificial glow. It would be a reach to extrapolate too much from this scene, but it did feel like it meant something.
A few days later, another scene. I was waiting for a train when I decided to take a photo of the same book I was reading in the bar, placing it on a seat on the platform to capture its cover. I use my Instagram account as a sort of diary to document the books I’m reading. It’s part of a rule I have about social media: only post about things that exist in the real world and are tethered to offline reality; books, articles, signposts to offline cultural events, protest. I’ve found the moment you are solely existing in the digital sphere, things can get warped, so this rule makes me feel (or perhaps fools me into thinking) that the connection to the analogue and is a grounding force.
As I was fiddling with my phone, a group of young people walked past, probably in their late teens or very early 20s. One sarcastically remarked, “get that content.” In their eyes, I – an ancient millennial – was clearly being cringe, removing myself from real life by focusing on composing a digital transmission. How embarrassing.
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Both of these scenes ultimately pleased me. They felt like the digital sphere being denied. For as long as social media has existed, so too has resistance to it. This goes for any technology. This year, I returned to Wendell Berry’s 1987 essay, Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer. “That computers are expected to become as common as TV sets in ‘the future’ does not impress me or matter to me. I do not own a TV set,” Berry wrote, “I do not see that computers are bringing us one step nearer to anything that does matter to me: Peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, good work.” Replace “computer” with the internet and social media. Since 1987, has such technology brought us closer to Berry’s list of things of personal import? I think we all know the answer.
[ We need to end the great social experiment on our childrenOpens in new window ]
Posting zero, a term that appeared in The New Yorker this summer, offered a prediction about “a point at which normal people – the unprofessionalised, uncommodified, unrefined masses – stop sharing things on social media as they tire of the noise, the friction, and the exposure.” It’s probably something many of us for whom social media is long-running background noise have noticed.
It certainly feels that withdrawing – reducing one’s number of followers, posting less or not at all, or removing oneself from social media entirely – reached a tipping point in 2025. Taking back control of your time and dopamine receptors – and rejecting the addictive attention industrial complex of social media – feels smart, grounded, evolved, admirable, even covetable. Sure, you may feel a little left behind, less attuned to the frivolous trends, gossip or online discourse of the day. But honestly, who cares? There are better things to be doing, and better ways to live.
[ Social media use grows overall but young people retreat, CSO showsOpens in new window ]
Besides paid-up influencers, or those for whom a consistent social media presence is an arm of their professional life, frequent social media posting is no longer about being in the real conversation. Instead, it’s about being outside of real life. A robust presence on these platforms has taken on qualities that are distant from how such activity was perceived at their dawn. Posting screeds about your personal life on Facebook is now shorthand for having a meltdown. Posting frequently on X (née Twitter) – or even being active on that platform – marks you out as confrontational or even a bit of a loser. Oversharing on Instagram as a “normie” without it being directly linked to one’s earnings or professional promotion is seen as narcissistic and old hat.
Real life, real connection, real friends, real community, is what is authentic. The New Cool Is Going Offline, a recent headline on Elle read: “The new ‘aesthetic’ is curated invisibility.”
All of this is happening at a time when online judgment, public shaming and call-out culture is peaking and when reality is being undermined by AI content and its slop. It is coinciding with a moment when policies are being drawn up to mitigate against smartphone and social media addiction and its harms for children.
And it’s happening when surveillance is increasing and various states are pitching authoritarian-minded policies – such as the US’s proposal for five years of social media history to be handed over for the privilege of visiting the country as a tourist.
[ Travelling to the US? Check your social media posts firstOpens in new window ]
Plus, the broligarchy of tech moguls doesn’t represent anything we want to aspire to. Looking to 2026, after years of online “presence”, here’s hoping the new “clout” is actually about being in the real world.
