Every Offline Project event in London begins with the same request: hand over your phone. Pelé Zachariah, who runs the gatherings, offers a mix of activities — group walks, collage-making classes, supper clubs — but the opening ritual never changes. Phones go into a lockbox, Zachariah closes the door and turns the key. “I don’t place them in for people, because it’s nice for them to physically put it in the box themselves, walk away, and think: for the next two or three hours, I’m fully present.”
The screen-free events have been running in London since August 2025, and newcomers often find the separation difficult. “You can sense the vibe when they’re putting it away,” says Zachariah. “People have said to me, ‘I felt really weird’ or ‘I felt super uncomfortable for the first few minutes not having my phone on me.’ Then they’ll say, ‘I didn’t know how much I needed that.’”
He understands why it feels strange: “It’s very unnatural. You might put your phone in the living room while you work in the kitchen, but here you’re seeing it locked behind what is essentially a gate that you can’t access,” he says. After events, people often tell him they want their own lockbox, or say they will try to avoid their device until they get home. “It’s kind of sad that we have to literally lock our phones away. But people really crave that time.”
Why phone-free is taking off
Jarred Laros, 31, from Essex, has been a regular since the start. At one of his first events, a “paint and sip” evening, an artist guided the group through painting a mountain landscape with a river and sunset. “I liked the idea of getting off my phone and being more intentional with how I’m spending my time. I would never try to teach myself how to paint, but doing that in a community setting is very easy-going. The conversation flows.” Laros runs his own business and spends much of his day on screens: “I’m always glued to a screen, whether it’s my iPad, my MacBook, my phone, or all three at the same time,” he says. “Outside of work, there’s the doomscroll that you succumb to. I go on Instagram without intending to. Half an hour later, I’m, like, ‘What am I still doing on this app?’ My average daily screen time is seven and a half hours. My relationship with my phone is not what I want it to be.”
The Offline Project is part of a wave of digital detox communities offering screen-free time. The demand is easy to explain: adults in the UK spend an average of four and a half hours a day online, mostly on phones, according to Ofcom’s 2025 Online Nation report. The same year, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s annual TouchPoints survey found that British adults used their phones more than they watched TV for the first time. The government has also announced a social media ban for under-16s in spring 2027, covering platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. When that news broke, a teenage girl went viral after telling a reporter she would spend her free time staring at a wall.
Musicians have begun enforcing no-phone policies, including Bob Dylan’s 2025 UK and Ireland tour, Fred Again’s February gigs at Alexandra Palace, and Harry Styles’s one-off Manchester show in March. Comedy events are doing the same: phones were locked in pouches at Sarah Silverman’s London Palladium gig last year, and Russell Howard’s current Don’t Tell the Algorithm tour promises “no phones, no distractions, just humans and jokes”. Eventbrite reports a 121% global increase in attendance at phone-free events between 2024 and 2025.
The pull of the screen
DJ and broadcaster Annie Mac’s club night Before Midnight places stickers over phone cameras. “It reminds people to be in the moment. You’re only going to get so much satisfaction out of blurred videos with distorted sound, or dark, fuzzy photos,” she says. “Nightclubs are traditionally places where you go to feel a sense of freedom – to be whoever you want to be. They’re meant to be dark for that dual sense of losing yourself and finding yourself at the same time. Phones inhibit both of those things.”
Cody Ramone, 31, from Derby, used an old flip phone from 2015 until the pandemic forced him back to a smartphone. In 2024 he switched to a “dumb phone” again. “I got tired of all the notifications and being constantly online,” he says. The change has been transformative: “I get bored more. Being bored is what drives you to try new things, pick up an old hobby, or think creatively. My attention span has improved, so I read more and spend more time doing creative hobbies, like crochet. I call people or hang out with them more often,” he says.
Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of Dopamine Nation, explains the pull of digital media: “Digital media activates the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol, releasing dopamine, our reward neurotransmitter, in a key area of the reward pathway in the brain,” she says. “Moving images are like catnip for the mammalian brain, leading to video-chaining, akin to ‘chain smoking’. Once we begin, it’s hard to stop, even when we want to.” Over time, she says, we become “desensitised to what we are seeing” and search for “more potent rewards to recreate that original experience of pleasure”. The result: “At the same time, we lose our ability to take joy in other more modest rewards, like watching a sunset, sharing a meal with friends, or reading a good book. We spend more time scrolling alone. We become increasingly dissatisfied and lonely.”
Lembke argues that a healthier relationship with technology requires time without it: “Part of having a healthier relationship with technology must include discrete periods of time when we are not using it, and instead fully present and interacting with the people and the world around us,” she says. “This means creating collective spaces where we come together device-free.” For anyone looking for that, a growing number of UK venues, clubs, cabins and retreats now offer phone-free experiences.
Digital detox clubs
The Offline Club was founded in Amsterdam in 2024 by Jordy van Bennekom, Valentijn Klok and Ilya Kneppelhout. It now has 14 chapters in cities across 10 countries, including London and Bristol. At its events, everyone places their devices in the “phone hotel”, a lockable metal box with slots. The first hour is spent in silence with music playing, while the second hour encourages conversation.
In London, the Switch Off runs quiet phone-free sessions for women, with journaling, collage or reading. The Offline Project offers screen-free walks, talks and workshops. The Logging Off Club, a UK initiative with local groups in London, Bristol, Brighton, Southampton, Cambridge and the New Forest, has also expanded to Sydney, Mexico City and Winnipeg.
In Bath, Nicola MacDonald and Laura Hughes founded the Digital Detox Club in early 2025. It meets every two months at The Den cafe, where phones are put in a “tech motel” and optional activities like board games, journalling and crafts are provided. “We’ve been struck by the diversity of attendees, from university students to retirees, which suggests this isn’t a niche concern,” says MacDonald. “It reflects a broader cultural fatigue with constant connectivity.”
Craft sessions
For those who prefer to keep their hands busy, craft classes offer a natural break from phones. Native Hands holds basketry, pottery and bushcraft sessions in an ancient woodland in Sussex, while Curious House in East Sussex runs classes from basket weaving to portrait painting, each starting with a mindful breathing exercise. In Leeds, Dan Palmer launched Airplane Mode in November last year at his organic restaurant and natural wine bar, Eat Your Greens. The monthly free events feature workshops led by local creatives, covering painting, collage and origami. Instead of lockboxes, Palmer uses a swear jar: “Every time I catch anyone on their phone, I fine them 50p,” he says. “All the fines go to a charity called Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers. So far, I’ve issued three fines – and one of them was for me! No one wants to be on their phones when they have something more interesting to do.”
Nadia Butt, founder of Inner Canvas, hosts art sessions for women at her home in Reading. “The screen-free element is at the heart of the sessions,” she says. “We treat it like a ritual. At the start of each session, phones are silenced and placed in a box. I call it the ‘phone spa’. Framing it as something collective removes the anxiety around it.”
Spas and saunas
Spas are tightening their rules on devices. Bath Thermae Spa enforces a strict no-phones policy, with guests keeping devices in a lockable pouch inside their locker. Careys Manor in the New Forest offers a digital detox spa break complete with relaxing treatments, a complimentary journal and a phone amnesty box in the room. The Bothy at Heckfield Place in Hampshire has banned phones since it opened in 2023. “Seeing someone on their phone in a space dedicated to restoration felt out of alignment. You are there to be with yourself, to listen inwardly, to slow down,” says spa operations director Reka Seres-Erdei.
Saunas are also providing a technology-free escape. Ryan Haynes, 34, is a regular at London’s Community Sauna Baths, with sites in Camberwell, Hackney Wick, Stratford, Walthamstow and Peckham. Phones are not allowed in the sauna itself, and although photos are permitted outside, a full phone ban is being considered. Haynes describes his Wednesday morning sauna session as “non-negotiable”: “All of my best ideas in the past two years have been while sitting in a sauna. Everyone needs to slow down to hear what’s going on in their brain,” he says.
Book clubs
Kelly Wickson, who owns the bookshop Chapter 34 in Shoreham-by-Sea, combined two passions by launching a monthly sauna book club at the Nomadic Sauna on Kingston Beach. Creating a phone-free space was key, and the sauna makes that easy: “It will ruin your phone; you’ve got no choice,” she says. Books are always 250 pages or less, and there’s no requirement to attend every month. Phones stay in waterproof tubs outside while the group spends an hour going in and out of the sauna, with some taking a quick sea dip during breaks. “We do it on a Friday evening and it sells out,” she says.
Silent Book Club also gives readers a chance to switch off, guided by the motto “Put down your phone, pick up a book.” The global network has about 2,000 chapters in more than 60 countries, with almost 150 in the UK and Ireland.
Pubs and bars
When Camille Jetzer and James Nasmyth opened the Roses of Elagabalus in Dalston, east London, last year, they wanted to minimise phone use. Described as a “clubhouse”, the venue has a bar, restaurant, dancing and cabaret. On arrival, a host explains that photography is not allowed and places a sticker over each phone camera, with reminders printed on the menus. “The idea of having no phones is that you would walk into the Roses, leave the outside world behind and enter this fantasy world where you can just enjoy the moment,” Jetzer says. “It’s a ‘you were there or you missed it’ situation,” she adds, noting that regulars also remind newcomers of the rule. “It creates an environment where phones are less desired. In a dream world, we’d lock away the phones. That’s maybe next year’s project.”
Elsewhere in London, Esmeralda’s Mayfair and the Spy Bar at Raffles London at the OWO both use stickers on phone cameras. Samuel Smith’s pubs have prohibited phones and laptops across their 200-plus establishments since 2019. At the Barrel in Bude, Cornwall, rule-breakers must donate £1 to local charities. The Butchers Arms in Herne Bay, Kent, has been phone-free since 2005; owner Martyn Hillier says enforcement is social: “A disgruntled look from other customers is enough. If that doesn’t work we all start saying, ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’, louder and louder until they realise they can’t converse any more.”
In Woking, Kim and Mike Jarred launched Beyond the Screen, a monthly phone-free social at the Olive Tree pub, in March 2025. Inspired by a desire to model good phone habits for their teenage sons, they provide puzzles and conversation starters, but most people simply chat. “Pubs are closing down and we’re just staying in our houses with our phones in front of our faces rather than getting out and meeting people. We’re human beings, and we need to connect with each other. Phones are getting in the way of that,” Kim says.
Club nights
Manchester club Amber’s, which opened in December 2024, has a strict no-photo, no-video policy, with stickers placed over cameras. “Nights out now can feel like content creation exercises. We wanted to remove that layer entirely and return the focus to the room,” says co-founder James Hutchins. “If people are seen taking photos or videos inside the club, they are politely asked to leave.” Similar policies operate at Fold and Fabric in London, Lakota and sister venue Moon Club in Bristol, and Doppler Studio in Leicester. At Offgrid, a monthly day party at House Party in Soho, London, co-founded by Stormzy, phones are sealed in locked pouches. Annie Mac noticed a tangible shift in atmosphere at the first phone-free Before Midnight event at the Warehouse Project in Manchester: “People were more present and louder. They whooped, they hollered, they whistled. They reacted to the tunes in a visceral way.”
Off-grid stays
Hector Hughes was working for a tech startup in London in 2019 when burnout led him to a silent retreat at a Buddhist temple in the Himalayas. “When you got there, they took your phone off you. I spent 10 days cut off from the outside world. It was a revelation,” he says. Hughes returned, quit his job and set up Unplugged, which offers off-grid cabins in the UK where phones are locked away. Launched in summer 2020, the company now has 60 digital detox cabins around the country, with expansion into Catalonia. The phone-free rule is self-policed: each cabin comes with a lock box and padlock, with the key in a sealed envelope, along with a Polaroid camera, a map and an old-school Nokia phone for emergencies. Hughes says many customers return regularly and make lasting changes, such as phone-free date nights or sharply reduced screen time.
Other off-grid options include Unyoked’s solar-powered cabins, which have no wifi and often no phone signal. Unyoked uses a “spice signal” — ranging from mild to extra spicy — to indicate how remote a cabin is and how long the walk to reach it might take; it also provides Brick devices that help block certain apps for a set period. Shacks’ cabins are also off-grid with no wifi and lockboxes for phones. For a more traditional retreat, the Cottage in the Clouds sits in the Lake District national park, and Woodcock Cabin is in the Cambrian mountains in Wales, both without wifi or signal. Lilypod in Devon is a floating retreat with three solar-powered eco pods on a platform beside a lake, offering board games, beanbags and a king-sized bed — and no TV, wifi or phone signal.
Remote retreats
Florence Achery, founder of Yoga Retreats and More, started “Retreat like it’s 1999” digital detox breaks in Lancashire and Cumbria in 2023. Guests hand over their devices on arrival and spend the next few days sharing meals, walking, doing yoga and stargazing. “They’re in charge, not their phones,” says Achery, who gives each guest a battery-powered alarm clock to take home as encouragement to keep phones out of bedrooms. One recent guest enjoyed the break so much she left her laptop and phone behind; Achery says: “I had to WhatsApp the guest she was travelling with to get them to pick up her stuff.” Achery has also launched a parent and teen digital detox retreat.
The Sharpham Trust, based on a 223-hectare (550-acre) estate on the River Dart in Devon, runs retreats focused on mindfulness and connecting with nature, encouraging guests to switch off their phones. In Suffolk, sisters Lauretta and Sharon Gavin host regular phone-free retreats at the Detox Barn, with vegan food, yoga, sound baths and countryside walks. “For many people it’s a huge relief to step away from their phones for 48 hours,” Lauretta says. “People open up, share stories and properly connect.”
