Amanda Tully and Steven Neville (left), spouses and co-owners of Kanoo Coffee in Guelph, Ont, enjoy a drink and conversation in their shop on July 20. In a bid to gently nudge customers to take a break from screens, the couple decided not to offer Wi-Fi and instead posted a small welcome sign encouraging guests to slow down.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
On the counter at Kanoo Coffee in Guelph, Ont., next to the pistachio amaretti cookies, sits a tiny sign: “This is a nice place to slow down and connect. Sorry, no WiFi.”
The café’s co-owners Steve Neville and Amanda Tully don’t offer internet on purpose. The goal is to “nudge” people offline and back into real life. The two wanted a reprieve from what they saw at other coffee shops – patrons sitting alone, hunched over laptops, faces aglow by their screens.
“These spaces feel like workplaces, like you’re at the office,” Mr. Neville said.
At Kanoo, some customers ask for a WiFi password, get annoyed there isn’t one and don’t come back. Their regulars, though, seem happy for a brief digital detox. They go analog, reading, sketching, knitting, playing chess, striking up conversations with strangers or joining tables with locals they know.
“There’s rarely anything that great online,” Mr. Neville said. “You don’t miss anything.”
Kanoo is part of a flourishing offline movement emboldening people to claim more time away from their screens. There are WiFi-less cafés, but also establishments with more explicit laptop bans, laptop-free hours or tables reserved for those not online. Screen-free events are also proliferating, with groups gathering in person without their devices, at restaurants, trivia nights and running clubs.
They join other endeavours to claw back more time offline: unplugged weddings, friendship apps that encourage users to meet people in the real world, as well as a cottage industry of apps that block social media and limit screen use, plus a wider international push for right-to-disconnect policies that require companies to draft plans addressing after-hours work communication.
In an era of ceaseless screen time, they are all experimental efforts to unplug. Throughout the pandemic, more than a third of adults spent four or more hours every day on their screens – this on their days off, according to Statistics Canada data that also found 27 per cent were spending their off-hours this way even before the global health crisis hit.
“Tech has a lot of powerful benefits. We’re just using it wrong. We’re behaving like a crazy person at a slot machine,” said Celeste Headlee, journalist and author of Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.
“Tech is great at figuring out where the train is, for holding your boarding pass, reminding you when to take a pill. It is great for all kinds of things that we should continue to use it for – and stop trying to use it as a substitute for human connection.”
Ms. Headlee is buoyed by the latest efforts to unplug. The screen-free public spaces and social events are particularly heartening to her, as workplace campaigns to disconnect have met some resistance, despite governments publicly setting out right-to-disconnect policies.
The regulars at Kanoo Coffee seem happy for a brief digital detox and opt to go analog, reading, sketching, knitting, playing chess, or striking up conversations with strangers.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Paradoxically, many of the new offline initiatives are being pushed by Gen Z and millennials, generations long accused of burying themselves behind their screens.
Nina Hill is co-founder of Calgary’s Offline Wellness Club, which launched in April. Popular with 25- to 40-year-olds, the club plays host to running groups, pickleball tournaments, trivia nights and other pop-up events to encourage in-person conversations. The club’s T-shirts feature the cloud, crossed out.
“We’re in that Gen Z population where it’s not just your work life that’s online – it’s your social life, your dating life, it’s everything. We wanted to start a community where we can put our phones down, stop scrolling and do activities that reconnect us,” Ms. Hill said.
While focus and productivity apps that block social media after a set number of hours have existed for years – Freedom, Opal, ScreenZen and the like – what’s different about screen-free initiatives is their communal approach: people seeking time offline among others looking to do the same.
“Everything is easier when you’re doing it with other people, even running. It’s the same with screens,” Ms. Hill said. “When all of your friends start to disconnect and come to these events, it’s a waterfall effect.”
“Digital-detox experiences” is how Nik Astashinsky describes UNPLUG, a new series of offline social events that take over various restaurants and cafés in Toronto. Devices are explicitly barred at the events.
People take part in a series of digital-free activities at UNPLUG, a new series of screen-free social events in Toronto, at The Company We Keep, a café on June 20.Nik Astashinksy/Supplied
Co-founders Mr. Astashinsky, 32, who works in corporate IT, and Javier Perez, 33, in education, found themselves increasingly fed up with the time-consuming pull of their little screens. Occasionally, they made a pact to place their phones in another room when they hung out.
They exported the idea with UNPLUG. In late June, their first event took over the Company We Keep, a Toronto café and market. Eighteen people showed up, most of them millennials.
Then came the confiscation: The organizers took everyone’s phones and devices away and sealed them in marked envelopes, which were then popped into a clear storage container.
“You see it being locked away,” Mr. Astashinsky said. “That had a strong effect on people. You could feel the room become more relaxed.”
Patrons ate, drank wine and made use of art supplies, origami, Sudoku and chess brought in by the organizers. When the event ended an hour and a half later, nobody seemed terribly eager to retrieve their devices.
“They were happy to stay away for a little bit longer,” Mr. Astashinsky said. “It wasn’t necessarily that they thought this would solve the problem but that they’d be around people who agree, this is a problem.”
The logistics of maintaining screen-free spaces can be tricky.
Neo Coffee Bar institutes a no-laptop-and-tablet rule on weekdays from 5 p.m. to close, and on weekends and holidays at several locations in Toronto. A sign with a laptop crossed out sits on the front counter, encouraging patrons to “take a break” from their screens.
“Around 4:30 p.m, we go with the signage, we talk to the customers individually and let them know, ‘Hey, sorry to bother you, just to let you know we’re doing no laptops after 5.’ Customers have at least 30 minutes to wrap it up,” manager of operations Kengo Torikai explained.
The policy has prompted some griping on Yelp, a website that publishes user reviews. One person balked at waiting in line and paying for one of the coffee bar’s elaborate creations, only to discover the rule.
On the flip side, there’s also a growing chorus against “laptop squatters” and “student campers” hogging tables all day long.
What Mr. Torikai sees after 5 p.m. at his coffee bar is a mellowing.
“Some people bring a book or magazine. They’re just peaceful,” he said. “I’m not saying using a laptop is not peaceful. But they’re chilling and enjoying time – their own time.”
On her mornings off, Julia Busato comes into Guelph’s Kanoo Coffee to read books, off-screen. Other times, she’ll colour with the owners’ young son, or point other patrons to her most beloved local bookstores, shops and restaurants.
Ms. Busato recoils thinking about other coffee shops where she’s seen customers taking video-call meetings with their bosses. But when she recommends Kanoo to students she works with at her retail job, some tell her they won’t visit because of the café’s no-WiFi philosophy. She finds that baffling, especially since she and her friends are increasingly sequestering their phones in their bags whenever they meet, understanding the distraction factor.
“I don’t feel like people are living enough outside of social media lately,” Ms. Busato said. “Enjoy the moment with the people you’re with. You need those moments.”