Touch Grass, Then Post About It

Bettina Dargie · 2026-08-20

Lately I've been thinking about how much time I spend on my phone. I don't love that I doomscroll before bed, or that I grab it the second I'm awake. I mentioned it to a friend, then another, then another, all of us a little sheepish about the same habit.

Which got me wondering whether it was just my bubble or something bigger, so I looked, because I wasn't about to build a whole piece on a hunch from my group chat. Unfortunately, we're part of a statistic: 58% of Canadians feel they spend too much time on their phones. And plenty of us are acting on it. Around 1 in 5 are on a proper digital detox, fully offline, and close to 7 in 10 have at least tried to cut back.

It's already changing what people buy. The tangible stuff is coming back: instant cameras just crossed a billion dollars in sales, and vinyl climbed for a 19th straight year while digital music downloads slid.

More interesting is how it's also changing the way people want to meet a brand. They're going out of their way to show up: 61% have been to a pop-up shop, and most say they'd travel for the right one. They're leaning back into print, with 71% saying a catalog or magazine feels more authentic than an online ad, and they'll gladly photograph a well-made package and post it for you. The brands getting noticed are the ones handing people something to see, hold, or walk into, while everyone else fights for one more second of scroll. About 6 in 10 say they're more likely to buy after meeting a brand in person than after seeing its ads online.

This works hand in hand with the digital side: pair print with digital and response climbs 20 to 30%. And if 7 in 10 people at a live experience end up filming and posting it, then whatever you make, however you show up in the physical world, has to be good enough that people want to carry it back online themselves. Coca-Cola once rigged a campus vending machine to hand out flowers, pizzas and foot-long subs, and the video of people's reactions pulled millions of views off one small moment in one cafeteria. Even digital products are stepping into the physical world: Apple TV+ built a glassed-in Severance office in the middle of Grand Central for two days, fans flooded their feeds with it, and that whole push landed right as the show became Apple TV+'s most-watched ever, new subscribers up 126% over the month before.

Most people right now are after less screen and more life, or at least a balance: room to live outside their phones, but still the pull to share the good bits. Show up in the real world in a way that's worth talking about, and the same customers trying to log off will happily carry you back online.