The Great Unscrolling: Why Some Young People Are Reclaiming Their Time from Social Media

Germany as a bellwether: the end of endless scrolling?

Late last month, I was struck by an article in the German weekly Die Zeit questioning whether social media might be “dying.” As a journalist long concerned by the eviscerating impact of constant “content swiping” on smart phones, particularly by young people, I wondered whether, finally, we were witnessing a turn around with how social media have imposed themselves on our lives.

No, social media, pertinaciously pushed by platform giants from Meta to Amazon to maintain their profit margins, are not about to fade away. Yet something very interesting is happening that may warm the cockles of concerned parents, teachers, and, yes, even us journalists.

Social media is dead?

Die Zeit

A fall of social media use among youth

Exclusive data from the British research firm GWI (formerly GlobalWebIndex) show that while Germans are spending more time than ever on their phones - roughly two hours and forty minutes a day in 2024, more than double a decade ago - the minutes devoted specifically to social media have barely increased since 2022. And among 16- to 24-year-olds, they have actually begun to fall.

The pattern is clearest among those who once seemed inseparable from TikTok, Instagram and other similar platforms: usage surged after 2018, peaked in 2023, and is now edging down. This may also be good news for those worried about worsening eyesight from overuse of smart phones, another consequence of too much small screen exposure according to one specialist from World Health Organization in Geneva. "Constant squinting at our phones is steadily ruining our eyesight, particularly amongst young people," she said.

Older users, meanwhile, are still catching up. Germans in their fifties and sixties have continued to expand their presence online since the pandemic, even if they remain far lighter users overall. The trend suggests that social media growth is no longer being driven by the young - traditionally the first to adopt and the first to abandon - but by older generations still joining the party.

Youth: A fading obsession with smart phones?

GWI

Social media: no longer about socializing

The Die Zeit analysis also points to a deeper transformation. Social platforms are no longer primarily about socialising. In 2017, most Germans said they used social media to connect with friends or find like-minded people. Today, only about 45 percent give that answer. Instead, they say they log on to check sports scores, follow celebrities or influencers, or simply be entertained.

The social web, as Zeit writers Dana Hajek and Lisa Hegemann put it, increasingly resembles television, a passive stream of content more than a space for interaction. TikTok has become the new broadcast channel, while Facebook is fading as the old folks’ platform. As for Instagram, it remains ubiquitous but, for many, feels too much like hard work.

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram have absorbed the “social” part of social media, while the big platforms have turned into personalised and more easily monetized entertainment or sales’ systems.

The emergence of an attention ceiling?

What may be emerging, researchers note, is an “attention ceiling.” A joint 2025 study by the German TV networks ARD/ZDF concluded that total media time in a day has reached its natural limit: people simply can’t cram in anymore screen hours amongst school, jobs, chores and sleep.

The result is a zero-sum battle for attention. When the day is already full, more time for TikTok must mean less time for Netflix and podcasts. According to another 2025 assessment by Postbank Digital Study, 72 percent of Germans now say they do not wish to increase their internet use, while one in five would prefer to reduce it. Astonishingly, among 18- to 39-year-olds, that share rises to more than a third.

Media consumption

The impact of social media: mostly negative

Similar sentiments are appearing elsewhere. In the United States, the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of teenagers now describe social media’s effect on people their age as “mostly negative,” up sharply from just two years earlier. Forty-eight percent say that they have already taken deliberate breaks from one or more apps. As various studies are conclusively showing, social media pressures are increasingly leading to depression, isolation and even suicide amongst growing numbers of young people.

As Struan Wynd-Smith, a 27-year-old filmmaker based in Atlanta, Georgia, put it, young people feel that social media has become a thing of the past. “When I was going through school, we used it to chat with one’s friends and share photos,” noted Wynd-Smith, who graduated a month before ChatGPT was released in November, 2022.

“Nowadays, the term 'social media' seems more appropriate as a money-making industry for anyone deemed lucky enough by the algorithm," he added. "And in a world where the algorithm chooses everything from your mood, your perspective, and your knowledge, malleable minds can be easily steered into directions that give the power to control narratives whether corporations and even governments.”

Meta: An insidious platform for profit? How concerned are the Big Tech giants about the well-being of young people?

The Tech Giants: An insidious – and increasingly dangerous - subversion

This assessment appears increasingly shared by other Gen Z youth (a term designating 13–28-year-olds, but one many pointedly dislike) who view social media as a form of manipulation for profit by the major platforms, such as Meta and Amazon. A growing number, too, believe that phones should be left outside the classroom as the algorithms are inherently biased subverting real evidence-based information which young people need to digest and form their own opinions.

The cultivated safe-thinking environment of what was once the classroom is being insidiously ruined. Individual reflecting is being tarnished across the board while every day at school. “Does that mean kids will never experience raw information coming from a verified textbook without the whisper of the algorithm telling them that the information is actually wrong?” questioned Wynd-Smith.

Some parents maintain that their kids – high school or university students – in Switzerland, UK and Canada have gone off TikTok and other social media for several weeks at a time. While hard at first, they did not miss it. British surveys show the same fatigue: large numbers of youth confess they would feel “relieved” if social media disappeared.

UN Photos

The ‘enshittification’ of social media

None of this means that TikTok or Instagram are about to vanish. Average global usage still hovers around ninety minutes per day, and youth culture continues to pulse online. But the sense of enchantment has waned. Even inside Silicon Valley, writers such as Canadian-British journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow speak of the “enshittification” of social media, the process by which platforms, chasing profit, degrade the very experiences that made them popular. Many users, especially younger ones, seem to have noticed.

If Germany’s data are any guide, social media’s golden age of effortless growth may be over. The next phase, however, looks more complicated. We may not be witnessing a rejection, but rather a renegotiation.

Teenagers still scroll, post, and chat, yet a small but growing number are setting limits, seeking quiet, or rediscovering slower ways of connecting. Whether that energy translates into more reading, sports, or simply being outdoors is another question, but the direction feels newly uncertain.

Youth: Questioning what they see or read in social media.

Courtesy Jeff Danziger

A rise in book sales

If digital exhaustion is the new normal, then something interesting is happening in its wake. Across Europe and North America, a quiet revival of old-fashioned reading and real-world social life is underway. Hardly a mass movement, but visible enough to feel like a generational correction.

Publishers have noticed it first. After years of decline, print book sales have risen steadily since the pandemic, especially among young adults. In the United States, industry figures show more than 760 million print books sold in 2023, a record. British publishers report the same pattern: sales of young adult fiction are up by double digits, and library memberships, thought to be relics of the pre-digital age, are increasing again. Some librarians say they now see clusters of teenagers coming not for homework but to read or write in silence, phones face down beside them.

The irony, of course, is that much of this revival owes its visibility to the very platforms that many young readers claim to be escaping.

The BookTok phenomenon on TikTok is one. This is an online community where readers have come together on the app to share their views, but also to show short videos of readers crying over novels or arranging aesthetic shelves. While this may not represent the book clubs that older generation readers are more used to, it has helped drive a surge in sales for printed books, particularly classics and emotional fiction. Whether this means that books are being read from start to finish remains an open question.

Geneva book fair 2025

Photo Palexpo

Analog nostalgia: A symbol of authenticity

For a generation raised on screens, however, the physical book has become a symbol of authenticity, proof of attention and self-control. Carrying a paperback on the train or posting a photo of it on Instagram signals a kind of rebellion against the noise. This is also somewhat reminiscent of the term ‘authenticity reporting’ to describe what genuine journalists do when they do on-the-ground reporting based on ‘real’ interviews and notetaking rather than rely on AI to compile what is already online. (See Global Geneva’s three-part series on the predicament of trusted journalism today)

Sociologists tracking these trends describe it as “analog nostalgia”, a longing for tangible experiences that cannot be scrolled. Vinyl records, disposable film cameras, hand-written journals, even printed photographs have all returned as status symbols of a slower, more deliberate life. (See Global Geneva article on photographer Steve McCurry)

According to a 2024 survey, more than 40 percent of Gen Z respondents said they now print digital photos regularly, far more than their parents. Many describe the act as calming, a way to reclaim ownership of memory. There is also a move toward traditional photography with the use of cameras rather than phones not unlike a return to watches for ‘show off’ but also time-keeping. (See Global Geneva piece on the history of watches)

Whether all this signals a deeper cultural shift or just a passing aesthetic remains open. Broader data still show a long-term decline in reading for pleasure. In the United States, only about 16 percent of adults now read on a typical day, down from 28 percent twenty years ago. As several highly educated corporate professionals somewhat sheepishly admitted to me, they buy books, but do not necessarily read them. “Half the books on my shelves I have not even read yet.” As another added: “The same goes for the three books I always seem to have on my night table.”

In the United Kingdom, just one in three children says they enjoy reading. Yet even these sobering figures contain nuance. For those who do read, engagement is intense; and the same online tools that once distracted them now help to organise book clubs, trading networks and small literary communities that meet face to face. The borders between digital and analog culture are blurring rather than hardening.

Human relations: embracing the personal rather than digital

Something similar is happening with friendship and leisure. Surveys across Western Europe show that adolescents still spend hours online, but also express a strong desire for in-person connection. After COVID lockdowns, sports clubs and outdoor activities report a rise in younger members; cinemas and small music venues are drawing Gen Z audiences seeking collective experiences that a feed cannot provide.

Cafes – and not just Starbucks – but also work-study and literary outlets with coffee areas such as Barnes and Noble bookshops in the United States, Payot in Switzerland and Waterstones in the UK have become hangout locations for young people. “I like hanging out in bookshop cafes because of the atmosphere for working and meeting people,” said a 25-year-old data engineer in London. “It feels real and you don’t feel as constrained if you’re constantly hunkered over your computer.”

The re-emergence of Barnes & Noble in the United States. A renewed thirst for books.

Barnes & Noble

Interestingly, as a once declining chain of bookstores, Barnes & Noble, now run by British businessman James Daunt, who also owns Waterstones in the UK, is constantly expanding its physical footprint to reach more readers, particularly youth. After more than 15 years of declining store numbers, the bookseller expects to open over 60 new locations across the United States in 2025, following a period of "strong sales" in existing stores.

Whether WhatsApp groups, Snapchat messages, or Instagram invites, such platforms remain essential for coordination, yet what matters is the event itself, such as meeting up for a coffee and a personal chat, not its digital trace.

A return to non-social media activities.

Alps Tourism

A return to “real life”

Psychologists suggest that part of this renewed appetite for real life stems from a growing awareness of the mental costs of permanent connection. Studies in Norway and the UK have found that reducing social-media use by even one week can measurably improve mood, concentration, and body image. For many young people, moderation rather than withdrawal is the goal: to stay online enough to belong, but not so much that it consumes them.

In this sense, the emerging culture among teenagers and students in Europe feels less like nostalgia for the past than an experiment in balance. They are trying to rediscover personal if not human attention as a scarce resource, and to invest it more deliberately: in a book, a sport, a friendship, or simply in being offline.

Whether that will last longer than a trend cycle is uncertain. But in an age defined by endless notifications and pretend self-glorification (“I am doing the most amazing things, when I am actually not”) even a modest return to the physical world feels quietly radical.

Switzerland's Jan Michalski Foundation is seeking to encourage both reading and writing, particularly amongst young people.

From default to choice: what the great “unscrolling” really means

What seems to be emerging is not a mass exodus from the digital world but something subtler: a change in attitude. For the first time since smartphones became the oxygen of daily life, many young people no longer take constant connectivity for granted. They are learning, sometimes painfully, that online life comes at a personal cost, notably of time, focus, privacy, even self-esteem. Young people are beginning to decide how much of that cost they are willing to pay.

In conversation, many teenagers describe the same quiet anxiety: the sense of being trapped in an endless performance, of curating themselves for an audience that never stops watching. The glamour of social media has been replaced by exhaustion, a recognition that the feed never ends, and that the likes never satisfy for long.

Against this background, the appeal of more grounded, tangible experiences - reading, walking, paragliding, mountain biking, sailing, scuba diving or simply being present with friends - becomes clear. These activities offer something social media rarely can: continuity, attention, and a sense of time that moves forward rather than looping endlessly. (See Global Geneva series on reinventing life and tourism in the Alps)

For educators and policymakers, this shift raises important questions. If young people are starting to seek calmer spaces, will societies provide them? Libraries, sports clubs, youth centres, and accessible cultural venues remain crucial antidotes to the algorithmic attention economy. Yet they remain chronically underfunded in much of Europe and North America. We are simply not grappling with the issue properly; we are leaving our youth to hang.

The challenge, especially for international hubs like Geneva, is to recognise that digital detox and civic engagement are linked: the more young people can experience genuine community offline, the less power global tech platforms will have over their emotional lives.

As journalists and concerned professionals, this is precisely what we are seeking to do with our YouthWrites workshops and initiatives, part of the non-profit Global Geneva Group. We are seeking to work with young people from high school students to young professionals, to communicate more readily, and honestly, and to improve their skills whether writing, filming, photography,

cartooning or art. For more information, please contact me directly: Email – edgirardet@gmail.com

There is also a broader democratic dimension. Social media has been both a megaphone for youth voices and a machine for distraction. If the coming generation learns to use it with more scepticism and self-control, they may yet shape a healthier information culture than the one they inherited. But this requires guidance, mentorship, and above all the spaces - physical and intellectual in which curiosity can thrive without the constant pull of the screen.

Perhaps that is where a quiet optimism lies. Young people are not fleeing technology; they are redefining their relationship with it. What was once a default is becoming a choice. The question for the rest of us is whether we can help them turn that choice into freedom, notably to read, to think, to connect, and to live more fully in the world beyond the feed.

Author’s note:
This article draws on reporting and analysis from Die Zeit, GWI, Pew Research Center, WHO Europe, and other recent surveys on youth media behaviour. The author invites both young readers and schools in the Lake Geneva region, and beyond, to share their own experiences of “unscrolling”: what happens when you put the phone down and look up.

Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet is a foreign correspondent and author with over 40 years’ experience reporting wars, humanitarian crises and environment across the globe. He is based in the Lake Geneva area along the Franco-Swiss border.