We’ve been giving Gen Z a hard time recently. We thought they’d be the generation to change the world. Instead they’re calling in sick from work all the time, having way less sex and eating dinner at 6pm like total wet wipes.
But now there’s a generational trend we can fully co-sign — deleting the social media apps and picking up serious hobbies. A cohort of Gen Z rebels are eschewing dating apps and perfect Instagram grids to work on their crochet skills, learning to sew, getting seriously into hiking and even picking up golf.
Chappell Roan, 27, is at the vanguard of this rebellion. No one expected a niche lesbian artist who draws heavily from drag tradition to go stratospheric, least of all her. But she did.
Yet rather than slog away on the pop star treadmill churning out album after remix after album like her millennial elders, she’s putting strict boundaries in place.
“It took me five years to write the first [album], and it’s probably going to take at least five to write the next. I’m not that type of writer that can pump it out,” she told Vogue while filming her video for The Subway. While she’ll pop onto Instagram to post an update, she deletes it immediately after the promotional task is done. “Socials harm the f**** out of me and my art. I’m not doing that to myself anymore.”
Thank god someone finally said it. I simply cannot spend more than two minutes on that devil application without my mental health throwing itself off a cliff. When I was a teenager back in the Noughties, my parents used to endlessly chastise me for my Facebook addiction (cringe). Now my mother can’t get me to reply to her Instagram DMs no matter how hard she cajoles. I just know I’ll get sucked into a spiral of hating my face/body/taste/life.
I don’t want to subscribe to a neurotically curated feed of my friends living their best lives. Even if we don’t see each other for months or even years, I want to store up our life stories so we can fully debrief in a natural wine bar, or at their kid’s first birthday party. Why develop a parasocial relationship with people you know you enjoy spending time with offline when you could swap doomscrolling for learning a skill?
And it’s not just me. A fledgling group of ‘Gen Z Rebels’ are in the same club as I am: swapping apps for IRL experiences. Picking up pickleball, going to rugtufting, gardening, deleting Bumble. These are the chosen special ones who will lead The Uprising one supper club at a time, where you can bet dinner here is never served before 9pm.
An encouraging sign: I'm hearing more and more about Gen Z "rebels" who refuse to get sucked into the social media lifestyle. They choose to do hard things and analog things.https://t.co/I4X0kNWuwi pic.twitter.com/Rj1IqHDsDF
— Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) July 20, 2025
Admittedly I have been working on knitting the same jumper for two years now. It’s cloud soft and as blue as the sea at dusk. All the component pieces are ready, I’m just scared to take the final plunge and stitch all the panels together. But when it’s done, I’ll have something that will last for years that I made with my own hands. And that’s important when I write ephemera for the algorithms all day.
Those of us raised on the internet know that it’s time to jump ship, and fast. AI slop is polluting our information and entertainment streams. Boomers are outsourcing their brains to ChatGPT. Keir Starmer wants you to upload a selfie before you have a cheeky wank to porn.
Cultivate as much media literacy as you like, but the zombie internet is shuffling towards us. Staying on social media means turning yourself into a guinea pig for weirdo billionaires to extract data from — so why not start a book club instead? Soon, telling someone to go touch grass won’t be an insult, it will be a warning.
Not TikTok though. You’ll have to pry the funny video app out of my cold dead hands. Sometimes you need a soupçon of brainrot to add piquancy to all those wholesome activities you’re taking up. There are brilliant women on there dressing up as Lin Manuel Miranda and climbing out of windows as a bit. And where else would I get my knitting tutorials from — a book?!
India Block is a London Standard columnist
