“I was constantly distracted, tired, and mad at myself and my device”: Why this tech worker started a series of phone-free socials

Shortly after my wife and I moved to Toronto from Boston two years ago, I attended a Spanish-English language exchange event and met the organizer, Javier Perez. We quickly discovered that we were both horrified by how we were using our smartphones. I was scrolling through Instagram every morning and swiping through TikTok every night. I was getting sucked into these wormholes because that’s what these apps are designed to do. I was constantly distracted, tired, and mad at myself and my device. Javier felt the same. When we started talking to our friends about what we were going through, we found out we weren’t alone.

Related: How smartphone addiction is ruining our lives

Javier has experience setting up events, and I’ve attended a ton of tech networking functions, so we landed on the idea of running a night with a simple premise: no phones allowed. In June of 2024, we found a café that was willing to play host, the Company We Keep on St. Clair West. We hung posters around the neighbourhood and outfitted the café with activities—books, art supplies, sudokus, origami kits, journals with writing prompts in them, that kind of thing.

On our first night, 30 people showed up. As they arrived, we asked them to drop their phones in a plastic box. Beyond that, there was no agenda or expectation. Attendees could do whatever they wanted. Some posted up in a corner and read. Others doodled. But most people had a few drinks and struck up conversations with someone new. A lot of the talk was about people’s challenges with distractions. Strangers would break the ice by asking each other what had compelled them to seek out this mini digital detox. That question led to deeper conversations about psychology and philosophy—not the kind of stuff you usually hear at networking events.

Related: “We don’t need to be hooked up to a digital drip feed of violence to do something about it”: Why this activist is taking the fight offline

By the end of the evening, enough people had asked us when the next event was taking place that we organized a second Unplug night in July. We advertised it on Facebook, and I still remember one of the comments: “Why would I do this? I can just read a book at home.” That’s true. I can’t compete with your couch. But the comment also misses the point of what we’re trying to do. There are very few spaces where we can engage with one another without phones being present. Usually, our attention is split between the people around us and the world contained in our phones.

Unplug took a break over the winter, largely because my wife and I had started new jobs and were preparing for a baby, and Javier had moved to Montreal for work. But we have plans to host more events in both Toronto and Montreal. People sometimes assume Unplug is anti-tech, but it’s not—I work in tech. We’re just trying to help people take a break. I speak from experience when I say that putting your phone away once in a while will help you in ways you can’t even imagine. In doing so, you are choosing to fully engage in the present, whether it’s solving a crossword, making a new friend or observing the world around you.