The Offline Club: How Ilya Kneppelhout Is Tackling the Loneliness Epidemic With Phone-Free Spaces
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All over the world, people are paying to lock their phones away for a few hours, and they're walking out with new friends. It started with one weekend offline in the Dutch countryside, where Ilya Kneppelhout came back so rested and clear-headed that he wanted everyone to feel it. A few viral videos later, The Offline Club is hosting phone-free gatherings from the Netherlands to the UK, Germany, and Bali. Ilya shares what happens when a room full of strangers puts their phones away, and why he believes phone-free restaurants and concerts could one day be as normal as no-smoking sections. He's also candid about the catch: building an offline movement as an entrepreneur keeps him glued to Instagram and his inbox, and he's still learning how to log off himself.
Key Takeaways: The Offline Club started as a three-day solo detox that left its founders feeling better than they had in years.
Ilya quit Snapchat when he noticed he was posting his own moments mostly to measure them against everyone else's.
Phubbing, short for phone snubbing, is reaching for your phone mid-conversation, and it cuts off the deep talks that only happen when nobody has anything else to do.\
When the club's first videos went viral, requests poured in from every corner of the world, a sign that the need for real connection is universal.
At every event, phones check into a "phone hotel" before guests spend an hour in shared silence and an hour meeting strangers.
A few phones in the room are enough to break the spell for everyone else.
Running an offline movement keeps Ilya on Instagram more than ever, because his business depends on being reachable.
Ilya built the club as a place to rest, and he was surprised to learn that meeting new people is one of the main reasons members come.
He believes phones will follow the path of cigarettes, with phone-free spaces becoming the default and phone use moving to designated zones.
*Find Ilya and The Offline Club online:* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoffline_club Ilya’s LinkedIn: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/ilyakneppelhout Website: https://www.theoffline-club.com/
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