Madonna and Miranda Kerr lead the new status symbol of logging off
With digital minimalism trending, privacy and discretion will be your biggest assets in the new year.
Logging off is the new luxury. “Dumb phones” are the new accessory du jour. Shutting up is seemingly more valuable than bitcoin right now, and set to increase even more in mental, emotional and social value as we careen towards the new year.
Ironically, 2026 is the year of the horse and it’s a colt that’s already bolted off the information superhighway and into the wilderness where connectivity with reality, not wi-fi, is the goal.
Privacy, like your health, is the greatest wealth you can possess.
Mystery, modesty in choosing what to share and covering your virtual tracks are no longer considered Jane Austen-demure. It’s a form of analog anarchy in this era overrun by overzealous oversharers.
In a recent Proust-type questionnaire by Feed Me, a daily Substack for “enterprise”, upwardly mobile Manhattanites were asked, “Who is having the most fun in New York?”. The overwhelming response from those who work in private equity and earn close to $1 million a year was, “The people who aren’t posting”.
Digital minimalism is a movement that has been growing in popularity with the top one per cent for some time now. That said, modern life is a lot easier when you have a (human) executive assistant on hand to pay your bills, don’t have a boss to reply to on email or a Zoom meeting (that could have been an email) to join.
Queen of the overshare back in the day, Madonna, recently sat down for her first ever podcast interview. The performer was early to push concepts such as sex positivity, to bring yoga to the attention of the masses and lead the early-aughts celebrity embrace of Kabbalah, the mystical religious philosophy based on the teachings of Judaism.
Now Madge is ahead of the curve once again, telling people that shutting up in a world riddled with chatterboxes is a real form of spirituality.
While she is active on platforms such as Instagram to promote her work, Madonna has abstained from giving media interviews for close to a decade. It’s a vow of virtual silence she seemingly shares with fellow cultural trailblazers Kate Moss and Beyoncé.
But she decided to break her media silence with former monk turned entrepreneur Jay Shetty on his top rating wellness podcast, On Purpose. During the two-hour chat, she implored those using and creating artificial intelligence to be alive to the fact AI chatbots such as ChatGPT can “do” things, like plan your next holiday, but they can’t experience that first sip of Champagne as you’re waiting to board your flight.
Don’t miss your copy of the December anniversary issue of WISH magazine in The Australian on Friday, December 5
Logging off, even for a week or a night, can replenish your soul.
It’s a concept Madonna, and many in the business and health sectors, both practice and preach. Less screens, more time to shhh; to gather your thoughts instead of “likes”. The new status symbol is not updating your WhatsApp status, it’s not being available online at all.
“We live in a very busy, chaotic world, lots of noise, lots of distraction. Everybody has to be visually stimulated all the time. There is no peace, there is no quiet,” Madonna told Shetty during their discussion. “Curiosity and being an outsider – those are the things that actually save you – even though it’s not supported in our society. To think outside the box, to take the road less travelled, to not be so concerned with approval, public approval. And now we live in a world where everyone follows algorithms, and algorithms are the opposite of taking chances. They are the opposite of being unique. They’re the opposite of spiritual life. They’re the opposite of consciousness.
“We’re not comfortable being quiet with ourselves and asking ourselves, ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘What am I doing?’, or ‘What is my intention in this specific choice I’m making right now?’,” she said.
Those with a certain amount of privilege, disposable income and, most importantly, time, are logging off and living offline. Others who are navigating life minus nannies while trying to hold down a job (or two), well, it’s a journey akin to weaning.
But young people are now starting to take the first steps away from the bells, whistles and notifications that come with smartphones and screens.
“Not fitting in is what saves you,” Madonna told Shetty. It’s a phrase the Australian government should hijack as it rolls out its world-first social-media ban for those aged under 16. A ban which may not be such an overreach, given that both the wrinkle-free as well as the truly cultured among us are finding 24/7 connectivity to be a bit cringe.
Research by The Harris Poll, a global market research company, discovered that 24 per cent of adults under 30 in the US now believe smartphones have had a negative impact on their mental health. Recent polling out of the UK, as reported by the BBC, shows that nearly a third of all social media users, especially Gen Z, post less than they did a year ago.
The stress of constant digital connection has led to a growing interest in young people buying “boring phones”, capable of just texts and calls. Recent data from Canada show the sale of these so-called dumb phones, such as the original Nokia (owned since 2016 by Finnish company HMD), are steadily increasing, jumping by more than 25 per cent in 2022 to 2023 alone. A growing number of Gen Z and Millennials are opting to use all types of electronic devices less frequently. Searches for “cute” items like Walkmans and out-of-print books are on the rise.
To those who were lucky enough to experience a childhood without a modem, it may come as surprise to learn it’s now a trend on TikTok to film yourself sitting and doing nothing. The idea of “rawdogging” boredom was propelled into the mainstream by Gen Z content creators who boarded flights and sat there for entire journeys sans entertainment. But with showboating in their DNA – their parents likely shared their first ultrasound online – they naturally had to film it. The irony of these videoed efforts to consciously deprive their overly stimulated brains of the constant dopamine provided by devices to reach a place of calm? The trend has been “trending” for months.
For model turned beauty mogul Miranda Kerr, intention and presence is key. The traps of mindless scrolling and sharing the minutiae of her life online is why she rarely posts anything personal online.
Kerr and her husband, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, have a strict “anti screens” policy for their four sons, who range in age between 21 months and 14 years old. “My husband is very anti-screens for the young ones because that’s the way he was raised. We’ve been together 11 years, and I’ve said to him, ‘Look, something that feels good to me is, maybe on the weekend or special occasion, curling up with the kids, the six and seven-year-old and the teenager [son Flynn from her marriage to Orlando Bloom] … snuggling up and watching a movie’. He’s like, ‘OK, but not every weekend’. That’s fine, a compromise, but that’s the extent of the screentime,” Kerr told The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show podcast in October.
Hypocritical or heroic? British Vogue – on behalf of its heterosexual female reader – thinks the latter, according to a viral op-ed titled, Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? But this piece isn’t about smashing the patriarchy. Instead, it examines how posting about relationships is becoming increasingly unfashionable. “Women are obscuring their partner’s face when they post, as if they want to erase the fact they exist without actually not posting them … It feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across as quite culturally loser-ish,” the piece states.
In his essay for The New Yorker, Are You Experiencing Posting Ennui?, Kyle Chayka argued that it’s not just women with boyfriends and billionaires who are abstaining from social media, but a growing number of regular people.
When Facebook launched, it was fun to log in on a PC and upload 98 photos from a digital camera to an album titled “Nightz Out”. Now such platforms feel like catalogues of inauthentic “#authentic” content.
“If the platforms are losing their grip on people’s normal lives and normal people don’t feel the incentive to post anymore, then social media becomes just like television. What we’re left with is the brand advertising and the fast fashion and the houses and the hotel advertisements – and that’s just not the same kind of organic, highly textured stuff that we were used to,” the Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture author wrote.
But don’t think Silicon Valley types will go gently into that good (silent) night. Some, such as Erik Wachtmeister, are capitalising on this digital malaise by launching new social platforms. Wachtmeister is the same person who co-founded A Small World, launched in the pre-Facebook days as the MySpace for the elite. He is back to fix those with a fear of missing out on their rich friend’s news or latest humble brag with a new app called NOMO, short for “no more missing out”.
“Our new app to make the world smaller again … an invite-only global friends-of-friends app designed to increase serendipity and opportunities around us,” Wachtmeister wrote in an email to potential members.
It’s all a bit Black Mirror, isn’t it?
The lack of self-awareness of those looking to throw back to the days of dial-up and MSN Messenger could only exist in what is clearly the point of social-media saturation.
The truly enlightened and aspirational don’t need a digital footprint; they’re happy being dinosaurs offline, unbothered and, most importantly, untraceable.
This story is from the December issue of WISH.
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