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The Future of Wellness Is Offline, Experts Say
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The Future of Wellness Is Offline, Experts Say

women do yoga overlooking mountains
From digital detox retreats to social bathhouses, experts foresee a rise in “analog wellness” experiences that trade phones for personal connection

While the wellness industry is booming, projected to become a $9 trillion market by 2028, a large percentage of the global population is as stressed out and unhealthy as ever. 

Amid this wellness paradox, researchers, journalists and industry experts believe people are more eager than ever to unplug as they seek refuge from the mental health perils of modern tech.  

In its newly released Future of Wellness Trends 2025 report, Global Wellness Institute (GWI) researchers pointed to a recent Harris Poll finding that 77% of people aged 35 to 54 and 63% of those aged 18 to 34 said they wanted to return to a time before the internet and smartphones. 

Amid this backdrop, GWI research director Beth McGroarty predicts that this will be the year of the “great logging off,” or as she calls it, “analog wellness.” 

“The online world’s relentless manipulations, marketing, disinformation and division campaigns, causing general brain and culture rotting, have gone too far,” McGroarty wrote in the report. “‘Digital detox’ may be as old as the Internet, but 2025 will be the year more people get aggressive about logging off, and new tools and destinations will help them.”

Digital Detoxes Becomes Big Business

The concept of a digital detox isn’t new, but it’s starting to gain mainstream appeal. Entire brands are now being built around the concept of helping people un-plug.

The Offline Club hosts digital detox retreats in the Netherlands and France where people can enjoy phone-free getaways featuring nature walks, chef-prepared healthy meals and creative hobbies like reading, yoga and games. The brand also hosts experiences in London and Barcelona, and is said to be pursuing expansion into new markets. 

Othership, a popular social bathhouse experience with locations in Toronto and New York City, offers emotional wellness programming against a backdrop of hot and cold therapy using saunas and ice baths. While Othership doesn’t market itself as a digital-free concept per se, its classes are phone-free by nature, offering people a way to connect that isn’t rooted in technology.

Person in sauna
credit: Othership

Hobby clubs are also gaining traction as offline wellness hubs.  

Social Pottery, a pottery, painting and handbuilding club, now has five locations in the United Kingdom. Book clubs are also reinventing themselves as modern hangouts for Gen Z-ers and Millennials: Reading Rhythms, which calls itself a “reading party,” hosts large meet-ups in cool spots from New York City to California to Italy. 

“These new analog clubs and salons are rewriting nightlife, what self-care means and will increasingly give fitness studios and pricey social wellness clubs competition as grassroots third spaces,” McGroarty said this week during a GWI event.  

Saunas (Re)Emerge as In-Person Hubs

Sauna culture has been around for thousands of years, but the practice of getting a sweat on is becoming increasingly communal – and creative. 

According to Jane Kitchen of “Spa Business,” who contributed to the GWI report, 2025 will be marked by a continued evolution in the way we use saunas. 

“From urban saunas in New York City and Chicago, to rustic waterfront saunas in Oslo or Brighton, to saunas with immersive art installations in Tokyo, today’s saunas represent a reinvention of an age-old tradition – and an increasingly younger, hipper crowd is taking notice,” Kitchen wrote. 

There’s no shortage of innovation in the sauna industry.

Social bathhouse brands like Othership and Sauna House continue to expand in America and across the pond – WYLD Sauna in Liverpool brands itself as the U.K.’s first floating public sauna, offering communal sauna spaces for up to 30 people. 

young people gather inside of a large sauna
credit: SALT

For those seeking a more private, contrast therapy studios like SWTHZ are becoming popular. 

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Kitchens also pointed to the rise of “sauna-tainment” around the globe. Two brands leading this charge include SALT, a sauna project in Oslo, Norway, that hosts events like concerts, drag shows and DJs, and Farris Bad in Norway, where you can listen to entire albums from bands like Pink Floyd and The Doors. 

Teens Seek Spaces to Unplug

Today’s teenagers might be more connected than ever, but they’re also starting to realize the importance of putting the phone down, at least for part of the day.  

“Teenagers today face mounting mental health challenges, shaped by societal crises, social media pressures and lifestyle changes,” wrote Kate O’Brien, a journalist and well-being author who contributed to the GWI report. “The wellness industry has a vital opportunity to support this generation and foster healthier, more balanced lives.”

Brands are starting to answer this call to action. CorePower Yoga, one of the world’s fitness brands by studio count, has sought to introduce teenagers to the physical and mental health-boosting benefits of yoga. CorePower has offered free summer passes for teens and recently partnered with Matthew and Camila Alves McConaughey’s just keep livin Foundation to make yoga more accessible to inner-city high school students.

U.K.-based Rewire, meanwhile, offers phone-free immersion retreats for teenage girls that include yoga, decision-making workshops and other forms of creative exploration. 

A CorePower Yoga event for high school students (credit: just keep livin Foundation)

Family wellness is also starting to take off. The Place Retreats in Bali offers family-based off-the-grid health and wellness programming including sound healing sessions designed to help parents and their children un-plug so they can better connect with themselves and each other. 

“Beyond simply recommending less screen time, healthier eating, or more sleep, teens need tangible guidance and a sense of being heard,” O’Brien wrote. “Integrating neuroscience-based strategies – teaching young people to regulate dopamine, for instance – can help them navigate tech-driven environments.”

To view the Global Wellness Institute’s Future of Wellness Trends 2025 report in full, click here.

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