There was something slightly absurd about watching the Justin Bieber Coachella set through a sea of phones.

Thousands of people, all in the same place, all witnessing the same moment, and yet almost every one of them holding it at arm’s length, recording it for later. It felt less like a crowd and more like a broadcast studio. A shared experience, mediated in real time.

You could argue nothing has changed. Concerts have always been about memory and documentation. But this felt different. The proportion had shifted. The instinct to capture had overtaken the instinct to feel.

This reflects a broader imbalance. Screen time continues to climb, and with it, a narrowing of experience. The average Gen Z now spends over seven hours a day on screens. Vision dominates. Everything is flattened into something watchable, scrollable, shareable. The other senses fall away. Texture, smell, proximity, even time itself, compressed into a feed.

Beyond the stages of Coachella, we’re starting to see a shift.

Gen Z, the most digitally saturated generation in history, is beginning to recalibrate. Not by abandoning technology, but by placing new value on what it cannot provide. The return to board games is a useful signal. It is not about nostalgia. It is simple joy, human connection, reading the room, not focusing on a screen. The same instinct runs through the return to vinyl, film cameras, listening lounges — analog rituals that resist the logic of the feed. Half of Gen Z vinyl buyers describe the format explicitly as a form of digital detox.

The data on what disconnection actually does is hard to ignore. A 2025 JAMA study found that one week of reduced social media use led to a 16% reduction in anxiety and a 25% reduction in depression among young adults. This isn’t a wellness trend. It’s a signal about what sustained digital immersion costs.

Even the workplace is starting to reflect this. After an education defined by remote learning, many Gen Z are seeking out environments that offer proximity to others. Not just for productivity, but for learning by osmosis.

Mentorship, observation, informal exchange. The kinds of things that do not translate cleanly through a screen.

There is a tendency to frame this as a contradiction. A digital native generation rediscovering the physical world. In reality, it is more that they understand the limits of digital because they have lived inside it.

Talking in person, you see emotions — laughter, reactions. Online, you can misread everything. It’s just not the same.

The result is a different hierarchy of value. Digital for access, speed, and reach. Physical for meaning, memory, and connection. One is efficient. The other is formative.
This is where IRL begins to take on a new role.

It is no longer just the baseline condition of life. It is becoming a designed experience in its own right. Something curated, intentional, and increasingly scarce. The more time spent in mediated environments, the more valuable unmediated moments become.

For developers, operators, and city-makers, this has real implications. Experience can no longer be thought of as visual theatre alone. It needs to engage the full sensory field. Sound, tactility, social density, unpredictability. The things that cannot be replicated or streamed.

Because ultimately, the value of IRL is not that it is real.

It is that it is felt.