Dubai Café to Host Phone-Free Meetup, Encouraging Visitors to Reconnect Offline

Organizers said Dubai will have its first phoneless meetup this Sunday, September 22, at a café in Jumeirah. Hosted by The Offline club, a company based in Netherlands in collaboration with the Seva Café, the event is intended as a way for people to socialize without the presence of technological distractions.

More specifically, the participants will be required to surrender their phones to the organisers upon getting to the event venue and will only be allowed to retrieve them upon the end of the event. The thing that I love most is the fact that for those attending the event, they get to break away from the online notifications and instead do offline activities such as reading, painting, writing, or even engaging with other participants in a conversation. The event also has a sound bath at the café’s garden to help people calm down and be mindful.

The Offline Club co-founder, Andrea Stefanelli, said of the event: “Offline is a way to time travel and return to a world where real means real, and it is a chance to embrace the moment.” Stefanelli talked about Dubai’s hectic lifestyle and how the population relies heavily on technology and that it is sometimes important to step back and relax.

The Offline club began in Amsterdam February of 2024 and quickly spread across the globe. The viral Instagram reel of people knitting and journaling at offline events also expanded it. Started in New York, the club is now in cities such as London, Milan, Paris, and Barcelona, and now, the people of Dubai can unite with the common goal of cutting down on screen time and encourage genuine interactions.

It occurs when digital cacophony and isolation itself are on the increase. Considering that the average man and woman spends 6 and a half hours a day glued to screens of one level or another, such events are a most welcome distraction.