All the traditional gestures of rebellion have been well and truly exhausted and neutralised; tattoos are the new normal, kinky sex is fifty shades of dull, cage fighting is available on TV and drugs are passed around in party balloons. So what’s left? The only really disruptive and troublesome thing a budding rebel can do is to disconnect entirely.

Who are millennials anyway?

Millennials (what we used to call “young people” but now encompasses anyone up to 35) have spent their whole lives interconnected through the web. Their digital footprint is a key part of their identity, but is also the umbilical cord connecting them to government, commerce and their parents. What self respecting counter-culturalist wouldn’t want to sever those puppet strings?

In light of recent high-profile data leaks, privacy violations and hacking cases, it’s hardly surprising that young people are choosing to cut ties to accounts they spent hours populating each day. Security aside, there’s no doubt that relentless commercial activity aimed at this lucrative group has taken its toll. The number of Facebook profiles for 13-17 year olds in the US has declined by 25% since 2011, dropping to 9.8m.

When 10 Downing Street has a Facebook page, which has about half the likes of the Great British Bake Off’s Facebook page, the party is well and truly pooped.

The status envy that took hold in the 80s, spawned by flatscreen TVs and expensive cars, has been superseded. Millennials now value smart design, purpose and ethical processes. Excess is considered crass and people now want experiences that allow them to switch off.

That’s it, I’m logging off

It’s been reported that Facebook has been linked to a surprising number of mental health issues, including feeling depressed and inadequate from social comparison to their peers. The expectation to appear perfect has created a deadly cocktail of FOMO (fear of missing out), jealousy, cyber bullying, death threats and depression; highlighted most recently by blogger Essena O’Neil, who berated social media publicly after she quit Instagram.

The unhealthy dependency and consequences of being on every social channel are leading millennials to the exit door, as they delete their profiles, footprints and histories altogether. By shutting off from social networks, logging off email, using Bitcoins and darknet protocols, this tech savvy generation can go invisible and exclude themselves from being tracked, sold to and exploited.

The over-riding ambition fuelling this movement to disconnect is to be indescribable and invisible; Céline designer Phoebe Philo suggested:

“The chicest thing is when you don’t exist on Google. God, I would love to be that person!”

Smart businesses want to be elusive too

Any significant exodus away from digital media, compounds the problems facing brands; alreadynot helped by ad-blocking software. We’re not really watching TV ads anymore (unless it’s for John Lewis at Christmas and then we’ll probably do that online), preferring instead to watch content on ad-free box sets, streamed online, or fast forward through ads using digital video recorders such as TiVo. Brands have to try to capture data through second screens (smartphones, tablets or computers) that offer interactive features simultaneous to TV broadcast, but being hunted and hijacked through our data is a bi creepy. Who hasn’t marveled at how quickly, after a purchase on Amazon, Google then bombards your desktop with ads for the thing you just bought.

Smart businesses keep this activity to minimum in favour of real world experiences. Savvy brands are drawing people towards their product and services through physical retail spaces such as Niketown, Legoland, the Apple Store, Redbull’s Air Race and most recently, via the impressive Nokia Lumia launch. Naturally we’re all much happier to go to something fun rather than feel pursued and analysed. As Dave Trott, former creative director of The Gate, stated:

We know that £18.3bn is spent on all forms of advertising and marketing every year. We know that 4% is remembered positively, 7% is remembered negatively, and 89% isn’t noticed or remembered.

That’s £16bn wasted, unseen, ignored and avoided. Largely because tracking down and interrupting people has always failed. Millennials are closing their browsers and deleting their cookies just as we closed our front doors to salesmen.

Businesses are catching on

However, some businesses are completely buying into this and profiting from it. One café in Vancouver was specifically built to repel Wi-Fi and phone reception. The owner said “I think the proliferation of digital technology like smartphones has happened so fast that we haven’t really had a chance to have a conversation about the etiquette or the ethics around their use.” Customers reacted favourably and many more cafes with a similar approach are popping up.

From Secret Cinema (which hermetically seals phones in bags to stop people recording the experience to later share outside of the event), to hotels free of Wi-Fi and cafes that encourage people to talk and relax away from their screens, tech is now barrier that many are tearing down. Because only without it, do they become free to do what they want to do.

Barnaby Girling is co-founder and creative director of Alpha Century

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