Gen Z has grown up with Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and a phone practically glued to our hands. But… what if I told you that 40% of young people in this generation wish social media had never been invented? And that is not all. 63% of Gen Z adults already unplug from technology voluntarily.
If not, why do you think everyone is signing up for pottery and barre classes?
(and in case you are wondering, barre is a mix of ballet and Pilates that apparently is much more cool)
Leaving aside the fact that an infinite website/social network is a clearly identifiable, addictive, and harmful dark pattern… Pinterest has just published a report that raises a rather surprising idea: brands should stop obsessing over keeping us glued to screens.
Yes, you heard that right. A platform that, among other things, lives off digital advertising is recommending that we stop scrolling. And beyond the fact that, in the end, this is coming from a company that probably wants to sell us something, the most interesting part is that its proposal makes a lot of sense for the future of this sector.
Let us be honest: how many times have you opened Instagram to check one thing and, before you realized it, spent half an hour watching videos you barely even remember? In fact, while scrolling through social media myself, I have come across the occasional video asking whether I remembered the one right before it. And the answer, embarrassing as it is to admit, has most of the time been no.
This has a name: doomscrolling, although the term is especially used for compulsively consuming negative news.
Sticking with the topic at hand… Pinterest highlights an interesting statistic: in 44% of the cases analyzed, people who go online end up scrolling through content they had not planned to consume. It is what they call “the loop”: a dynamic in which we jump from one piece of content to another, often without any specific goal. And they would know, considering this is the platform many of us turn to for a peaceful scroll through beautiful things or a bit of inspiration.
Does this mean young people want to leave the internet behind? Obviously not, especially since we have practically helped build it… What does seem to be changing is what this audience expects to get out of being online.
For example, the study says searches for “things to do instead of scrolling” have increased 365% year over year on the platform. Searches related to basic phones, analog activities, and plans to make away from screens are also on the rise. Technology is still important, but there is growing interest in using it to do things in the real world. Even content creators such as Jesús Villegas took on a challenge that practically turned into a study, putting himself to the test: 15 days without a phone on an island.
To measure the results, he tracked his brain activity before and after the experiment, revealing the following: before giving up his phone, using it and scrolling generated “calm” signals in his brain; after fifteen days without it, using it again caused his brain to become stressed once more.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by villegas (@yisasvillegas)
A post shared by villegas (@yisasvillegas)
At the end of the day, we are part of this too; we are accomplices. At first, nobody believed you could sell a product on social media, then it became the norm, and well… you already know what came next. With that in mind, Pinterest is proposing a new sales strategy: Design the Exit. And what does that mean?
It means that instead of asking how to get someone to spend more time consuming content, brands should ask how they can help that person do something.
To be fair, this is not something Pinterest invented; it is already a common strategy on many brands’ social media accounts. They have simply given it a name.
But let us look at an example.
Imagine a furniture brand posts a beautiful video of a living room. You can watch it, like it, and keep scrolling. But… what if, in addition to inspiring you, it also offered the products, the measurements, and a guide to achieving a similar result in your own home? The difference is significant. In the first case, you consumed content. In the second, that content helped you make a decision.
And Pinterest argues that this is where the opportunity lies for brands: moving from generating views to generating real intent. Of course, we should not forget one thing either: this proposal comes from an advertising platform that is trying to persuade advertisers to invest in it. But beyond its commercial interest, the reflection is an interesting one: what is the point of millions of views if nobody remembers your brand afterward or does anything with your content?
In its report, Pinterest shares two specific cases:
As you can see, marketer, it is not just about advertising products, but about helping people use them or enjoy the experiences they offer.
Of course, these are examples selected by Pinterest, and we do not have enough data to claim they performed better than other campaigns. But they do help explain the concept. And according to the platform, this philosophy comes down to three very simple steps: inspire the user, help them make a decision, and finally, let them act.
Because the goal should not be for them to spend the entire afternoon watching your ads, but for them to find something that genuinely interests them.
You may find it amusing that while Pinterest is talking about helping users leave platforms, other social networks are betting on the exact opposite: integrating more and more activities within them. A good example is TikTok Shop.
Two seemingly opposite strategies. One proposes using the internet as a bridge to the real world. The other aims to keep the entire purchase process inside the platform. But they both have something in common: they want to remove the friction between discovering something and doing something with it.
This suggests that perhaps, instead of measuring only how many people see a post, we should pay more attention to how many find what they are looking for, make decisions, and ultimately become customers.
Because getting attention is great. But getting that attention to actually serve a purpose is even better.
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