The irony of building a digital wellness community online is not lost on me. I've sat with it for a while. And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the online and offline need each other and that the in-person part is the one we're missing most.
The irony
Let's just name it. Secured Wellness lives on a website. I share it through Instagram. You probably found this post through a link. The community WhatsApp group is on your phone.
The obvious response to "I spend too much time on my phone" is not "here's another thing to do on your phone." I understand that tension. I've felt it every time I open my own Instagram to post something about stepping away from Instagram.
But I don't think the answer is purity. I don't think the solution to our complicated relationship with technology is to reject it wholesale. The answer is intentionality choosing how and when and why we engage, rather than letting it happen to us.
And part of that intentionality, for me, has always been creating spaces that are explicitly offline. Places where the phones go away. Where the conversation is what it is. Where nothing is being captured or shared or optimised for engagement.
What online can't do
Online community is real. I don't want to dismiss it. The conversations I've had in DMs and comment sections and group chats have genuinely mattered to me. Connection can happen through a screen.
But there are things it can't replicate.
It can't replicate the feeling of sitting in a room with people who are all trying to do the same thing you're trying to do. The shared discomfort of putting your phone face-down on the table for two hours. The specific kind of laughter that happens when someone admits something they'd never type into a caption.
It can't replicate accountability in the same way. It's easy to scroll past a post about reducing screen time. It's harder to look someone in the eye at the next event and tell them you didn't follow through.
And it can't replicate the way a real conversation moves the interruptions, the tangents, the moments of silence, the sense that you're genuinely figuring something out together in real time.
"The specific kind of laughter that happens when someone admits something they'd never type into a caption. That's what I'm trying to create." Imanie
What happens when we meet in person
I've run a handful of small in-person gatherings over the past year. Nothing formal a living room, a hired space, a corner of a cafe. And every single time, something shifts in the room about twenty minutes in.
People stop performing. The version of themselves they've been presenting online careful, curated, considered relaxes. They start saying things they'd never post. They ask the questions they've been embarrassed to ask on the internet.
One woman told me that the gathering was the first time she'd talked about her phone habits with anyone who didn't either lecture her or dismiss the problem entirely. She'd been trying to change her relationship with social media for two years, and she'd never said that out loud to another person before.
That's not something a post can do.
Real spaces, real conversations something shifts when the phones go away.
This isn't anti-technology
I want to be clear about what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that digital community is less valid. I'm not saying the internet is the problem. I'm not saying you should delete your apps and only talk to people face to face.
I'm saying that for a lot of us, the in-person part has quietly disappeared from our lives and we haven't noticed how much we've lost.
We have more ways to connect than any generation before us. And many of us feel more isolated than our parents did. Those two things are related. Not because technology is evil, but because passive consumption is not the same as connection, and we've started confusing the two.
Worth sitting with: When was the last time you spent two hours with people where no one looked at their phone? How did it feel when it ended?
What we're building
The Secured Wellness gatherings the workshops, the creative evenings, the volunteering days are my attempt to build the offline part intentionally. To create spaces where people can actually practise what we talk about online. Where they can struggle in front of each other. Where they can laugh about how hard it is.
They're not therapy. They're not productivity sessions. They're just people, in a room, without their phones, doing something that matters to them. That sounds simple. It's proving to be rare.
If you're in Kyrenia, I'd love for you to come to one. Details are on the gatherings page. And if you're not, I hope this makes the case for finding or creating something similar wherever you are.
The community we're building online is real. But the one we'll build in person will be something different. Something you can't screenshot. Something that doesn't disappear when you close the app.
