Okay okay, I just listened to Miley’s new song, and I’m freaking out. Did she just revive pop music or am I crazy?

Because when did having fun become so complicated?

We have more entertainment than any generation before us. Every song ever recorded lives in our pockets. We can order food without leaving the couch, watch practically anything whenever we want, buy something at 11 p.m. and have it arrive the next morning, talk to someone on the other side of the planet and consume an endless stream of other people’s lives.

We have everything.

And yet sometimes it feels like nobody wants to dance.

We don’t experience things anymore. We consume them.

Go to a concert and look around.

Half the room is watching the exact concert they’re attending through a six-inch screen.

Go somewhere beautiful and there will inevitably be someone trying to capture the perfect version of being there before they’ve actually had a chance to be there.

Dinner needs a photo.

The outfit needs content.

The holiday needs a carousel.

The workout needs to be tracked.

The morning routine needs to be optimised.

Somewhere along the way, experiencing our lives and documenting our lives became almost indistinguishable.

And our phones aren’t entirely to blame. They’re just very good at feeding something that already exists inside us: the desire for stimulation.

When nothing is happening, we reach for something.

Standing in a queue? Phone.

Waiting for a friend? Phone.

Can’t sleep? Phone.

Commercial break? Phone.

Sitting alone with your own thoughts for approximately eleven seconds?

Absolutely not.

Phone.

We’ve become incredibly uncomfortable with nothing happening.

Everything comes with something else attached.

The night out comes with the photos.

The holiday comes with the content.

The purchase comes with another thing to want.

The internet comes with comparison.

The convenience comes with dependence.

The escape can come with something you never asked for.

We’re overstimulated and somehow underwhelmed

Maybe that’s the strangest contradiction of modern life.

There is always something to see.

Open TikTok and within sixty seconds you can watch someone’s divorce announcement, a war, a skincare routine, a dog wearing sunglasses, a political argument, someone’s engagement, a conspiracy theory, an Amazon haul and a stranger explaining why your morning coffee is apparently destroying your hormones.

Then we put the phone down and wonder why normal life feels a little… quiet.

Of course it does.

Normal life cannot compete with an algorithm designed to give your brain something new every few seconds.

A conversation has pauses.

A book takes time.

Cooking dinner can be boring.

Walking doesn’t have a plot twist every twelve seconds.

Real life moves at real-life speed.

And perhaps we’ve forgotten how to tolerate that.

We’re connected to everyone and close to nobody

There’s another contradiction here.

We’ve never had more access to other human beings.

And loneliness is still serious enough that public-health authorities have specifically warned about social isolation and emphasized the importance of real social connection.

Social media itself isn’t inherently evil. It can create communities, maintain friendships and introduce us to people and ideas we’d never encounter otherwise.

But connection and feeling connected aren’t necessarily the same thing.

You can have 4,000 followers and nobody you’d call when your life falls apart.

You can know everything about twenty influencers and have no idea what your neighbour’s name is.

You can spend three hours interacting with people online and still go to bed feeling lonely.

We’ve confused access with intimacy.

We turned everything into self-improvement

Even our downtime isn’t safe.

Walking became getting 10,000 steps.

Eating became macros.

Sleeping became sleep scores.

Reading became a yearly book target.

Exercise became performance data.

Morning routines became optimisation.

Hobbies became side hustles.

And wellness, ironically, became another enormous list of things we’re apparently failing at.

There is nothing inherently wrong with tracking things or wanting to improve yourself.

I love a routine as much as the next person.

But I sometimes wonder when we decided that every part of being human needed a measurable outcome.

When was the last time you did something completely pointless?

Not productive.

Not monetisable.

Not content.

Not “good for you.”

Just enjoyable.

Maybe we need to go analog again

Not permanently.

I’m not throwing my phone into the ocean and moving into a cottage to churn butter.

I like Google Maps.

But perhaps the answer isn’t another detox, challenge or perfectly curated morning routine.

Maybe we just need more moments that aren’t being mediated by something else.

Listen to an album without doing anything at the same time.

Go somewhere without posting it.

Eat dinner with people you like and leave your phone in your bag.

Walk without tracking it.

Buy the ridiculous shoes simply because you love them.

Dance badly.

Talk to strangers.

Sit outside.

Be bored.

Do something that will never become content.

Because there is something deeply human about experiences that exist only because you were there for them.

No proof.

No metrics.

No audience.

Just a memory.

Maybe the kids do want to dance

Maybe we’ve just forgotten how.

We’re overstimulated, over-informed, over-marketed-to and permanently reachable.

We’re consuming everyone else’s lives while optimising our own.

We’re being entertained constantly and somehow becoming harder to entertain.

So perhaps the rebellion isn’t deleting every app, rejecting technology or pretending modern life isn’t incredibly convenient.

Maybe it’s much smaller than that.

Put the phone down sometimes.

Let yourself be bored.

Let music be music instead of background noise.

Let dinner take three hours.

Let a night out exist without evidence.

Let yourself do something badly.

Let yourself experience something without immediately wondering how you’re going to share it.

Because maybe what we’re missing isn’t another thing to consume.

Maybe we’re missing the feeling of being completely inside our own lives.

And sometimes, you really should just fucking dance.