27-year-old Shaz used to love music. So much so that her online identity was once formulated primarily around it. In the mid- to late 2010s, she was a diehard fan of The 1975 and amassed 18.2k followers on her fan account on X. She even featured in not one but two of The 1975’sth music videos, “Love It If We Made It” and “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME”. 

That was six years ago. Now, Shaz has quit listening to music and, posting on her Instagram Stories a couple of weeks ago, revealed that she is getting rid of all of her vinyl. “I decided to quit music towards the end of 2024,” Shaz tells Dazed. “I can’t pinpoint the exact shift in my mindset towards music, only that I realised I spent more time skipping songs on Spotify or trying to find the ‘right song’ to walk, drive and complete chores to, so I just thought, you know what? Let me give it a break for a bit.”

The idea of quitting music might seem strange or incomprehensible to a lot of people. In 2024, Youth Music, a national charity investing in music-making projects, surveyed 2,100 children and young people and found that 71 per cent said music is a big part of who they are. 68 per cent said they couldn’t live without music, and 70 per cent said music helps them feel connected to others. There’s a science behind that emotional intensity: teenagers’ brains experience dopamine spikes more intensely than adults, meaning that that song you first heard at 16 can feel life-defining. Music often becomes central to the identities and communities we form, especially in youth. So why walk away from it?

For Shaz, it wasn’t the music itself that became the problem; it was how she’d come to rely on it. “Growing up, I used music as a coping mechanism, as I’m sure a lot of us did, and it was a way to distract myself from my real feelings,” she explains. “Quitting music feels like a fog has been lifted from my brain. I feel like I have more clarity to think. I’ve become so much more reflective simply because I’m no longer in this daydream state of being.”

There is a growing desire among Gen Z to reclaim their autonomy from their phones and remove themselves from what Shaz describes as a passive state of being. Last year, anti-tech activist and writer August Lamm predicted that abstention would be the next big thing. On X, she wrote: “I’m calling it right now, abstention is the new big thing; sobriety, celibacy, digital minimalism, dumb phones and religion. The age of hedonistic hyper-consumption is over. We are moving into a new peaceful age marked by moderation and self-discipline; I can’t wait.” Lamm had tapped into something that many young people have been feeling: that their consumption habits have gotten out of control. Now, they’re trying to reclaim their money and agency through no-spend years and their time by deleting their social media or getting dumb phones. Quitting or listening to less music may be the next frontier for their goal of self-reclamation. 

Of course, music itself isn’t the problem; it remains one of the most powerful tools of expression, entertainment and emotional connection. But the conditions under which we engage with it have changed. The rise of algorithmically generated playlists and near-constant headphone use means music has often become background noise, something to fill space, not deepen experiences. A 2021 study by audio brand Jabra found that UK headphone users wore them for nearly an hour a day, with 38 per cent doing so specifically to avoid talking to others. It’s even more intense among teenagers: a 2017 report from the Noise and Health medical journal found that 80 per cent of 13 to 18-year-olds reported listening to music via headphones for one to three hours a day. For individuals like Shaz, stepping away from music isn’t about rejecting the art form, it’s about rejecting the disconnection that comes with consuming it mindlessly.

Before downgrading from Spotify Premium, 26-year-old Isra listened to roughly 800,000 minutes of music in 2023. “My friends would laugh at how high my Spotify Wrapped numbers were, and I started to grasp just how reliant I was on music,” she says. Since stepping back, she’s noticed that she feels more confident in her thoughts and decisions simply because she can hear herself. “I have more confidence in my ideas, direction, and what I am supposed to be doing in the moment – even in the long term.”

Isra describes her former relationship with music as an addiction. To replace it, she now listens to audiobooks, something that supports her work as a writer. Shaz has made a similar shift, turning to podcasts, Islamic lectures, and the Quran as part of a deeper commitment to her faith. While these are still forms of audio input, they represent a more deliberate way of listening. For both, the goal isn’t distraction but intention. Still, it’s worth asking: Are they engaging with these mediums fully, or are these just another form of ambient distraction? Is the goal truly mindful listening or simply replacing one kind of noise with another?

Quitting music feels like a fog has been lifted from my brain. I feel like I have more clarity to think. I’ve become so much more reflective simply because I’m no longer in this daydream state of being – Shaz 

Some view this turn towards abstention and self-restraint as a sign of Gen Z’s quiet slide into conservatism. Article upon article has been written linking Gen Z’s obsession with self-optimisation, gym culture and digital minimalism to right-wing ideology. In one of her most recent Substack essays, Lamm writes that she’s come to realise that aspects of her anti-tech activism are conservative. She discovered this when she attended a conference hosted by the right-wing organisation Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which Jordan Peterson co-founded. She planned to attend the conference and write a takedown but found herself at times agreeing with some of the speakers. One in particular who quoted the French philosopher Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Lamm concluded that both conservatism and anti-tech activism share a desire to return to “an earlier, superior age”.

But the values at play here aren’t so easily mapped onto a political binary. While some conservatives may yearn for a “simpler time”, that past is a myth. As writer K Wilson argues in their article, “Why the Right Constantly Panics Over Societal ‘Decadence” for Current Affairs, the right’s obsession with societal decline is rooted in a fantasy of a golden age that never truly existed. Furthermore, the pushback against algorithmic living isn’t about reviving an imagined past but about imagining a different kind of future, where we are more alert to our surroundings and are not at the mercy of evil tech overlords.

Ultimately, what’s being sought is agency, the ability to choose how we spend our time, what we consume and why. In a world of constant noise and algorithmic influence, stepping away from music isn’t about rejecting the art form itself but resisting the passive, often compulsive habits surrounding it. For people like Shaz and Isra, stepping back is a way of stepping in: into presence, clarity and even discomfort. The point isn’t necessarily to abandon music but to relearn how to listen, with intention and the understanding that silence can be just as meaningful.