Just a quarter of UK adults (24%) say they'd feel comfortable spending more than 24 hours disconnected from digital media and sitting in silence, according to new Opinium polling of 2,000 UK adults commissioned by National Retreat Week, which runs from 19th - 26 September.
The generational divide is stark: only 14% of under-25s and 16% of students said they could comfortably go offline and stay silent for a full day, compared with 32% of over-55s, which was the age group most at ease with digital disconnection.
More than four in ten adults (42%) said spending a whole day in silence without digital entertainment would be difficult, rising to 55% among 18-29-year-olds, against 34% of Boomers. Just 5% said they could sit in silence indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the Christian retreat movement is increasing in popularity. National Retreat Week, which is run by Renew All and founded by the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, says its reach has grown fivefold in three years, from 260,000 people in its first year to 1.3 million in 2025. The initiative now involves 107 retreat centres, churches, denominations and Christian organisations.
Carol Rider, Chaplain and Director of National Retreat Week, told Premier Christian News that retreating from the world is something we see time and again in the Bible with Jesus doing it himself to draw closer to God, and that we can do it too.
"Those thin places where actually you can turn your phone off, we do digital detox retreats where you can just put your phone away and just absorb yourself in the presence of God."
The secular global wellness retreat market is valued at approximately £205 billion ($273 billion USD), according to the Wellness Retreat Market Report amid growing work-related stress and burnout.
"A retreat of a detox in worldly terms, is, you know flurry slippers, a nice white robe, going to a spa. There's a lot of money being made for people taking secular retreats. We need to almost reclaim it as Christians."
Organisers say the week is deliberately reaching beyond its traditional audience, with growing interest among 25-40-year-olds and from Black Majority Churches, evangelicals and charismatics. Rider concedes not everyone has the money or the time to go on a retreat to a different location but that switching off should never be considered a luxury.
"It's about creating 'holy habits'; retreating from the daily demands is all it can be."