‘Silent Walking’ trend has Gen Zers leaving iPhones at home to go for walks

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If there’s one thing Gen Z knows how to do, it’s setting trends.

We’ve had “everything showers”, “bed rotting”, even “bare minimum Mondays” – which have been adopted to varying degrees of social media fanfare.

And now the latest Gen Z “movement” taking the youngest generation by storm is, ironically, not that new at all.

They call it “silent walking”, that is: going for a walk without their phones, or without listening to music, podcasts, or any sort of technological distraction.

Podcaster Mady Maio takes credit for “unintentionally starting a movement” that, she promises, will “change your life”.

In a video on Tiktok, she explains her boyfriend was the one who first challenged her to take a walk without any distractions.

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“No AirPods, no podcasts, no music. Just me, myself, and I,” she said in the video, which has now gained almost 500,000 views.

“And at first I was like f**k no, my anxiety could never – which is probably what you’re thinking – but something within me was like let me just try it.”

Maio said the first two minutes of her walk were “mayhem”, until she hit a “flow state”, when “suddenly you can … hear yourself.”

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“Look, the universe and your intuition comes to you through whispers, so if you’re never alone with your thoughts and you never get quiet you’re gonna miss the whispers,” she said.

“And those whispers are the most important to be paying attention to.”

Maio said silent walking gave her the “clarity” she had always been looking for.

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