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Offlining is becoming a growing trend — online. It was a topic of discussion at the recent tech conference SXSW, where Mark DiMassimo exhorted the crowd to step away from their smart phones. DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum are offlining pioneers, having launched Offlininginc.com, a site that encourages visitors to make an “offlining pledge.”

An article this month in U.K.-based magazine Prospect takes a closer look at the phenomenon.

“We have (at SXSW) incredibly smart people, very capable people, very motivated people – and what are we working on? What are we obsessed with? We’re obsessed with engagement, stickiness, gamification, making sure that we’re attracting people to our worlds, engaging them. We are working very very hard at making sure that when people start to interact with whatever it is that we want them to interact with, that they go as deep as they can, stay as long as they can, they come back as much as they can. So there’s this incredible creative energy focused on the “on” button. Where is the business model in the off button? Where is the business model in helping people find some balance?” – Mark DiMassimo, speaking at SXSW.