The “Great Lock In” is Gen Z’s latest self-help trend

Tiktokers love a challenge, especially when it involves a self-imposed period of hibernation that changes their lives and pays off in physical or financial success.

Currently is my feed full from young People Participation in “The great lock-in“A three-month challenge that began in September and runs until the end of the year. The goal is that by January participants have already completed a series of goals and established certain habits, a jump start in “New Year, New Me.”

“Locking In” has become its own aesthetic. Videos under the #TheGreatlockin and #Lockingin hashtags feature Zoomers in sterile apartments wearing neutral workout clothes. They typically fix healthy meals, walk on treadmills, and make lists in magazines with timestamps for each activity. There are inspiring Slideshows tune to rap songs. Others feature soundbites from legendary NBA players like Kobe Bryant And Michael Jordan.

“It's all about programming your mind to have a sprint of time,” says influencer Tatiana Forbes in one Tiktok Video. “Let it be this time when you have made immense efforts in one area of ​​your life.”

It's strange that incarceration is a formal challenge. With Origins In football and video game culture, the term itself describes a period of hyperfocus to get things done. Online, blocking has become the ultimate Gen Z mantra. People post about locking up at the gym, locking up at work, locking up to finish books, locking up to stay hydrated, and locking up to just get through the day.

Of course, this collective desire for productivity and personal growth is not a new phenomenon. If Gen Z seems obsessed with assigning themselves a list of goals every few months, it's probably because they saw, or at least felt, the residual effects of millennial hustle culture. While Millennials responded to their own generation's misfortune – namely the Great Recession – Zoomers are trying to shake off the brain rot of digital lives in the pandemic and navigate economic uncertainty through artificial intelligence and the second Trump administration.

What exactly is Gen Z a mantra for manifesting in their lives beyond Tiktok? Is blocking an act of resistance, a coping mechanism, or just performance? The answer is a little bit of everything.

Gen Z wants to get off their phones with the help of their phones

There are some obvious reasons why young people crave. As much as it's about confinement, it's also about completing tasks. For some, this also means eliminating distractions. Social media lockdown tips include consistently limiting screen time before bed. Some guides are more extreme, encouraging users to “lock out And disappearFrom social media with the expectation that they will eventually return as their improved selves.

Even if time away from their phones is temporary, many young people aspire to digital minimalism, a term popularized by Georgetown University professor and author Cal Newport. There is now a popular subreddit dedicated to promoting digital minimalism as a lifestyle, a way to recharge and live intentionally.

Locking is not that different from a concept coined by Newport: deep work. And it's apparently just the Gen Z version of a millennial idea. According to Newport, this refers to “focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.” Newport says young people he's spoken to are “specifically reacting to smartphones” and feeling like they're “under the spell of digital attention providers.”

“It would be impossible for them to avoid the extent to which these devices essentially deprive them of any meaningful activity and manipulate their psychology,” Newport told me.

Recent studies show just as much. About 83 percent of Gen Z respondents said they have an unhealthy relationship with their phone, compared to 74 percent for other generations The 2024 Digital Wellness Report. Similarly, 72 percent of Gen Z members surveyed were in A 2025 study by Harmony Healthcare It said their mental health would improve if apps were “less addictive.” This year Pinterest summer trend report found that searches on the platform for “digital detox vision board” trended 273 percent.

Still, for many, the act of being active requires posting on Tiktok or Instagram, which you may be opposed to the entire distraction-free concept of confinement. The cooped-up lifestyle falls into a broader category of popular aspiration content online, which largely revolves around wellness and fitness and fitness in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. There is social media capital in what someone who is locked up looks like.

So what's stopping the actually inspiring young people from inspiring with their lives? You would think that getting off your phone is about making human connection. But Gen Z has made a reputation for being that loneliest generationwith Higher isolation rates as Millennials and Gen X-ers, in part due to pandemic lockdowns and heavy reliance on social media. An uncertain economy also keeps Gen Z in a permanent cocoon.

Gen Z's never-ending pursuit of a better self

Saving defies previous stereotypes we held about Gen Z and their relationship with work. Gen Z is anything but lazy – studies have shown that Gen Z has a different perspective on their professional lives than what grind culture has taught millennials. Zoomers are more focused on creating work and life data than climbing the corporate ladder. According to a, only 6 percent say achieving a leadership position is a primary career goal 2025 Deloitte survey. A LinkedIn study also found that Gen Z was the most likely generation to reject jobs that don't offer Flexible work policies. But just because Gen Z isn't as eager to dedicate themselves to a business doesn't mean they aren't busy.

“Gen Z is no longer obsessed with productivity, but obsessed with productivity in a different context,” says Kate Lindsay, co-founder of the Embedded Newsletter and co-host of the podcast ICYMI. “Anecdotally, Millennials enjoy being productive in terms of their careers, while Gen Z is more focused on productivity than self-improvement-'Locks,'”glow,' etc.”

Lindsay sees our resting state becoming “very passive.” “We scroll, we binge, we bed trade,” she said. “Locking down is a way to boot yourself out of it and into a more active state.”

This focus on self-improvement can be explained by a job market that is growing for young people in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, including one Decline in the number of entry-level jobs because of AI. A report from the Bank of America Institute found that over 13 percent of unemployed Americans last July were “new entrants” or those with no prior work experience, a group that refers to “Gen Z versus Gen Z.”

While “locking in” may seem like a shallow exercise to some British fashion.

“Many of the promises we've been sold in the traditional narrative of growing up seem out of reach for the vast majority of the population,” Wilkinson told me. “Factors such as crippling student debt, rising real estate prices, inflation and the bleak outlook for graduate students – especially as AI threatens entry-level jobs – have left many Gen Z-ers dissatisfied with the current state of play.”

In its most radical interpretation, blocking seems to be a way to push back against tech companies that have shortened our attention spans and worsened our social lives. However, in its most common use, the trend of locking shows Gen Z pursuing an endless cycle of self-improvement that offers no solution to their generation's problems.

You have to ask yourself: Is Gen Z having fun with all these rule-based attempts to improve their lives?

“So much of Gen Z's worldview is shaped by economic anxiety, and many can feel uncomfortable if they are not productive,” says Wilkinson. “Current economic structures could make 'fun' difficult. Even 'free' fun, like going for a walk or hanging out at a buddy's house, is a certain level of compromise.”

For now, it just seems like a way to get better by “locking them up,” not necessarily a way to get better. We'll know life has finally improved for Gen Z when they don't have to try so hard.