TikTokers love a problem, particularly if it includes some form of self-imposed hibernation interval that may remodel their lives and repay in bodily or monetary success.
At present, my feed is full of younger individuals taking part in “The Nice Lock-In,” a three-month problem that started in September and lasts by way of the tip of the yr. The aim is that individuals enter January having already accomplished a set of targets and established sure habits, a jumpstart on “New Yr, New Me.”
“Locking in” has grow to be its personal aesthetic. Movies underneath the #thegreatlockin and #lockingin hashtags function Zoomers in sterile flats carrying impartial exercise garments. They’re often fixing wholesome meals, strolling on treadmills, and making lists in journals, full with timestamps for every exercise. There are inspirational slideshows set to rap songs. Others function soundbites from iconic NBA gamers, like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan.
“It’s all about programming your thoughts to go arduous for a dash of time,” says influencer Tatiana Forbes in a TikTok video. “It’s meant to be this time the place you place forth immense effort in some space of your life.”
It’s curious that locking in is a proper problem. With origins in soccer and video-game tradition, the time period itself describes a interval of hyperfocus to be able to get stuff achieved. On-line, locking in has grow to be the final word Gen Z mantra. Individuals put up about locking in on the health club, locking in at work, locking in to complete books, locking in to remain hydrated, and locking in to easily get by way of the day.
After all, this collective want for productiveness and private progress isn’t a brand new phenomenon. If Gen Z appears obsessive about assigning themselves an inventory of targets each few months, it’s in all probability as a result of they witnessed or at the very least felt the residual results of millennial hustle tradition. Whereas millennials had been reacting to their very own era’s misfortune — specifically, the Nice Recession — Zoomers try to shake off the mind rot of digital residing within the pandemic and navigate the financial uncertainty introduced on by synthetic intelligence and the second Trump administration.
So what precisely is Gen Z locking in for, and the way does the mantra manifest of their lives past TikTok? Is locking in an act of resistance, a coping mechanism, or only a efficiency? The reply is a little bit of every thing.
Gen Z desires to get off their telephones — with the assistance of their telephones
There are some apparent the reason why younger individuals are craving focus. As a lot as locking in is about finishing duties, for some, it additionally means eliminating distractions. Suggestions for locking in on social media persistently embody limiting display screen time earlier than mattress. Some steering is extra excessive, encouraging customers to “lock in and disappear” from social media with the expectation that they’ll finally return as their improved self.
Even when the time away from their telephones is short-term, many younger individuals are aspiring to digital minimalism, a time period popularized by Georgetown College professor and creator Cal Newport. There’s now a well-liked subreddit dedicated to selling digital minimalism as a way of life, a strategy to recharge and reside extra deliberately.
Locking in isn’t that totally different from one other idea coined by Newport: deep work. And it’s seemingly simply the Gen Z model of a millennial-era concept. This, in accordance with Newport, refers to “the act of focusing with out distraction on a cognitively demanding process.” Newport says that, in accordance with younger individuals he’s talked to, locking in is “particularly a response to smartphones” and feeling like they’re “underneath the spell of digital consideration purveyors.”
“It might be unattainable for them to keep away from noticing the diploma to which these gadgets are taking them away from basically each significant exercise and manipulating their psychology,” Newport advised me.
Current research reveal as a lot. Some 83 % of Gen Z respondents stated they’ve an unhealthy relationship with their cellphone, in comparison with 74 % for different generations, in accordance with the 2024 BePresent Digital Wellness Report. Equally, 72 % of Gen Z members surveyed in a 2025 examine by Concord Healthcare IT stated that their psychological well being would enhance if apps had been “much less addictive.” This yr’s Pinterest Summer season Development Report discovered that the searches on the platform for “digital detox imaginative and prescient board” had been trending up by 273 %.
Nonetheless, the act of being energetic, for a lot of, necessitates posting on TikTok or Instagram, which you may say is antithetical to the entire distraction-free idea of locking in. The locked-in life-style falls right into a broader class of standard aspirational content material on-line that, following the Covid-19 pandemic, revolves primarily round wellness and health. There’s social-media capital in trying like somebody who’s locked in.
So what’s locking in truly inspiring younger individuals to do with their lives? You’d assume the purpose of getting off your cellphone could be to have interaction in human connection. However Gen Z has constructed a popularity for being the loneliest era, with greater isolation charges than millennials and Gen X-ers, due partly to pandemic lockdowns and heavier reliance on social media. An unsure economic system can also be protecting Gen Z caught in a everlasting cocoon.
Gen Z’s infinite pursuit of a greater self
Locking in defies earlier stereotypes we’ve held about Gen Z and its relationship to work. Gen Z is much from lazy — reasonably, research have discovered that Gen Z has a distinct perspective on their skilled lives than what grind tradition taught millennials. Zoomers are extra targeted on creating work–life stability than climbing the company ladder, with solely 6 % saying that attaining a management place is a main profession aim, in accordance with a 2025 Deloitte survey. A LinkedIn examine additionally discovered that Gen Z was the almost certainly era to reject jobs that don’t provide versatile work insurance policies. However simply because Gen Z isn’t as wanting to dedicate themselves to an organization doesn’t imply they aren’t busy.
“Gen Z isn’t extra obsessive about productiveness, however reasonably, obsessive about productiveness in a distinct context,” says Kate Lindsay, co-founder of the publication Embedded and co-host of the podcast ICYMI. “Anecdotally, millennials get pleasure from being productive in relation to their profession, whereas Gen Z is extra targeted on productiveness as self-improvement — ‘locking in,’ ‘glowing up,’ and so forth.”
Lindsay sees locking in as a response to our resting state changing into “very passive.” “We’re scrolling, we’re binging, we’re bed-rotting,” she stated. “Locking in is a manner of kick-starting ourselves out of that and right into a state that’s extra energetic.”
This deal with self-improvement will be defined by a labor market that has grow to be extremely aggressive for younger individuals following the Covid-19 pandemic, together with a declining variety of entry-level jobs attributable to AI. A Financial institution of America Institute report discovered that over 13 % of unemployed Individuals this previous July had been “new entrants” or these with out prior work expertise, a bunch that “skews towards Gen Z.”
Whereas “locking in” can seem like a shallow enterprise to some, it permits individuals to “really feel accountable for their lives in an economic system that seemingly gives little safety,” in accordance with freelance author and editor Chiara Wilkinson, who lined “The Nice Lock In” in British Vogue.
“Most of the guarantees we had been offered within the conventional narrative of rising up now appear out of attain for the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants,” Wilkinson advised me. “Components like crippling scholar debt, rising home costs, inflation, and bleak graduate prospects — particularly as AI threatens entry-level jobs — have left many Gen Z-ers unhappy with the present state of play.”
In its most radical interpretation, locking in looks as if a strategy to combat again in opposition to tech corporations which have shortened our consideration spans and degraded our social lives. Nevertheless, in its commonest use, the locking-in pattern reveals Gen Z pursuing an countless cycle of self-improvement that doesn’t provide a repair to any of their era’s issues.
You must marvel: With all these rule-based makes an attempt to enhance their lives, is Gen Z factoring in enjoyable?
“A lot of Gen Z’s worldview is formed by financial nervousness, and lots of can really feel uneasy once they’re not being productive,” Wilkinson says. “The present financial buildings may make ‘having enjoyable’ tough. Even ‘free’ enjoyable, like going for a stroll, or hanging at a mate’s home, comes with a level of trade-off.”
For now, it looks as if “locking in” is solely a strategy to get by, not essentially a strategy to get higher. We’ll know that life for Gen Z has lastly improved once they don’t should attempt as arduous.
