One recent Friday night, people packed the dance floor at House of Yes, a club in Brooklyn, as the D.J., Eli Escobar, played electronic music. There were friends wearing glow sticks and dancing as they faced one another, couples kissing and swaying under a giant disco ball and people cheering and jumping as the beat dropped.
There wasn’t, however, a stilted crowd filling the air with bright screens — a ubiquitous sight in the TikTok era.
House of Yes has joined a growing movement of New York City nightlife spaces that are banning or limiting phones on dance floors. This year, the policies have been introduced at recognizable venues including House of Yes and Elsewhere, as well as new clubs such as Refuge and Signal. Pop-up dance parties eschew phones, and even Andrew Yang is throwing no-phone gatherings.
Some venues place stickers over phone camera lenses, have staff members remind attendees of house rules or use signage (“PLEASE DON’T USE PHONES ON THE DANCE FLOOR :),” signs at Nowadays, a club in Queens, urge).
Whatever the method, the idea is to improve the experience, and people appear to be responding.
“There is a more collective energy to the music when there aren’t phones out,” Basil Lyons, 23, said at House of Yes.
At Refuge in East Williamsburg, Felicia Ju, 26, said, “We’re in a club for a reason.” She added, “I’d rather live in the moment and feel the joy.”
In recent years, staff members at House of Yes, in Bushwick, noticed that its dance floor was filled with people taking selfies or recording instead of dancing, said Sophie Winter, the marketing manager.
So in May, the venue decided to test out a major change: It made the dance floor a phone-free zone during Mr. Escobar’s monthly residency.
“It felt like how parties used to feel,” Ms. Winter, 29, said of that evening. “Everyone was in the moment, everyone was enjoying themselves.” It went so well, the policy has remained in place.
Social media can encourage users to chase trendy spots and post about them, rather than enjoy the music and the experience. One quick picture can lead to getting lost in your notifications, and that can kill the vibe for others in the crowd, club owners and patrons say.
People have posted videos lamenting the static crowds around them at clubs, or showing people with their arms erect or their elbows in others’ faces as they vie to document the beat drop. It becomes harder for some people to shed their inhibitions, especially when one person’s moves can become the latest meme. Some musicians and D.J.s also say it’s challenging to respond to a crowd’s energy as they face a sea of screens.
When Nick Spector opened Signal, a club in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this year, he said he insisted on barring phones. Even one person filming on their phone takes others out of the moment and encourages the habit. “It’s not good for the crowd,” Mr. Spector, 37, said.
For nightlife spaces, one consideration around banning phones is losing what is essentially a source of free online marketing. But after Signal opened, Mr. Spector said its no-phones policy received more press than the club’s sound system or music programming.
“That seemed to do more for our marketing than any amount of Instagram videos could,” he said. Mr. Spector’s newest club, Green Room, also in East Williamsburg, plans to install small lockers where people can voluntarily store their phones.
The conversation about how phones change nightlife isn’t new, but it’s growing louder. Dance music is experiencing a renaissance, with new followers emerging from the pandemic addicted to their screens and with little understanding of dance music culture and etiquette. Big warehouse shows and events like those at the now-closed Brooklyn Mirage were highly produced spectacles designed for Instagram stories.
In Berlin, where the famed techno scene is on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list, phone-free nightlife is customary. Clubs in London, Manchester and Athens have joined in on the trend.
And the practice has precedent in New York, where people have long felt the need to unplug from frenetic city life. Output, which opened in Brooklyn in 2013 and closed in 2019, was beloved for its free spirited, no-photos-allowed atmosphere. Nowadays has had a no-phones dance floor policy since it opened in 2015. Basement, an underground club in Queens, opened in 2019 with a strict no-phones policy.
The movement has grown as people seek an escape from phones — even members of Gen-Z who have a reputation for being chronically online.
“It’s healthy, especially for my age group,” Quintazia Roberts, 25, said last month at Refuge, where she was attending her first phone-free party. Later, she said she was struck by how “everyone’s in sync.”
Becky Wang, 27, said she used to document everything, including her favorite D.J. sets. “I realized I was not enjoying the music and spending time in the moment,” she said.
There’s research to support that: One study examining the secret sauce behind Berlin’s nightlife culture found that banning smartphones and cameras can help foster meaningful shared experiences.
By promoting community and a sense of escape, phone-free environments also honor the roots of rave culture and dance music culture as safe spaces for Black and queer people in Detroit and Chicago.
Of course, the bans aren’t a panacea, and some people flout the rules.
Zack Maguire, 27, said covering phone cameras with stickers “feels more like a performance to build credibility for the venue.” Some people complain that the stickers leave a sticky film on their camera lenses.
Mr. Escobar, the D.J., said he wasn’t against people taking photos, as long as there was balance.
“I don’t think people should feel shamed if they capture some moments,” Mr. Escobar, 50, said, “but just don’t let it overshadow actually having fun.”
That is typically the push and pull people describe, said Alix Barasch, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Colorado Boulder, who has published several papers on the topic. “I want the content so I can have it later,” she said, “but it does psychologically take me out of the moment when I’m getting that content.”
But some have developed a workaround for that problem: Book Club Radio, a pop-up dance party where phone cameras are covered with stickers, has recorded its own events and uploaded them to YouTube in recent years. “You don’t need to take your phone out and record this, because we’re going to have a way better video for you to watch later,” said Jojo Lorenzo, 31, a D.J. and an organizer of the party.
Erez Davids and Cal Green, the founders of Raw Cuts, a pop-up party that also covers phone cameras and uploads its own video, said they recognized the reality of the social media era: Videos allow artists and D.J.s to promote their work, and fans to keep up with the scene.
“We’re trying to think of an equation where everyone can win,” Mr. Davids, 28, said. He said the test would be how parties can “maintain those values, behaviors and rules” with ever-growing crowds.
At House of Yes, Gianny Matias, 33, a photographer, was admiring how beautiful her friend looked as she danced under the disco ball. “I wanted to take a video of her,” she said. She reached for her phone, but then she scanned the phone-free dance floor.
Instead, she soaked in the moment and kept on dancing.
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