At the start of 2026 (gosh, how is it already mid-March?!), an article by parenting columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton came out in The Cut, resolving that ‘In 2026, We Are Friction-maxxing’.
Wait, “friction-maxxing”? you might ask. That sounds… tedious.
Well, that’s kind of the point!
We’re at a moment in time when everything has been made convenient.
- We get Uber Eats, Foodora, or Wolt for those nights when we’re just too exhausted to cook.
- We get Netflix or any streaming service of your preference to entertain us and our kids when we get bored.
- We have Claude or ChatGPT to answer any burning questions we may have or even do a large portion of our work for us.
If we really wanted to, we could probably just stay on our couch all day, surfing the channels, ordering food from our phones, leaving some form of AI to run in the background to do whatever it is we’re supposed to do at work.
And yet.
We’ve never felt more burnt out, more depressed, more lonely, more overwhelmed by everything that’s going on in the world. On top of that, most of us probably aren’t even making more money with all this time we’re supposedly saving. So what gives?
According to Jezer-Morton,
Once we’ve adopted a habit of escaping from something, whether it’s Uber-ing dinner five nights a week or using AI for replying to texts, the act of return, which is how we might describe no longer using a tool of escape, feels full of irritating friction. In these moments, we become exactly like toddlers in the five minutes after the iPad is taken away: The dullness and labor of embodied existence is unbearable.
In other words, life itself becomes irritating and inconvenient. I doubt that this is what any of us were looking for when we started using these technologies.
This is where friction-maxxing comes in.
Friction-maxxing is not simply a matter of reducing your screen time, or whatever. It’s the process of building up tolerance for “inconvenience” (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) — and then reaching even toward enjoyment. And then, it’s modeling this tolerance, followed by enjoyment and humor, for our kids.
Some examples of friction-maxxing:
- Stop using AI for every single task or query or curiosity. Flex your research muscles and go old-school (use Google search or ask a friend or expert for extra points).
- Cook instead of ordering in. Or go to the food establishment itself to takeaway the food. You’ll get some exercise AND actually get some social interaction in your day!
- Read or even dive into a lengthy series on Netflix instead of scrolling through shorts on social media. Retrain your focus and capacity for deep work. (Bonus points if you pick up some poetry or a work in translation!).
- Call instead of text.
(Read more of our articles on doing social media detoxes here, here, and here).
Go ahead and be creative! Find fun ways of introducing friction again into your life, even though they won’t feel fun at first. But after a while, I can promise you that you’ll start to see the benefits, whether it be your ability to focus on a project for a long period of time or discovering little pockets of pleasant surprise along the way, like getting a compliment from the restaurant staff at the place you’re taking away from.
Friction-maxxing is basically learning to be human again. And in a world that seems saturated with everything artificial, I think we owe it to ourselves to take back our humanity.
Rinni Amran
Hi! I’m a cultural writer-researcher with over 10 years’ experience in academia. From the warmth of Brunei to the mindfulness of the Nordics, I tell stories that help us reconnect beyond screens and beyond the scroll.
