Perspective - Will ‘face-up media’ pull us from our screens and back to the real-ish world

The AdNews end-of-year Perspectives, looking back at 2025 and forward to next year.

 

We’re a nation of addicts and I confess that I rank amongst that number. The ubiquity of smartphones has seen ‘face-down media’ dominate how we search, communicate, entertain ourselves and, whether we like it or not, how we move through daily life. But there is a shift starting to take shape. After years of addictive scrolling, rising anxiety, collapsing social habits and the uncomfortable sense that our devices are quietly reshaping who we are, attention is lifting. Not out of nostalgia for pre-digital life, but because a new class of technologies is pulling media back into the physical world.

 

This emerging shift, towards what I’m dubbing, ‘face-up media’, signals one of the most meaningful behavioural and cultural pivots in the years to come.

 

Personality data from the United States reveals a striking decline in conscientiousness among young adults, with average scores falling. Traits tied to social behaviour, such as extroversion and agreeableness, are also falling. In Australia, one in three young people now meet the criteria for problematic smartphone use, and phone time has climbed past four hours per day. Meanwhile, data from around the world shows in-person socialising continues to drop when compared with the pre-smartphone era. For all the good that mobile technology has unlocked, a generation growing up more distracted, less social and more isolated should give us pause.

 

This is not simple phone fatigue, it is something closer to phone regret. The gnawing sense that while these devices connect us, they also remove us. The hour spent scrolling should perhaps have been spent watching a child play sport, phoning a friend back or simply being present in the world. The Australian Government’s move to ban social media for those under 16 may be framed as a safety measure, but at heart it reflects something deeper. Adults know they are addicted, they know it is harmful, and they do not want their children inheriting the same compulsions. It’s one of the reasons why a Pureprofile study of 800 people in October found three-quarters of parents support the social media ban.

 

And yet none of this signals a retreat from technology. Instead, it reveals that the current form of technology, constantly held and what seems permanently interrupting, is becoming less of a fit for the society we want or the cognitive limits we have reached. The next wave of media will not ask us to abandon digital life, it will simply move it off the small screen.

 

Artificial intelligence is accelerating this shift by making technology increasingly ambient. Tasks that once required a phone, such as translation, navigation or research, are slipping into the world around us. Earbuds now translate languages on the fly. Cars respond to complex voice queries. Wearables and smart appliances quietly act as personal assistants without demanding visual attention. Search is beginning to happen outside browsers and apps.

 

This creates the conditions for face-up media, technology that allows us to experience the world while still accessing the benefits of digital intelligence. Instead of pulling us into feeds, it will meet us in physical spaces. Instead of demanding constant vigilance, it recedes into the background until needed. It is immersive without being isolating, connected without being compulsive.

 

For brands and marketers this shift has profound implications, not as a technical challenge but as a cultural one. When attention moves from screens to surroundings, the battleground changes. The most powerful prompts will come not from feeds but from context, from what we see while walking down a street, what we hear in a store, what appears in a car at the moment of intent. The world becomes the interface. AI becomes the interpreter. Brand becomes the deciding factor.

 

In a future where content is not pushed but summoned by voice, gesture, place or need, brands with strong memory structures and clear value propositions will dominate. When AI systems choose what to recommend in real-world contexts, the brands that are distinct, trusted and genuinely useful will surface most naturally. The fundamentals of marketing remain the same, the right message at the right moment for the right audience, but the moment will become spatial rather than scroll based. The audience becomes defined by environment and the message must be instantly legible in physical and ambient formats, not just creatively optimised for feeds.

 

In practical terms, brands will increasingly need to think beyond the phone. They will need to be discoverable everywhere, through wearables, through voice, through augmented environments. They will need to design experiences that meet people as they live, not as they scroll and see real world again as a canvas for attention.

 

If the last decade fragmented our focus and pulled us inward, the decade ahead may do the opposite. Face-up media hopefully offers a path back to more intentional consumption, richer experiences and more social forms of connection. It is a gentle realignment rather than a revolution, but the psychological tailwinds behind it are strong.

 

Smartphones shaped an era. But is the era of heads-down engagement reaching its limits? It’s a big call and one not likely to change quickly, but the rise of face-up media is an opportunity for brands and I for one am ready to start looking up.