News and Insights

I’m a digital strategist who threw a work event and didn’t post any pics

October 16, 2026

Our team recently hosted the office happy hour and didn’t take photos or videos to post on LinkedIn (gasp!). We just had fun. There was nothing particularly novel or unique about the fun we had; it was just a mellow afternoon at the office, away from our desks and with (most) of our devices put away. 

I’m fully aware of the irony that I seem to be flexing about not creating digital content in a digital blog, but I do so to pose a question: What is the value of a work-related social event if you don’t post images and videos or document it in some way on your social media accounts? In a world where we constantly build brand equity — our own, our employers, or the products and services we support — via social media, what is the value and purpose of old-fashioned socializing?

Since our assigned month to host the office happy hour is September and we’re part of the FINN Partners Global Education Practice, we usually lean into back-to-school or homecoming as our theme. Turns out this year’s happy hour was scheduled for September 29, which is National Coffee Day. So this year everyone would be invited to a coffee break in the “teachers’ lounge.” We offered coffee, of course, and the usual potent potables one could expect at an office happy hour. The snacks were donuts and cookies, and the decor amounted to an array of candy cigarettes (a callback to the smoky faculty lounge trope of some of our Gen X youths). The only organized activity was a three-question trivia quiz about American education (test your knowledge below). 

You know how these things go. We met colleagues on different teams, some of us had our first IRL encounters with coworkers whom we only see on Zoom, and we reconnected with the coworkers we never get to see because we’re all busy and frequently working from home. Based on how late people stayed, the happy hum of conversation throughout the evening, and the effusive thank you emails the next morning, we can deduce it was a success.

The event had no selfie-board for people to post to their socials. We didn’t assign anyone to get good video. We didn’t even have nametags. It was just a friendly crowd of about 50 people connecting in one place in time and space. It was beyond the digital realm. If you weren’t there, you missed it.

Oh, and the prize for the winner of the quiz? A gift certificate to a bookstore. Also analog.

The power of presence

As communications experts who serve the education sector, we of course know the value of putting phones away. A mounting body of scientific research is bringing into focus the neurobiological harms of excessive device use, social media and AI, particularly for kids and young adults. Schools across the country are instituting bell-to-bell smartphone bans and even refining their approach to the use of laptops and other digital tools, and we’ve seen the growing popularity of “dumbphones” among Gen Z.

But no workplace can be phone-free — the phone and its emails, Slack messages and texts connect us to the “workplace/office” which is frequently virtual. Virtual, however, is just not the same as being face-to-face. The fact remains that teams that show up together in the same space on a regular basis tend to be more productive, communicate more effectively and build stronger social relationships. They also tend to report more satisfaction with their work, something that’s essential to workplace culture as well as our own sense of purpose. One Stanford study found that in-person teams generated 15% to 20% more ideas than those that were exclusively virtual.

We have no way of scientifically establishing whether it mattered that we didn’t create content for social media at our happy hour. Maybe our guests didn’t even notice. Or maybe it made it easier for us all to be present in the moment.

One happy hour isn’t a radical crusade, of course. But the experience was genuine, and you did have to be there to get a donut and share an IRL chat with a friend. 

Curious to see how you’d fare on our education quiz? Here are the three questions, with answers at the bottom. 

1. What is the average number of days in an American school year?  

2. What is the average salary of an American K-12 teacher?

3. This month, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) published their latest global academic rankings of students by nation. Where was the United States in mathematics? 

Answers: Question 1: 180. Question 2: $74,495. Question 3: 27th in math (13th overall).

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