Who better to encourage teens to take a break from their phones than a fellow Gen Z? Parents can attempt to limit their kids’ screen time all they want, but it likely won’t stick unless it’s their idea. That’s why a new trend called “appstinence” is so encouraging. A 24-year-old Harvard grad student started this movement to help people detach from constant phone use, and it’s gaining favor among teens.
Appstinence was founded by Gabriela Nguyen, who started a club about it at her Ivy League school for other students who felt they were addicted to social media, per Fast Company.
Related story
Real Teens Share What Makes a Parent Easy to Talk To
“Forget screen time controls. Algorithm hacking. Digital detoxes. What about Option E: None of the above?” states her website. The movement is simple: taking a break from apps altogether.
According to Nguyen’s website, appstinence means “refraining from having personal social media accounts and instead using direct-line communication like phone calls and texts.” You know, like what cell phones were originally built for. Nguyen doesn’t want a limit — she wants a complete departure from smartphone culture altogether.
How Does Appstinence Work?
It revolves around a 5D method: Decrease, Deactivate, Delete, Downgrade, & Depart.
If your teen wants to follow this method (or you do, because let’s be honest, parents might need a break from smartphones too), then start slowly. Start by letting your close friends and family members know you are experimenting with moving offline and making sure you have their phone numbers to communicate over text or call instead. This is also a good time to write down your goals/fears/feelings about this process.
Decrease: delete apps from your phone and only access them through the browser on your laptop. It helps to slowly lower the amount of time you are on the apps instead of quitting cold turkey.
After a few weeks, it’s time to make a more permanent move — deactivate your social media accounts like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. Just do one account at a time, slowly relying less on apps. After 30 days, deactivated accounts will automatically be deleted. The idea is that by this time, you will have spent so much focus cultivating offline connections, real self-care activities, and learning how to live more slowly that it will be a (relatively) painless transition.
Once one app has been permanently deleted, go through the steps again and again with the others, until all your social media accounts have been deleted. You may need to set a regular schedule or reminder to call loved ones and schedule in-person meetups. It’s also a good time to try out new hobbies and activities that you’ll have time for now that you aren’t doomscrolling.
Downgrade and depart are the last two steps in the appstinence method. This refers to getting a transition device: a phone that’s in between a smartphone and a flip phone that will allow you to download some necessary apps (like Uber, banking, etc.) that primarily lives in your bag unused, and a flip phone that you will use the majority of the time to connect with others. Depart can be anywhere from several weeks to over a year after you began your appstinence journey. This is a chance to reflect on why you enjoy moving offline and existing in the real world instead.
You can sign up for personalized guidance to achieve the appstinence lifestyle, where you will get a lifestyle plan, personal goals, follow up phone calls, and more coaching.
Social Media Addiction
When SheKnows talked to New York City teens in February about their screen use, 17-year-old Annie told us that she’s “embarrassed” about the number of hours she spends on her screen: “I wanna cut it down … I could be doing better things. It’s not good for me.”
Annabella, 16, told us, “My friends are on it [their phones], I feel like I couldn’t get off it or certain apps, I don’t know — I’m just, like, addicted.”
Research backs this up. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey of US teens ages 13-17 found that 19% of teen girls use TikTok “almost constantly,” and 19% of teen boys say the same about YouTube.
Despite all this social connection, teens are lonelier than ever. Richard Ramos, author, speaker, and founder of Parents on a Mission, previously told SheKnows that teens are “caught in a cycle of superficial interaction” online that doesn’t fulfill “their deeper need for belonging.”
“Friendship used to be about shared experiences, you know, the stuff like riding bikes together, staying up late talking, going out for a soda, bowling and working through problems face-to-face or on the phone,” Ramos told us. Now friendships often exist as online exchanges only. “As a result, many teens may struggle with deeper emotional bonds which can lead to increased anxiety, depression, and a sense of isolation — but feel confused as they know a lot of people, but not in real life.”
Certain apps have introduced ways to help teens limit their screen time use — like TikTok, which is launching an in-app meditation guide that is mandatory for those under 18 after 10 p.m. Things like this can help, but sometimes, quitting social media altogether might be the best option for teens.
“It’s not obvious to us. It’s a lot of either unknown or a lot of never lived without it,” Nguyen told Harvard about why she started the appstinence movement to help young people learn how to quit social media. “And so that’s why in addiction research abstention plays such a big role because when you remove the stimulus it gives you a lot to learn about how much control it had over you.”
“It’s not a utopian fantasy of like, ‘Oh, if only I could run out into the woods and leave all my technology behind and get off social media and reinvent myself,’” she added. “It’s something that people are actually doing.”
These celebrity parents are sharing the struggle — and sweetness — of raising teenagers.
More Stories from Parenting
Leave a Comment