Ditching the feeds: how one movement urges app abstinence to reclaim real life
Gabriela Nguyen, a 24-year-old Harvard-affiliated founder, champions 'appstinence'—a phased approach encouraging people to cut back on social media. Through her group, begun in 2024, she promotes the 5D method (decrease, deactivate, delete, downgrade, depart) and peer coaching to redesign users' relationship with tech. After years of struggle with Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok and a move to a largely offline life (including a dumb phone and ad-free tools), Nguyen now advocates prioritizing real-life connections and has seen rising demand for guidance and events from others seeking to reduce digital reliance.