Should you practice Appstinence? Gen Z and Gen Alpha are embracing this Harvard student movement

“APPstinence,” which as you may have guessed, refers to abstaining from using your apps, is a movement encouraging people to get off social media and become less attached to their smartphones. It was founded by Harvard graduate student Gabriela Nguyen. The 24-year-old, who grew up in the center of Big Tech in Silicon Valley, realized she was addicted to both social media and her phone, probably from an early age, so she decided to something about it and started a club at the Ivy League school for her fellow students, along with the website APPstinence.

Aimed at her Gen Z and Gen Alpha peers — although it applies to everyone who feels they have an unhealthy relationship with tech (which is basically all of us, right?) — APPstinence forgoes popular quick fixes like screen time controls, algorithm hacking, or digital detoxes, and offers something much more radical: a five-step method (which sounds Alcohol Anonymous’ 12-step program) to free yourself once-and-for-all from the chains of technology addiction.

Appstinence’s 5-steps method can be summed up in just as many words: Decrease, Deactivate, Delete, Downgrade, and Depart. The point of this process is to reduce the sources of stimulus gradually. The idea isn’t to be completely phone-free, but to eventually be able, over time, to downgrade to some type of dumb-ish phone without social accounts. (Nguyen herself has three dumb phones, including the Light Phone.) According to her, people, and Gen Z specifically, should know they have the choice to opt out of social media.

How does the process work?

Sure, quitting cold turkey is hard. (Am I the only person who regularly deletes Instagram off my phone, only to reload it at 1:00 a.m in a panic?)

Instead, Nguyen’s 5D Method decreases your usage incrementally, by deactivating your social media accounts one-by-one, which automatically deletes your apps 30 days later, allowing you to downgrade your phone, and finally depart from the digital world.

Interested in trying it out? Here’s a full breakdown of the steps.

• Before you start: Make a list of family and friends you are in regular contact with, and who are important for you. Let each know, one-by-one, you’ll be moving offline and to reach you by text or phone instead.
• Step #1, Decrease: Delete all of the apps from your smartphone, and only access them through the browser on your laptop. Unfollow non-essential accounts and turn off non-essential notifications. After a few weeks, you can move to the next step.
• Step #2, Deactivate: Social media apps have a 30-day deactivation period before your account is deleted. Start by deactivating the app you feel you use the least.
• Step #3, Delete: As your accounts automatically delete in 30 days, spend this time strengthening your connections in the real world, for example, exercising, calling your relatives, hanging out with friends, or reading.
  • Refer to your list from before you started. Set a regular schedule to call loved ones (or text, if necessary) and propose a time to hang out in person. Doing this regularly will help you stay connected with the people that matter, and more intimately so.
  • If you panic during this withdrawal stage, re-activate, it’s not a race.
  • Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you’ve deleted the last app.
• Step #4, Downgrade: Get a “transition device” like a low-fi smart phone with limited functionality, something cheap that will allow you to access the basic apps you need (banking, Double Factor Authentication for students, QR codes) and keep it shut off in your bag on outings when you may need it. Also get a flip phone, which you should use most of the time.
• Step #5, Depart: It could take several weeks, months, or over a year to get to this final stage.

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