‘My social life completely plummeted’: gen Z is fighting back against big tech

From apps that block distractions to stripped-down phones, young people are finding ways to unplug from platforms they say profit from their attention

Nelissa Moukoudi, 19, a university student in Canada, noticed a shift once she joined Instagram and TikTok.

“My social life completely plummeted and it felt like my life was only [using] social media and school,” she said.

Tired of fighting for self-control, Moukoudi downloaded Opal, an app that forces users to solve math problems before reopening distracting apps. It is one of a growing number of companies in the sprawling digital detox industry that is enticing users – ideally paying ones – by promising to keep them off their devices. The industry is valued at nearly $1bn and is estimated to grow to nearly $8bn by 2035.

Many of these companies are hoping to capitalize on gen Z’s growing weariness about the devices and social media platforms they grew up with. Nearly 60% of gen Z respondents identified as having a social media addiction in an April poll, and a third of the generation said they had deleted some of those apps, according to a 2025 survey.

The shift has also been driven by growing anger at tech platforms that have left some in gen Z feeling as if they are being exploited for profit.

Gen Z “was basically optimized for dopamine by very smart systems”, said Kenneth Schlenker, 39, a former product marketer at Google and co-founder of Opal. “But this generation is also realizing what they don’t want and are trying to change how the system impacts them.”

Some are turning to new devices entirely. Kendall Schrohe, 23, a founding partner of the Attention Studio, a consulting firm advising parents and policymakers on responsible tech, said that she traded her smartphone for a Light Phone, which sells for $349 and includes minimal smartphone features.

“These big tech platforms have been hurting people for years, and we are just now feeling the impacts of it,” Schrohe said. “Our generation were the guinea pigs to big tech, and our suffering and addiction to these apps were profited off of.”

Shreya Nallamothu, 19, a computer science student at Duke University, created her own DIY “Brick”, a device to block selected apps, using $8 near-field communication (NFC) tags that she bought online.

“Everyone deserves to have a good relationship with technology, and it shouldn’t be cost-prohibitive,” Nallamothu said. “Often the tech companies’ best interests aren’t in the users’ best interests. Social media has gotten away from what good technology can do, and people have noticed.”

Research that Nallamothu conducted in high school helped convince state senators in Illinois to advance a recent bill to prevent parental exploitation of children on social media and the state to pass a law forcing parents to compensate their kids.

New event-focused apps are also trying to capitalize on the pivot away from social media. Pie (People I Enjoy), an app highlighting local events including bar pop-ups, 5K runs and concert meetups, grew 150% in a single month – jumping from 120,000 users in July to 300,000 in August.

Co-founder Nadya Okamoto describes Pie as an in-person, active social network.

“I think of social media as this passive consumption of content, but Pie is separate from that,” Okamoto said. “Users are actively networking and building your social circle.”

Co-founder Andy Dunn, who also founded menswear brand Bonobos, added: “Everything about the product is designed to make you want to go and be in community with those people. It gives you so much more agency.”

The price of using such digital detox apps can vary. An Opal subscription costs $99.99 a year, while Brick, a physical block that phone users tap to lock and unlock apps, costs $59. Shift, an app that promises to turn a smartphone into a so-called “dumbphone” that can only make calls or send texts, charges a one-time $150 payment.

That is one reason why convincing gen Z digital detoxers to pay for a new app could be tricky. Like approximately 95% of Opal’s 10 million customers, 75% of whom are gen Z, Moukoudi said she is using the free version. “I am not going to pay for an app just to reclaim my life,” the university student said.

For some, simply deleting apps does the trick. Han Choi, 26, deleted all social media apps last year to spend more of his time on trivia nights and workouts.

“People are rejecting the systems that have been put in place by people who stand to profit off our compliance,” Choi said. “The doomscrolling economy is not one that we need to keep participating in.”