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Gen Z held an anti-social media event. Here's how they heard about it.
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Business Insider
Posted: November 16th, 2025
https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-anti-social-media-even...
"Delete Day," organized by several Gen Z-led groups, called on young people to excise an addictive app from their lives, starting, for now, with their phones. The event was not heavily promoted on social media, unsurprisingly, and minimally online. Instead, attendees relied on more old-school methods, like word-of-mouth. They decorated the park's entrance with chalk signs like "Delete your apps on the grass" and gave out hand-drawn stickers and pamphlets detailing how to save their data before nixing accounts on apps like Instagram. When they were ready, they could take a seat on the lawn, on picnic blankets, with candles, glow lights, and a living room lamp. The event, which drew about 80 participants, featured a few short speeches from the organizers, the deletion ritual, and a no-phones party. Nick Plante, 25, one of the speakers who organizes events around "attention activism" in the city, [said] that the night's tone was meant to be positive. The idea was to bring people together organically. "We wanted to really, really get in on a couple of people and change their lives very deeply," [said grad student Gabriela] Nguyen. Speakers shared their own struggles of growing up with social media, from being distracted at school to living with looming self-consciousness. "If you're like me, you've canceled on a friend because the pull to just stay at home and chill with all your devices is just too strong," Nguyen said.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
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