APPSTINENCE GONE GOOD

Gabriela Nguyen helps people break their overreliance on cell phones and social media to venture offline and become self-empowered again. With over 40% of American social media users ages 18 - 22 feeling addicted and 50% of British teens reporting the same signs, she has her work cut out for her. And she's doing it all through her company, Appstinence, and their 5 D process: decrease, deactivate, deflect, downgrade, and depart. Gabriela isn't just texting the text (see what we did there?), she's walking the walk having been an enthusiastic social media user herself, she now has what she calls a 'dumb' phone (not a smart phone - get it?). “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 says, "It's something that people are actually doing.” We talk about how her dad tossed the family TV when she was a child, what it feels like to connect with others on a human level ...