CALLING ALL GEN Z: Phone Free Friday Summer Challenge!
This Summer, Let’s Reclaim Our Time (Starting June 14th)
Hi everyone,
I’m Freya India, staff writer at After Babel and part of Jon’s movement to Free the Anxious Generation.
Like many of you, I spend a lot of time thinking about the harms of social media and how it has transformed our lives. I’ve written about algorithms transporting us to dark and extreme places, the degrading effects of life online, and grief for a time I never knew. My essays are often emotional, reflecting on this radically different, phone-based world we’re growing up in and how it makes us anxious and disconnected.
But it’s time to take action—even if it’s starting small. Gen Z shouldn’t feel anxious because of social media and smartphones. We should be angry—angry that real-life experiences have been ripped away from us, angry that we are constantly distracted by a deluge of online content without a minute to think, angry about the time that has been wasted.
Let’s start taking it back and reclaim our time…
Join Us From June 14 - August 14 for the Phone Free Friday Summer Challenge!✌️
What Is The Challenge?
This summer, we’re excited to launch our very first Phone Free Friday Challenge! I’m calling on Gen Z (anyone above age 13, born after 1995) to commit to going phone-free every Friday this summer. That means spending as many hours as possible without your phone and immersing yourself in real-life experiences instead.
Throughout the summer, I want you to share your story with me! Visit our Share Your Story webpage and send in pictures, videos of what you’ve been up to, screenshots of your Friday screen-time stats—anything that tells your story. Winning submissions will be featured on the After Babel Substack.*
Get creative! Turn your Phone Free Friday into a Phone Free Sleepover, a Phone Free Date, a Phone Free House Party, or anything else you can think of. Join local communities, go on adventures, and involve as many friends as you can. Once you sign up for the challenge, you’ll receive emails from me with ideas and inspiration, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
I’m Not Gen Z… How Can I Help?
If you’re a parent, teacher, or researcher, you can help by sharing this challenge with as many young people as you can. Encourage your friends, family members, or students to join in, create phone-free events, organize group activities, or take on the challenge yourself to inspire the younger generation. We’d love to feature your stories too!*
I’m Gen Z…How Do I Take Part?
Once you sign up for the challenge using the link below, we'll email you weekly with tips to get started. All we ask is that you share your experiences going phone-free.
• SIGN UP here, using this form.
• RECEIVE a resource guide with helpful tips, plus an email from us every Phone Free Friday to check on your progress
• RECOMMEND the challenge to at least 3 friends!
• SEND in your screenshots, photos, videos, and stories about what you did on your Phone Free Fridays and what new discoveries you made. You can upload and update us anytime here, but make sure it’s before August 14.
What Happens At The End?
At the end of August, we’ll announce the winners! We’ll be looking for participants who truly impressed us—those who committed weekly, got creative, sent us impressively low screen times, and shared what they learned and discovered about themselves…
Winners will be celebrated in a dedicated After Babel Substack post, showcasing their pictures, screenshots, and stories from the summer. Plus, other special prizes to be announced!
One final thing: This isn’t just a one-time event. We want to inspire lasting change. By participating, you’re not just reclaiming your time; you’re joining a movement. It’s not too late to change course. Let’s take back our lives, one Friday at a time.
*Important information
• Privacy of data: We take your privacy very seriously. All personal data will remain confidential and ONLY shared if you are selected as a winner. We will notify all winners beforehand and ask for permission to share your story. People under 13 are not eligible to sign up for the challenge.
• Age and parental permission for story sharing: If you are under 18, please ensure you get parental permission. Before using any story publicly, we will email you to verify the information and ensure you are comfortable sharing your story. People under 13 are not eligible to participate.
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Hi, member of the generation myself here:
I love this challenge, but another wild idea? Don’t send in your memories! Don’t have photos to document them in the first place. 75-90% of my day-to-day memories that I find noteworthy I keep in a little notebook that I carry around in my pocket, and I find paging through that to be a lot more rewarding than scrolling through old photos. It’s also easier to write things down and still feel in the moment, as opposed to pulling out a phone and taking pictures which (to me) immediately adds an air of artificiality and a need to be “liked” by the masses which detracts from the whole point of unplugged interaction. Remember: this isn’t about winning the challenge, it’s about disconnecting.
Both ways of doing this work very well, I’m just throwing mine out there in case some of you would want to try it.
I was all about this challenge, but I had to start laughing when I realized they were going to need to use their phones to document what they did. It seems rather contradictory.