The video opens to a young woman stepping into an elevator, head down to her phone. “This is Cory,” an invisible narrator tells us. Cory is a college student who’s been trying to cut down on her screen time. But she’s about to face the ultimate test of resistance: an elevator ride on campus with a stranger. Can she stay strong? 

As another student enters, Cory slowly slips her phone into her back pocket. Her eyes go wide as the doors slide closed. “Don’t just stand there in silence, Cory,” the narrator encourages her. “Do hard things!” After a bit more prompting, our heroine finds her nerve and asks her new companion about the matcha tea she’s sipping. Within seconds, the two are bonding over café recommendations and their mutually dwindling caffeine budgets. They’re giggling, as they walk out of the elevator in the same direction. “Wait, are you also in Econ 101?” Cory asks. Meanwhile, the image fades, and text appears: “NYU IRL. Less phone, more friends.”

NYU IRL is the university-wide campaign New York University announced in January to promote time spent “in real life,” as opposed to online. In addition to masterminding Cory’s skit, which appeared on the university Instagram on September 9, NYU IRL encompasses a range of other educational resources and device-free spaces and programming. The driving concept is that everyone on campus could benefit from some help establishing a healthier relationship with their devices — that we’ve all been Cory in the proverbial (and literal) elevator, itching to look down at our phone rather than engage with the world around us, especially other people.

With the new school year has come announcements of several colleges and universities starting similar initiatives to help students log off and look up. Harvard and Boston University are distributing special pouches in which students can lock their phones away for device-free socializing. The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is organizing cohorts to implement a screen time-limiting tool and meet regularly throughout the semester to discuss the experience. Cornell kicked off a weeklong effort to decrease tech use campus-wide. 

We appear to be universally bugged, disturbed, by the sense that our devices became our favorite shield from uncomfortable interaction and, in the process, we’re depriving ourselves of the necessary experiences of life.

At N.Y.U., the approach has managed to differentiate itself as one of the first and most sprawling. The directive comes from the top, with President Linda Mills and Counselor to the President Kristie Patten, and reaches all three global campuses: New York, Shanghai, and Abu Dhabi. “We realized as the largest private university, with the real global reach, that we could do something very focused and at broad scale,” Patten said. Now six months in, and with programming continuing to pick up, NYU IRL seems primed to lead the charge of colleges eager to find out whether students can indeed feel better, phone-free. 

Doomed to scroll?

The “why” of all this analog enthusiasm may seem obvious. We’re not just seeing it at universities, after all. It’s on display in cafes with no-laptop policies, restaurants and concerts asking visitors to check their phones at the door, and state-enforced phone bans at schools nationwide. We appear to be universally bugged, disturbed, by the sense that our devices became our favorite shield from uncomfortable interaction and, in the process, we’re depriving ourselves of the necessary experiences of life. We’re so familiar with the doom of the scroll that we rarely talk about the one without the other. It’s just, we can’t seem to stop.

Recent lawsuits and ongoing anti-tech movements give credence to these concerns, particularly for young people. Last month, Meta agreed in a settlement to pay up to $17 billion after a consortium of states alleged the tech giant promoted its apps to children despite knowing the platforms were addictive and potentially harmful. Thousands of other cases accusing social media companies of similar wrongdoing are in progress. Attention activism has emerged as an explicit fight to reclaim humanity from the grips of a trillion-dollar industry profiting off the commodification of our attention.   

One of the most well-known experts to address the social-emotional injury of tech for youth is, not coincidentally, a professor at N.Y.U. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, wrote the 2024 best-seller “The Anxious Generation,” which links the dawn of the smartphone to the rampant mental health issues now affecting young people. Childhood, he contends, has been “rewired” since its shift from being play-based to phone-based. Specifically, it has forced children to confront what he calls the “four foundational harms:” social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. 

It’s worth noting that not everyone is convinced by Haidt’s pitch. A common critique of his argument is that it is based on a questionable analysis of the data. Other scientists suggest the dual escalation of smartphone use and mental health problems indicate correlation, but not causation. In fact, a dossier of studies has shown “no, small, or mixed” results as to how or whether tech and social media impact wellbeing. A combination of other factors may also be at play, among them exposure to violence, discrimination, financial concerns, and social isolation.

Students enter the NEST, a device-free space in N.Y.U.'s student center. Credit: New York University

But whether tech is the central culprit in the so-called youth mental health crisis, many young people do seem compelled to distance themselves from their phones, and report relief when they do. At N.Y.U., it was students, some of whom were inspired by a class with Professor Haidt, who reduced their screen time and then approached administrators about finding a way to help others do the same. “They just named numerous benefits to this that they really felt that the greater N.Y.U. community could benefit from,” Kristie Patten, the counselor to the president, said of the students in a focus group she led. 

The initiative that has since become NYU IRL continues to be “led by and for students,” Patten said. And as it came together, the guiding question was how to increase the scope and engage people from every corner of campus. A partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning developed to create resources and learning communities for faculty on limiting tech in the classroom. A designated device-free space, called the NEST, was built out in the Greenwich Village student center, The Kimmel Center for University Life. Similar spaces emerged in Shanghai and Abu-Dhabi. A calendar of device-free events and programming advertises meditation sessions and crafting of all kinds. 

On a cold day in April, more than 200 N.Y.U. students turned out for an outdoor dinner event, Around the Longest Table, in which they sat for a phone-free meal around a single, 0.1-mile-long table, stretched down a street in Manhattan. This September, as part of N.Y.U. Welcome week, Patten said around 1,300 first-years attended a student-organized dance party where they were asked to cover their phone screens and cameras with stickers. In less than two weeks, the N.Y.U. Phone Breakup Challenge will begin, encouraging students to reset their relationships with their phones over 30 days of assignments and incentives designed by Catherine Price, a colleague of Jonathan Haidt and the author of “How to Break Up with Your Phone.” 

In the end, for the wellbeing professionals, the goal may be less about the success of specific activities or initiatives and more about whether, over time, healthier tech habits become part of the wider campus culture.

Hundreds are showing up to these phone-free events, but there’s reason to believe the NYU IRL marketing team still has their job cut out for them. Students on the street outside the Kimmel Center, where the device-free NEST lives, recently expressed mixed awareness of the IRL campaign. Some said they had heard about it broadly, but not about the NEST, or vice versa. One was familiar with both, and another neither. No one had actually spent time in the NEST, though several were interested. A sophomore commented wistfully on how people used to connect more in person when she was growing up. A recent graduate said she didn’t make friends easily and figured the NEST could have been helpful when she was a new student. Another underclassman was intrigued by the option but felt she had too much else on her plate to reasonably go. 

It is possible that, as with most activities, the already-converted are showing up, while those on the margins remain difficult to reach. Carrie Landa, the executive director of Student Wellbeing at Boston University, said she has heard from students that they are eager for device-free spaces — but they’re conflicted, too. They appreciate how their phones connect them with friends and peers and worry that being too offline may cause them to miss out. Landa is taking these mixed feelings into account as she promotes her own device-free effort, BU Unplugged, using Yondr pouches that students slip their phones into and can only unlock with a specific magnetic key. “Creating messaging for something like this is hard,” she said, “because we want to acknowledge the loss while also acknowledging and reminding students of the gain.”

The task being asked of these students isn’t simple. After all, if it were, Patten said, we’d all have changed our ways by now. Zoe Ragouzeos, N.Y.U.’s vice president for student mental health and wellbeing, said she imagines it will take time and experience for students to begin to truly shift their behaviors. So while N.Y.U. can continue gauging interest in IRL activities based on the number of attendees, tracking the impact on their tech use may be more complicated and drawn out. At this point, the primary measurement tool appears to be pre- and post-surveys on tech habits and attitudes that will bookend the school year and specific IRL activities, like the upcoming Phone Breakup Challenge.

In the end, for the wellbeing professionals, the goal may be less about the success of specific activities or initiatives and more about whether, over time, healthier tech habits become part of the wider campus culture. Ragouzeos said her intention when students angst over screen time or social media comparisons is to help them think about other (offline) activities they could do instead. Could they take a walk, meditate, exercise, eat, or sleep — find some other way to pass the time or de-stress that doesn’t involve their phone? To her, hearing an N.Y.U. student simply took a break from the library by getting fresh air rather than getting on the phone would be a triumph. 

Ragouzeos doesn’t need students to be able to pinpoint the exact moment or IRL experience that taught them a new skill or lesson, she said. “But that instinct to take a break in ways that don't include checking out with the phone, to me, is going to be how we measure our success.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.