NYU asks its students to break up with their phones for 30 days

NYU IRL, the university’s initiative on in-person connection, launched a four-week “Phone Breakup Challenge” this week with journalist and author Catherine Price, whose bestselling 2018 book is How to Break Up with Your Phone. Administrators have been pushing the idea since February, when they introduced NYU IRL and the NEST, a phone-free space in the Kimmel Center for University Life.

Price says the goal is not to be offline. It is to set better boundaries so the phone becomes a tool rather than a time sink. Week one is an audit of habits and of the real-world relationships you want to prioritise. Weeks two and three involve muting notifications and a 24-hour day without a phone, and the last week reviews what stuck. The NEST hosts events along the way.

Ishani Upadhyaya, a Tandon sophomore, says that within two days she had replaced scrolling before bed with reading. Tracy Ye, who works at the NEST, says some students who came into the lounge had been spending more than 12 hours a day on their phones and became noticeably more social. The programme has an academic parent: Price co-wrote a graphic novel with Stern professor Jonathan Haidt, whose research inspired NYU IRL and who spoke at the May commencement.