👋 Hi fellow dumdums,

I knew I had a problem when I tried to zoom in on a printed photo.

Like, an actual photograph. On paper.

I pinched the corner with my fingers like it was a touchscreen and just… waited.

As if my niece’s kindergarten class picture was going to magically expand and offer me Instagram filters and a coupon for hummus.

That’s when it hit me.

My brain is no longer fully offline, even when I am.

Which is why I found myself weirdly obsessed with a Harvard student named Gabriela Nguyen — a person who is, against all odds, doing less on purpose.

She has three phones.
Which sounds like a red flag until you learn that none of them do anything useful.

One is a flip phone. One looks like a rejected prototype for a garage door opener. And the third is a sleek little rectangle that proudly refuses to do anything. No email. No TikTok. No calendar alerts to tell you it’s already your cousin’s wedding and you haven’t bought shoes.

She’s not in a cult. At least not an official one.

She’s the founder of Appstinence — a growing movement where young, high-functioning overachievers buy phones that work worse than the ones their parents threw away in 2004.

And the reason?

Because it turns out when your phone gets dumber…you don’t.

The Glorious Inconvenience of Being Present

Most of us are glued to phones like they contain oxygen, or directions out of IKEA. But Gabriela? She voluntarily lives like it’s 2003.

No apps.
No scroll.
Just the kind of device that takes 3 minutes to type “on my way” and another 10 to realize you meant to say “okay.”

At first it sounds tragic.

But then you realize…

She’s the only one at brunch who actually hears what anyone’s saying.

She’s the only one walking through Harvard looking up.

She’s the only one not pretending to be productive while secretly Googling “What is quinoa really?”

This isn’t minimalism. It’s counter-programming.

Gabriela didn’t ditch her smartphone because she hates technology.

She ditched it because it was working too well.

It was too good at stealing her time.

Too efficient at delivering distractions.

Too convenient at making her forget what she actually wanted to do with her day.

So she added some friction.

Now every text takes effort. Every decision takes thought. Every moment has to be lived instead of hyperlinked.

And that is what makes Appstinence the gold standard of dumb thinking.

It looks like a step backward — until you realize it’s a competitive advantage in disguise.

The Art of Intentional Inconvenience

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do isn’t to optimize — it’s to un-improve.

To take something that's too good at hijacking your attention…and politely punt it out a window.

Appstinence is a reminder that great ideas don’t always start with “how can I do more?”

Sometimes they start with:
“What if I just made it slightly harder to ruin my day?”

Dumb Word of the Day: Nomophobia

(noh-muh-FOH-bee-uh) — noun.
The irrational fear of being without your mobile phone.

Short for “NO MObile PHOne phobia.” (Because apparently even our psychological conditions have bad acronyms now.)

Why it’s peak Dumbify:
Nomophobia is the invisible leash we paid for. A condition where the moment we realize we’ve left our phone at home, we briefly forget how to function as mammals. Time slows. Sweat forms. We start looking around for the nearest payphone, only to remember those were hunted to extinction sometime around the debut of Shrek 2.

It’s the kind of fear Gabriela Nguyen wants you to feel.

Because once you sit in that discomfort long enough—not scroll, not check, not click—you stop panicking…

And start noticing.

Nomophobia isn’t just a diagnosis. It’s a clue.

A sign your brain is overdue for a vacation from the digital IV drip.

Try it in a sentence:
“I accidentally left my phone at home and survived three whole hours with just my thoughts and a crumpled receipt. The nomophobia is fading, but I still twitch when I hear birds that sound like Slack pings.”

The Appstinence Lite Challenge

Today, subtract one helpful thing from your life and see if your brain grows back.

• Turn your phone grayscale.

• Move your most-used app to the fourth screen.

• Write a to-do list by hand. Using an actual pen. Like a barbarian.

• Or, if you’re feeling reckless… make a phone call.

This isn’t about going off the grid.

It’s about kicking the grid in the shins and saying,

“Not today, dopamine goblin.”