Maddie Freeman grew up spending hours a day on social media.
The 24-year-old from Littleton, Colorado, said she got her first smartphone when she was 12 years old. When her colleagues started downloading apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Vine and Twitter, Freeman followed suit. It was fun to see what her friends were doing online.
It wasn’t long before social media started taking up much of her waking hours. “My screen time in high school was about 10 hours a day,” she says. And that was just her phone usage.
Freeman experienced significant loss during her high school and early college years. Ten friends and colleagues have died by suicide, five of them in 2020 alone. “Some of them were with him, like three days before he died,” she said. “And then they were gone.”
Freeman began attending the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019, where he studied business administration. In the fall of 2020, after spending half of her freshman year at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, Freeman said she watched the Netflix docudrama “The Social Dilemma,” about the negative effects of social media.
Then, she says, something clicked.
“It really convinced me that this is one of the biggest issues facing my generation,” she says. In addition to isolation during the pandemic, “this is definitely a big part of why we’re all struggling so much.”
According to a 2025 report from the Pew Research Center, nearly half of teens ages 13 to 17 (45%) say social media is making their sleep worse, with 40% saying it’s hurting their productivity and 19% saying it’s hurting their mental health.
Since their founding, social media companies have taken steps to protect their users, such as filtering out bullying comments and allowing minors to opt out of seeing personalized ads.
Days after watching the documentary, Freeman said she came up with the idea for the month-long social media detox that has become a global movement. That is “No Social Media November” or “NoSo November.” Tens of thousands of young people have participated so far around the world.
Freeman now runs full time NoSo, a youth-led nonprofit that leads month-long detoxes. She was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2025.
Learn how she built the mental health movement.
Young people report via email that detox has improved their lives
In 2020, after her friend’s death, Freeman drafted a petition asking Colorado school districts to implement more mental health resources and student support systems.
Freeman said the petition quickly spread, and she started working with local school districts on initiatives such as suicide prevention presentations for high school students.
After watching “The Social Dilemma,” Freeman gave a new presentation in one of her classes about “the business model of technology companies and how it negatively impacts mental health,” she said.
“My goal is to make sure that young people don’t feel like victims of this technology.”
maddie freeman
Founder, NoSo
She also challenged her students to take a month-long break from social media. Freeman told them that she plans to try detoxing herself, and that “if someone would volunteer to join me, that would be great.”
Approximately 30 students took on the challenge. And the response, she says, has been overwhelming.
Ms Freeman said she received emails from young participants saying their body dysmorphic disorder had “disappeared” after just two weeks. She wasn’t surprised. She herself felt the severe effects of withdrawal from social media.
Instead of scrolling, Freeman would pick up a book or go for a walk. “I found it much easier to manage my anxiety and depression because I started looking at healthy coping mechanisms,” she says.
NoSo runs a program to educate young people about the dangers of social media use
While in college, Freeman continued to grow and eventually became NoSo, expanding both his original agenda and activities.
NoSo is currently focused on three main objectives:
Workshops and presentations at schools aimed at educating young people about what Freeman calls “the addictive design of these social media platforms” also include tools to reduce screen time. Hosting in-person mindfulness events with tea, meditation, nature walks, and journaling, she says, encourage people to provide “another coping mechanism for people who scroll too much.”
Mr. Freeman is also currently a Youth Fellow at McGill University, where he supports research into the use of AI among young people.
“My goal is to make sure that young people don’t feel like victims of this technology,” she says of social media. She hopes NoSo November becomes as popular as health trends like Dry January.
Freeman still hears from people about the effects of their own detox.
“I’ve had children come up to me and say that this program influenced them to decide not to take their own lives,” she says. “This is exactly the biggest impact I could have dreamed of, because that’s where this thing started.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 or live chat at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.
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