−34min
Daily time U.S. adults spend with friends has dropped from 60 minutes in 2003 to just 26 minutes in 2023. Less than half.
Source: U.S. Census · American Time Use Survey, 2023
Real life, in your area
Lose your phone,
Lose your phone,
find your people.
disconnect_d is for getting offline together. See what your neighbors are actually up to right now. No feed, no DMs, no doomscroll. Just the everyday stuff we used to do before the phone ate the block.
The problem
The bar closed. The rec center became condos. The coffee shop doesn't have chairs anymore.
Third places are vanishing. The default place to be is your couch. So we built an app to get you off it, out the door, and into a room with your people.
No. 01 · Loneliness
+63%
Increase in loneliness reported by adults under 30 in the last decade.
No. 02 · Screen time
7.4h
Average daily screen time on phones. Most of it on apps designed to keep you scrolling.
No. 03 · Real friends
−70%
Decline in face-to-face time with friends since 2003. Adults now average 4 hrs/week.
How it works
Three steps, under a minute.
Sign up with a phone number. See what's nearby tonight. Show up. That's the whole thing. Same flow for new folks and returning regulars.
Step 01 ~30s
Type your number.
One field. We text a six-digit code. No email, no socials, no password to forget.
+1 (555) 123-4567
Step 02 ~45s
Search what's nearby.
Find what's going on tonight, this week, and nearby. No statuses, no posting, no doomscrolling. You control your experience.
APR28
Porch guitar
7:30 PM · Birch St.
APR29
Sunday run club
8 AM · Prospect Park
Step 03 tonight
Log off, show up.
The home screen is what's on tonight. Tap once to RSVP, then close the app and walk out the door.
What you'll find on it
Normal stuff with the people who live here.
No influencers. No activations. No brand pop-ups. Just the things your neighbors are already doing, and would like a couple more people to show up to.
Trust & privacy
Meeting strangers should feel like 2005, not 2025.
We built disconnect_d for people who want their phone to do less, not more. Here's what that means in practice.
Age
18+
Adults only. ID isn't required, but we enforce age rules and remove minors on sight.
Sign up
1×
One phone number. No email, no social login, no password to forget. Same flow for new folks and regulars.
Contacts
0
Zero contacts uploaded. Your phonebook stays on your phone, always. We never store your contacts.
Coverage
US
United States only for v1. We'll expand carefully, city by city, once a block can hold itself.
The receipts
What happens when you put the phone down.
Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling. It harms both individual and societal health. Its mortality effects are comparable to those caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
Dr. Vivek Murthy
U.S. Surgeon General · 2023 advisory on loneliness
U.S. Surgeon General · 2023 advisory on loneliness
We've been subsisting on snacks of connection from social media rather than having the sort of nutrient-dense meal of in-person connection.
Dr. Marisa Franco Psychologist · author, Platonic
Source: NPR / WBUR On Point, 2022
15 cigs
The mortality impact of chronic loneliness in adults is comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, exceeding the risks of obesity and physical inactivity.
Source: U.S. Surgeon General · Our Epidemic of Loneliness, 2023
We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.
Sherry Turkle MIT professor · author, Alone Together
Source: TED Talk · "Connected, but alone?", 2012
50%
Adults with strong social connections have a 50% higher likelihood of survival than those who are isolated, across age, sex, and health status.
Source: Holt-Lunstad et al. · meta-analysis of 148 studies, PLOS Medicine
Social isolation and loneliness are most strongly linked to heart disease and stroke, with a 29% increased risk for heart attack and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
American Heart Association Scientific statement · JAHA
Source: Cené et al., 2022
1in 3
U.S. adults report feeling lonely
CDC, 2024
26min
Daily average Americans spend with friends, down from 60 in 2003
U.S. Census ATUS, 2023
29%
Higher risk of heart disease tied to social isolation in adults
American Heart Association, 2022
$406B
Annual U.S. economic cost of loneliness and social isolation
CDC, cited 2024
From our letters
All letters → Things we're thinking about.
What Was Hiding Behind Snapchat's Ghost.
Disappearing messages built for dealers. 63 families. A search warrant ignored. 75 complaints on one account. The receipts on what Snapchat hid behind its ghost, and how to walk away.
Read the letter →Instagram Sold You A Mirror And Called It A Window.
Zuckerberg's own emails. Meta's own buried research. The acronym they invented for inappropriate contact with kids. And the trial that could finally crack the wall.
Read the letter →Douyin Is Spinach. TikTok Is Opium.
TikTok engineered teenage addiction in 35 minutes. Their own internal documents, accidentally unredacted by Kentucky regulators, tell us exactly why.
Read the letter → Get the app
Today is the day you find your people.
Download disconnect_d, set your zip, and find what's happening near you tonight. One tap to find your people.