By: Mike Lucas
Newswise Adnan Alkhalili was lying in bed awake and doomscrolling on his phone during the wee hours one winter morning when an idea came to him.
“I just realized that this can’t be normal,” said Alkhalili, who is majoring in psychology with a minor in biochemistry at the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Most Gen Z spend all of their time on their devices and then end up with medication because we’re all chronically sick – that we end up taking for the rest of our lives. We can’t assume that we have to live like this.”
From that realization, the Touch Grass Together movement, which encourages a digital disconnection in favor of a reconnection to the real world, took root.
The 20-year-old said he was worried about how young people exist in conditions that harm their health and wellness – including algorithm manipulation on social media platforms, processed foods and indoor isolation. Alkhalili also thought about how young people really should “touch grass,” slang for telling someone to get off the internet and go outside.
He wanted to “do something about the health crisis my generation was living through,” so he took a train from New Brunswick, N.J., to Washington, D.C., to speak with legislators.
During his time at the nation’s capital, Alkhalili, of Wayne, N.J., befriended Sam Sievers, an engineering student attending the University of Maryland and the son of a diplomat who grew up living in multiple countries throughout the Middle East.
“We started out walking into the Senate Hall and communicating with our senators,” said Alkhalili, who spoke with representatives of senators Cory Booker, D-N.J., Bill Cassidy, R-La., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., among others. “I sat with their teams, talked about what was happening to young people and left more convinced than ever that a student-led movement could have a real seat at that table.”
Alkhalili said he also met directly with the secretary and deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as well as the chief of staff to the U.S. surgeon general.
He and Sievers formed Touch Grass Together in 2025. Alkhalili said the movement aims to promote digital disconnection, combat screen addiction and metabolic dysregulation among generations Z and Alpha. The group, which has registered as a nonprofit and is waiting to obtain 501(c)(3) status, organizes and encourages social media campaigns promoting digital disconnection.
The thought was to keep posts lighthearted and fun
“I was thinking, if we’re going to do this on a really big scale and reach as many people as possible, we need to find a way that we can ensure that we are not just talking about health, but they’re still becoming healthier,” said Alkhalil, who, as the chief executive of Touch Grass Together, appeared on The Dr. Phil Podcast in January. “That’s where the idea of using technology to combat technology came in. I thought, ‘Let’s create the best social media campaigns we can.’”
As a Rutgers student, Alkhalili participated in a cancer screening patient navigation project as a member of the first cohort for the Rutgers Health Service Corps, which provides students of all backgrounds and disciplines with hands-on service and learning opportunities in the public health space.
He credited Jack Hemphill, the associate program manager in the Office of Population Health and co-founder of the corps, for having “his door open for students” as well as providing inspiration.
“The health service corps itself is a unique program that allows students to really use Rutgers Health’s full breadth of resources, which are many,” Alkhalili said. “Ultimately, it gave me more awareness in the health world which is very significant for what I’m doing now.”
Noting that Alkhalili is “super committed to service,” Hemphill said the junior “goes above and beyond in pretty much everything that he does. I wasn’t too surprised when I heard that he started his own group and got featured.”
Hemphill added, “He’s really the epitome of the kind of students we love to see within the corps. We want them to take what they learn and feel empowered to then go out and make a difference. And that’s really what he did.”
A critical element of Touch Grass Together is its field operations on college and university campuses and the recruitment of student delegates, namely 85 influencers charged with creating viral videos and spreading the organization’s message. About 20 of them are paid; others are interns and volunteers.
“They make a social media page and they just promote silly, healthy, Gen Z topics and focus on getting people to go and do something healthy and highlighting healthy moments,” Alkhalili said. “These students basically host large-scale events on campus and they get people to come outside and touch grass. During Valentine’s Day, we had an event where people basically just hugged a tree.”
Touch Grass Together social media posts have received more than 150 million video views and about 160,000 interactions overall, said Alkhalili, adding that the group has more than 1 million followers between Instagram and TikTok and 123,927 pledges on its website.
Alkhalili said he started experiencing symptoms of anxiety, including panic attacks, as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder during his high school years. He found therapy, exercise and diet helpful and crucial to his health and well-being.
He came to Rutgers with the goal of studying psychology “because I was doing a mental health project in high school called Free the Bird, and I really wanted to study mental health.”
His goal with Free the Bird was “basically to destigmatize mental health in my high school,” said Alkhalili, who whose efforts were featured in a segment on NJ Spotlight News in 2021. “I felt like I was in a cage and I wanted to really get out of it by going and sharing with people I had mental health issues and that we all have mental health issues and we should talk about them more.”
After graduation, Alkhalili said he plans to “keep medical school in the picture” and pursue a master’s degree in metabolism. In the meantime, he will be working on Touch Grass Together “full time and ensuring this is something that grows as much as possible.”
“I’m in a moment where I’ve been given such a great position in terms of the nonprofit that I have an opportunity to continue making change on a full-time level,” he said. “It’s not something that I can give up. This is what I want to do.”
|
|