A solution to reduce screen time may be a silent phone

I didn’t think I had a problem with my smartphone, but looking back, I saw some signs. Until recently, I would have considered myself a Luddit-lite: I don’t have social media or email notifications turned on, but I still instinctively tap icons and mindlessly scroll whenever I get the chance. I have analog watch because I want to know the time, but I don’t know how many unread messages I have, and yet I regularly forget to put it on. When Screen Time was introduced and threatened to snag me with the weekly reality of smartphone use, I quickly turned the feature off and tossed (gently) the phone across the room (on to the bed).

As I reflected on my visceral reaction to Screen Time — a feature ironically designed to help people deal with the addiction that smartphones encourage — it became clear that I had to be in denial. Maybe I was chronically online and finally I am addicted to my smartphone.

In an article for “New Yorker”.Jia Tolentino refers to the strategies I used to put space between me and my phone as a series of “digital chastity belts.” The problem is that any key could unlock them. So I thought, what is the most reliable digital chastity belt? He doesn’t have a smartphone at all.

Enter my new hot pink flip phone. It’s a direct descendant of the brick of the early days, it’s chunky, clunky, looks a bit like Paris Hilton circa 2005, and it’s very satisfying to click into place. (Remember that feeling?) No internet, no apps: just calls, texts, camera and Tetris.

I decided this would be my phone for the week. I probably wouldn’t even go back to a regular phone after that, I told everyone. That was it for me. A phone like that: a phone I won’t answer if someone calls without texting me first, because some things can never be changed.

I’m not the only person who is turning their smartphone into a “dumb phone”: sales of these featureless phones have been rising for two years, and there are reports – rumors – that Gen Z is driving the dumb phone market.

All over the Internet, people are extolling the benefits of having a phone without the Internet. There are dumb phone unboxings on TikTok, questions about life beyond smartphones on Reddit, and YouTube tutorials on how to turn your smartphone into a dumb phone.

So what happened? In 2013 Atlantic stated that the Nokia phone is dead. However, in 2022-2023, the brand’s manufacturer, HMD, doubled sales of flip phones and predicted even greater returns by the end of 2024.

In 2022, American couple Will Stults and Daisy Krigbaum launched the Dumbwireless brand, selling basic phones and accessories. It turns out that they weren’t jumping on a fad, but they got in on the ground floor. In March this year, they sold over $70,000 ($104,000) worth of products, 10 times more than in March 2023.

During Milan Design Week in May, Heineken launched The Boring Phone: a limited-edition, featureless flip phone aimed at young people fed up with Big Tech. There is also Punkt., which looks too much like a calculator for me to feel relaxed using it. The most minimalist option is The Light Phone, which looks like a mini Kindle. It is not backlit, and the first iteration only allowed phone calls. The second version, in 2019, evolved to include text messaging and custom apps like alarm, calendar, directions, music, and notes. The Light Phone’s revenues doubled between 2022 and 2023 and are on target to double again this year. You can now order Light Phone III with a camera, the premiere of which is planned for December.

“I’m not against technology,” The Light Phone co-founder Kaiwei Tang tells me, “but we wanted to create a solution that would give people a break from it.” He says he was pleasantly surprised to discover that as many as 70 percent of their customers are Gen Z. “For them, it’s not about completely disconnecting, but about choosing when they are connected,” he says, adding that it’s a throwback to the old days , when you sat down at the family computer to connect, and when you got up, you were disconnected.

The first day without my smartphone makes me itchy. Without Instagram, what should I browse at the gym? Without Twitter, what should I read over breakfast? Without podcasts, what should I listen to, my own thoughts? No, thank you. But the real confrontation with reality comes later, at the post office. With nothing to scroll through, I admire the attire of the elderly woman in front of me when I see she’s holding a bill of some kind – an actual piece of paper, can you imagine? — and a check. After an hour of waiting, she was told she couldn’t pay here. It dawns on me that she hasn’t chosen to be offline; the world moves on without her. It makes me feel stupid and privileged.

The rest of the week presents other challenges, such as forgetting to take my bank cards (and checking their balances) when I leave the house, or going for a run without music – I had my seventh-generation iPod Classic charged for two days in preparation before I realized that I threw away my headphones.

There are also victories. Like when I go to the hairdresser. Normally I would type the address into Google Maps, but now all I can do is rely on my very poor sense of direction. When I pull into the familiar parking lot on time, I’m happy to realize that I actually know the way to the salon I’ve been going to for three years. Shocking.

When meeting a friend for dinner, I choose a spot on the bus route because I can’t order an Uber there or find my way home if there are too many twists and turns. I’m early and my friend is late, so I buy a book, order a glass of wine and sit down to wait. This is great.

Halfway through the week, I put my phone away. My heart doesn’t jump into my throat and I don’t try to catch it. Instead, I watch as he slides across the floor and hits a large concrete pot. “Is the pot okay?” – my partner asks when he hears the collision.

By the end of the week, I don’t feel like being on social media anymore. Feeling smug, I call Brady Robards, professor of sociology and director of research at Monash University. His area of ​​expertise is young people and digital cultures. I tell him that one of the things I noticed was that I kept reaching for my phone even though there was nothing there to distract me. I changed the wallpaper, re-read the text messages, looked through the 0.3 megapixel photo gallery. What about this? “Until you do these experiments where you disconnect, you don’t realize how integrated smartphones are into our lives,” he says. But it’s important to switch off from time to time. “Disconnection is a kind of social lubricant. People need to step away from the party to get some fresh air or take a walk to have time to think. These are all examples of how we need disconnection in all human interactions.”

After reinserting the SIM card, my iPhone Mini seems huge, too bright and noisy. Instead of slowly reintroducing technology, as Cal Newport recommends in his book Digital Minimalism, I drown in it. My first week back online, I’m late for work, I’m distracted and no laundry gets thrown out. I also miss the term for this story.

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