Interesting read here on how more and more Americans are ditching their obiquitious smart phones in favor of low-tech "dumb phones". Most of these dumb phones have phone and texting capabilities - but not much more. And if you're interested there are links to purchase some dumb/flip phones at the end of the article. RePosted from AOL.
Matt Thurmond seems like a poster child for tech-forward millennials. He runs an AI-assisted platform for mortgage professionals. He leads a nonprofit that connects longevity researchers, investors, and startups. He was the copresident of a technology conference at Harvard, where he got his MBA.
So it's a little surprising that Thurmond is almost never on his phone.
Count him among the "appstinent" — one of a growing number of Americans, mostly millennials and Zoomers, vowing to live a life free of endless scrolling. "Screen time was just crowding out other things," says Thurmond, who's 41. "That's not where I want to get my entertainment, and it's not really where I want to have any substantive conversation. I prefer to do that kind of stuff in the analog world."
Three years ago, Thurmond became worried that his smartphone use was making him less present, less social, and less productive. He traded in his Android for a Light Phone, a so-called "dumb phone" that allows him to text and make calls but doesn't give him access to email and social media. With its simple interface and limited features, it's built to ward off phone addiction.
The switch wasn't totally seamless. Thurmond, a self-professed "long-winded texter," struggled with the phone's E Ink keyboard, which can take some time getting used to. And not being glued to his phone also meant he was slower to respond to texts, which quickly became a point of friction with his now ex-girlfriend.
But as he reduced his screen time, Thurmond realized he didn't need his Android as much as he thought he did, and that many of the Light Phone's inconveniences were actually "benefits in disguise." He started calling people rather than texting, which led to more satisfying interactions. He began each morning sketching out the day's goals on a whiteboard, rather than "just reacting to things" like emails. And instead of using his Android to unlock the Citi Bikes he uses to get around New York, he requested a $10 key from the company.
"I was more relaxed, because I didn't have all this stuff rattling around in my brain," he says. "I was just more fulfilled by things in day-to-day life."
"Appstinence," a play on abstinence, was coined by Gabriela Nguyen, a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard. Nguyen, who grew up in Silicon Valley and got her first iPod Touch when she was 9, came to view her addiction to phones and social media as the enemy of productivity and living in the moment. She found her calling in encouraging people to wean themselves off their phones. Last year, she started a club called APPstinence at Harvard and launched a website of the same name.
"After adopting this lifestyle, it felt like this incredible, secret, competitive edge that I wanted to share with other people," Nguyen says.
Still, even Nguyen isn't completely phone-free. She has three dumb phones, including the Light Phone, which she alternates between based on their usefulness to whatever task she's tackling.
For her, appstinence is a bridge to a healthier relationship with technology. "Leaving social media is not a resignation," Nguyen says. "It's not this idea that you've been defeated, now you have to do a walk of surrender."
As evidence mounts of our collective phone addiction — and the toxic effects of social media — there's a growing appetite for the Gospel of Appstinence. Searches for dumb phones have been surging. From Amsterdam to Brooklyn, there's a growing trend of nightclubs requesting that revelers leave their phones at home — or at least keep them off the dance floor.
Adults like Thurmond and Nguyen, who grew up when the internet and social media were just taking off, are perhaps the most desperate to reclaim the attention and focus that technology has taken from them. But lately, the appstinence movement has also begun to capture teens and college students, many of whom grew up seeing their phones as integral to their social lives. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that most American teens have access to smartphones — and nearly half reported being online "almost constantly."
Samantha Palazzolo was in sixth grade when she got her first iPhone, and she spent most of her middle and high school years glued to it. "I would stay on social media, scrolling instead of going to sleep, even if I was tired," says Palazzolo, who's now 20.
She began questioning her social media addiction during her freshman year at the University of Illinois. After waking up one morning feeling deeply embarrassed by an Instagram story she'd posted the night before, she began reflecting on how social media was consistently killing the vibe. "Going into college, everyone was telling us, 'You're going to remember these moments forever,'" she says. But her phone was distracting her from her actual experiences. "We were going out to these parties and people would just be scrolling on their phones," she says.
So she and two friends bought flip phones — an old technology that was totally new to them. She loved how the antique-looking gadget served as a natural conversation starter in social situations. And to declare her newfound freedom from social media, Palazzolo turned — where else? — to social media. Her TikTok paean to flip phones went viral, garnering over 18 million views. She also joined a growing number of Gen Zers on TikTok who unbox and offer reviews of their favorite dumb phones. Cult favorites include an HMD Barbie-branded model of the Cat S22, a flip phone compatible with most apps but with a small enough screen to deter doomscrolling.
Seán Killingsworth was an even earlier convert to appstinence. At 15, he traded in his smartphone and started hosting phone-free events at his high school. A few of his peers parodied his events in mocking posts on Instagram — precisely the kind of online bullying he was hoping to get away from. But Killingsworth stuck with it. Today, he runs the Reconnect Movement, which hosts phone-free events across college campuses "to create a fully engaged, uninterrupted social environment that Gen Z rarely experiences."
Killingsworth, who's now 22, recently partnered with Nguyen and Jonathan Haidt, the author of "The Anxious Generation" and a leader in the growing phone-free school movement. Together, they've linked up with Truth Initiative, which advocates against youth nicotine addiction, to plan an international "day of appstinence" to encourage Gen Zers to delete their social media apps.
"It's like a muscular atrophy of our social skills," Killingsworth says of our phone-centric lives. Luckily, he's found that the condition is temporary if it's caught early enough. "They come right back in 15, 30 minutes," he says.
Thurmond's journey to appstinence started in 2022. Craving more in-person interactions as the COVID pandemic wound down, he began hosting monthly digital detox events, which attracted people whose phone use had exploded during the lockdowns — including one man who had spent most of his time messaging with an AI chatbot. The attendees, Thurmond realized, were far more diverse than the people in the algorithm-fueled bubbles of his social media. At one of the events, Thurmond invited Joe Hollier, a co-founder of Light Phone, to make a presentation.
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