By Gavin Boyle
Everyone seems to be looking for ways to decrease their screen addictions as even technology enthusiasts are giving up their smartphones for dumb phones.
“You use [the Light Phone] when you need to, and when you put it back it disappears in your life,” said Kaiwei Tang, the CEO of Light, a phone company creating paired down phones that offer very limited services. “We get a lot of customers telling us they feel less stressed out; they become more productive; they become more creative.”
Though smartphones have been ubiquitous in modern life for over a decade and a half, many people are now longing to return to a world without them. The use of dumb phones and traditional flip phones are on the rise as millions of Americans per year choose to limit their access to social media, email and other stressors prevalent on smartphones.
“Most of being disconnected for me has been through two themes: finding joy in time-bound opportunities to ditch the phone and removing apps from my phone,” a dumb phone enthusiast told Newsweek when explaining their relationship with phones. “I’d say I’ve been periodically disconnected from my phone for nearly my whole adult life.”
Even those who have never known a world without the iPhone are longing for freedom from the technology. A British study conducted in May found that 46% of today’s teens wish they grew up in a world without the internet.
Related: Are ‘Dumb Phones’ a Practical Way to Break Technology Addiction?
“The younger generation was promised technology that would create opportunities, improve access to information and bring people closer to their friends,” said Susan Taylor Martin, an author on the study. “Yet our research shows that alongside this, it is exposing young people to risk and, in many cases, negatively affecting their quality of life.”
For this reason, even many young people are embracing dumb phones to free themselves from social media addiction. Fourteen-year-old Ben Cohen, for example, swapped his smartphone for a flip phone after losing his phone for a couple of days and realizing how much of a hold technology had on his life.
“I was lost without a phone for, sort of, two days. And I realized how my days were just so much longer and more full,” Cohen told CBS Evening News. “I knew something had to change because I was not getting my work done, I was anxious, I was biting my nails a lot.”
Millons of Cohen’s peers have had a similar experience. While our world has always trended towards more and more technology, the addictive nature of today’s tech may have gone too far.
Read Next: Here’s How Cutting Screen Time in Half Changed One Teen’s Life
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