There’s Still Hope for Gen Z: College Kids Ditch Smartphones

Published: June 10, 2025

Gen Z, friends, teens — Photo by Limbo Hu on Unsplash

By Michaela Gordoni

As college kids catch on to the fact that smartphone use can be massively unhealthy, many turn to old tech.

Using a smartphone “basically created this pattern where I was anxious, and so I’d open my smartphone, and then I would hate myself for opening my smartphone, which made me more anxious,” said 20-year-old Charlie Fisher.

Fisher knew what it was like before smartphones took hold of him and his peers. They used to knock on each other’s doors and ask them to go shoot hoops or play outside. Then everyone got Snapchat, and playing outside was old.

“It got to the point where I didn’t even know what being present was,” Fisher said. “Someone said flip phone. I was like, “Wait, you can do that?”

Almost half of teens admit they are online constantly, and 48% of 13 to 17-year-olds say social media negatively affects their peers.

Technology analyst Joe Birch said, “There is evidence of this generation modifying their smartphone behaviour, with concerns around the negative impacts of being constantly digitally connected driving this. Three in five gen-Zers say they’d like to be less connected to the digital world, for instance.”

Another college attendee, Seán Killingsworth, started a movement after he summed up the state of Gen Z as a “social wasteland.”

He experienced some awkwardness when he tried to use a flip phone in high school. So when he got to college, he started events for like-minded people. Thus began the “Reconnect Movement.” Since January, it has spread from Rollins College to the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida. Simpson College in Iowa will also start a chapter this year.

The kids play outdoor games and sports, paint, engage in goofy debates and have fun hangouts.

“It’s a way to see and be able to experience what is possible with just connecting with a group of people for no reason and just hanging out purely to hang out,” Killingsworth said. “That doesn’t really happen anymore, because everything’s so facilitated and planned out by technology.”

Fisher returned to his old hobbies when he ditched his smartphone.

“I’ve been seeing things more like when I was a kid,” Fisher said. “You really see things for how they are in the physical world, and your emotions are really attached to that.”

He also has more time for his music and plays the mandolin, harmonica and other instruments.

One college student who attended a Reconnect event said, “This was an extremely restorative day, and it was wonderful to spend time with a new group of people who I’d never met before, and immediately connect with them more than I connect with people on a regular basis, away from all the distractions and kind of slow down and not be aware of time and just kind of feel what life is meant to be.”

Hopefully Gen Z’s willingness to ditch phones will flow into other generations, too.

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