Life without smartphone
April 3rd, 2023I switched to dumbphone on January 30th , 2023. It’s been a bit over 2 months as I’m writing this. I also used it for half of the 2022.
Why? Two major reasons: it’s good for my wellbeing and doesn’t allow corporations to spy on me that much.
Life gets so much calmer without staying in touch 24/7. Smartphone really disturbs you by forcing to constantly be online. Someone needs you? They will wait until you are in the mood to check your mail. No distracting stimuli. Easier to concentrate.
I don't reach for my phone the exact second i got slightly bored, I'm left alone with my thoughts instead. Life gets more real.
How? I'll be honest, it's not easy and comes with a lot of disadvantages. The modern world is not suited for people without smartphones and everyone expects you to have one. But for me the benefits outweigh the cons.
My phone is motorola razr v3i. I think razr is one of the coolest looking phones ever made.. The keyboard looks like a CD!
2025 update
June 11th, 2025I spent around a year in total using dumbphones, but I don't use them anymore. It's too inconvenient in the modern world. The number of times I had to urgently call my friends or parents to ask them to do something that required internet while I was outside reached a critical point.
The things people usually worry about when considering ditching their smartphones turned out to be less of a problem than I initially thought. How do I stay in touch with people? You call them and message them from your PC once you get home. How do I pay? Carry cash or card. How do I navigate? Well, how did people navigate for thousands of years before the invention of GPS? Learn to navigate without it. All of these things are very manageable and you get used to them quickly. The people around you get used to calling you, too.
People also worry about being ostracized if they carry a dumbphone. That didn't happen to me. I didn't really get weird stares or anything because I presented my decision mostly as a stylistic choice. I got the most fashionable flip phone of the 00s, put a lot of keychains on it, and told everyone I was using a dumbphone for the nostalgic vibe. People found it super stylish and cool. I also took pictures of my friends and classmates with that phone, and everyone loved getting these nostalgic photos of themselves.
What actually was the issue for me is that... Lots of random things go wrong. People expect you to have a smartphone, and you can end up in awkward situations without one. Like, a professor suddenly gives a test through an online form during a lecture. You're given a QR code instead of menu at a restaurant. An old lady at the bus stop asks you to check the GPS location of the bus she's been waiting for a long time, but you can't help her, because you can't check that either. You can't get into the movie theater because you forgot to print out the tickets and can't open your email. First things that came to my mind, all of which had happened to me. They're not catastrophic — you can usually find a way around them — but at some point it gets really tiring solving problems like that all of the time.
I think it's worth trying to give up your phone temporarily — it gives you a new perspective. But it's not a viable strategy long-term. It can only work if you're unemployed, not studying, and don't live in a big city.
After all, it's not a big deal whether you use smartphone or not. You shouldn't worry about giving yourself some irreversible damage by being on your phone a lot, that's not really how it works. The effects the smartphones have on the brain are temporary, you will quickly bounce back to your default stimulation needs & attention span once you remove the stimuli.
The bigger issue is your habits, they are harder to change. If you feel like your current habits are dysfunctional, ditching your smartphone for a while can work as a factory reset. After going through 1-2 weeks of "withdrawal" (mindless urges to grab your phone and start scrolling), those neural pathways for getting instant gratification will begin to fade, and those urges will go away. You'll have a blank canvas to develop new habits.
Even though it's been a long while since I lived without a smartphone, I never came back to the same level of compulsive phone use that I had before. Your phone isn't the issue — the apps are. Just don't install the apps that encourage habitual scrolling. I de-googled my phone and deleted my profiles on social media. I don't have youtube installed. I currently don't have a single app on my phone that has infinite scroll. If you need a certain app with that function in your daily life, you could search for a lighter frontend without endless feed and other manipulative practices designed to keep you hooked.