Dumbphone life, as r/Dumbphones moderator Jose Briones advised me, is about “recovering your time and a spotlight for the stuff you really worth.” In fact, getting sucked right into a subreddit as a result of it was algorithmically recommended to me—primarily based on my intensive on-line shopping—is the antithesis of that. But it surely’s how I discovered r/Dumbphones, now my favourite place on the web.
“The telephone you had in 2009” is a good approximation. Briones obtained into them in late 2019. On the time, he was logging 12, 13 hours of display time a day. One evening, at round 1 am, he was watching Netflix on his telephone and thought, “Sufficient.”
He tried to go chilly turkey with a Mild Cellphone, a tiny bare-bones machine with an E Ink display and only some primary options. It didn’t work. Life with out Google Maps was too laborious. The siren track of the smartphone was too sturdy, so he picked it again up once more. A couple of months later, amid the isolation and stress of the pandemic lockdown, he gave a dumbphone one other strive. This time, one thing clicked. He took his canine for extra walks, learn extra books, joined a sports activities league, and tried extra hobbies. He additionally found r/Dumbphones—through the algorithm, in fact—and shortly turned its moderator, serving to the subreddit go from fewer than 10,000 members in 2020 to greater than 50,000 4 years later.
I’m a part of that development. Like Briones, I’d tried out a Mild Cellphone again within the day, and in addition like Briones, I’d failed. Once I moved residences, the Mild Cellphone didn’t include me.
That was OK, or so I’ve discovered from r/Dumbphones. On this group, having a dumbphone shouldn’t be about succeeding or failing and even about being anti-tech. It’s about asking your self what you actually need out of your telephone. “It’s a useful, completely happy sub,” says Alex Locklin, who joined it in 2024. “We’re all searching for one thing related however not similar. I believe everybody realizes they’re scrolling an excessive amount of and lacking out on life.” There are not any ideological purity assessments. Nobody accuses you of being a faker in case your machine is insufficiently dumb. I haven’t needed to throw my iPhone into the closest physique of water, to emerge cleansed and pure. The sub is extra beneficiant than that. In my six months there, I’ve not seen something resembling an argument. Arguing with strangers on the web shouldn’t be very dumbphone-y.
New arrivals to the subreddit often search the Dumbphone Finder, a device Briones made for, nicely, discovering dumbphones. You’re taking a quiz with questions like, “Would you like good apps?” and “What fashion telephone would you like?” (candy-bar, flip, or touchscreen), and it tells you whether or not a Cat S22 Flip or a Punkt MP02 may be just right for you. Briones recommends beginning with what you will have: Android telephones may be rooted and modified; iPhones have parental controls that lock apps.
All I needed to do was put my telephone down and use some ideas and methods I discovered on r/Dumbphones. I eliminated each social media app, tried grayscaling. Once I observed I nonetheless saved utilizing my telephone to test the time, I checked out among the images that customers posted, and positive sufficient, virtually everybody had a wristwatch. I obtained an affordable Casio. I additionally began placing my telephone in a bag as a substitute of my pocket. Makes it a lot much less handy to absentmindedly pull it out on the subway.
Even these small steps have made the telephone really feel much less like an extra appendage and extra just like the multi-tool in my bike restore package. My display time has gone down by about an hour a day, but it surely looks like much more. I’m nonetheless struggling to depart my telephone in one other room on the finish of the workday, however I’m getting there.
At r/Dumbphones, there appear to be only some longtime residents or recurring characters, in contrast to on different subreddits. Right here, folks present up, discover what works for them, then vanish. Like a very good dumbphone, r/Dumbphones is the perfect sort of know-how: We use it once we want it.
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