Why I Downgraded To A Flip Phone
And How To Spend Less Time On Yours Without Switching
Worldwide, the average adult uses their phone for an average of 6 hours and 40 minutes daily. That’s about 100 days per year spent craning our necks and straining our eyes at TikToks or Instagram reels. This growing problem is not lost on us as a society, in fact, it’s been increasingly a concern. Google Trends data reveals the search volume for phone addiction is continuously growing as people from all walks of life realize they might be using their phones too much.
Smartphones are designed to be addicting. Former Google designer Tristan Harris has spoken out at length about the intentional design choices made to hook the brain’s reward center, many of them modeled after slot machines and similar casino games. The bright colors, vibrations, sounds, and illusion of choice and control are designed to keep us on our phones as much as possible.
When we’re constantly consuming content, we’re told what to think. We willingly turn off our rational brains in favor of absorbing anything handed to us.
Too much phone usage can lead to a sleep deficit, lowered concentration, anxiety, loneliness, chronic insecurity, lowered cognitive function, and even physical problems, like GABA (a neurotransmitter) dysfunction and loss of grey matter in the brain.
Most of us want to decrease our phone time, but with smartphone manufacturers, social media platforms, and streaming services using all their resources to stop that from happening, what exactly are we supposed to do?
For me, taking my time and autonomy back into my own hands looked a little extreme. Like 97% of Americans and 85% of people in the developed world, I own a smartphone. Over the past few years, I’ve spent 5+ hours a day on my smartphone. (And that’s aside from my online job and doing my homework!) Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t seem to keep that number down long-term. Sure, for a week or two I’d read more books or go for walks with friends, but before I knew it I’d be back scrolling mindlessly through YouTube before bed instead.
So I’ve switched to a flip phone.
Downgrading to a “dumbphone,” as they’re called, is a growing phenomenon among Millenials and Gen Zers like myself. The limited functionality of my flip phone forces me to slow down.
Sure, I can text on it, but I can’t whip out 90wpm like I can on a smartphone. (Which is ridiculously fast by the way, perhaps a testament to how much time I’ve spent “practicing.”)
Having immediate access to everything made everything feel mundane, and I didn’t even realize it. I now either write down my questions to look up later when I pull out my laptop, or I go find a book that might have the answer. This return to slow intentionality (which in truth is less of a return and more of a discovery for me, having grown up with technology) is incredibly rewarding.
My anxiety has eased, my FOMO has quieted, and I’ve found many more hours in the day than I expected. The less stimulating flip phone isn’t always in my pocket either, meaning I’m not always available and am able to truly rest in a way I haven’t experienced in years.
I’m actually not sure where it is right now, which has become increasingly common since I’ve made the switch.
Of course, there are drawbacks to a flip phone, and downgrading isn’t a feasible option for everyone. (But if your holdup is basic apps like Google Maps, Whatsapp, or Spotify, let me put you on Android dumbphones.) They’re inconvenient (which I would argue is a benefit, but to each their own), they aren’t good for cashless/virtual payments, and group chats are a mess. But even if you can’t or don’t want to make the switch, you can still regain control over your time and focus. Before I switched to my flip, I spent years figuring out how to trick my brain into using my phone less, and I’ve found plenty of ways to make putting the phone down less painful.
Here are my top ideas to help you take ownership of your phone (instead of the other way around).
- Make it less stimulating.
Just because your smartphone is designed to keep you glued to it doesn’t mean you have to let it. Being aware of the tricks your phone is playing on your brain is the first step to knocking it out of the driver’s seat.
Visually, the bright colors and constant movement on your screen keep your brain in a dopamine loop, waiting for more and more input. Disabling animations (found under Accessibility settings) is an easy, nearly unnoticeable way to lesson visual input. Likewise, turning off autoplay is not a big change but can give you a split second longer to decide if you really want to keep watching.
Hard Mode: If you’re serious about using your phone less, grayscale makes a huge difference. Your phone looks so much less interesting when the world around you is in full color and it looks like it’s stuck in the 1940s. This is a tip I continue to use on my flip.
Aurally, the little beeps or vibrations you get every time Sara from high school goes on Facebook Live about her pyramid scheme are distracting you from what you’re actually trying to do. Silencing off all non-person notifications is a simple way to reclaim some of your time. Keep on text notifications if you need to, but there’s no reason you need to immediately know every time one of your podcasts releases an episode. You’ll find out when you turn on your phone later. You can also schedule silent mode or do not disturb so that you don’t get any aural notifications when you’re trying to sleep, work, or socialize.
Hard Mode: Turning off aural notifications is a fantastic start, but turning notifications off entirely will make a huge difference. Does it really matter if you ever find out that Tumblr user i-am-a-fish liked your post?
2. Limiting phone time.
For a lot of us, the advice to “limit phone time” is utterly fruitless. After all, we’re not trying to spend all of our time on our phones, and it’s not our fault that they’re trying to trap us. I bet you’ve already tried the screen time limits that come in your phone settings, but find it too easy to bypass them.
Luckily for you, there’s more substance in this typically empty advice this time. I strongly recommend installing StayFree, a 100% free app that lets you set usage limits and block apps/sites, with the added benefit of being ad-free. It also has a feature where you tell it how long you want to be in an app before it’ll close it automatically, which I’ve found is fantastic for when you intend to be mindful but end up doomscrolling.
The reason, in my opinion, this app trumps all others, is that you have to type in a sentence/paragraph to bypass the limits (and it doesn’t let you copy/paste). Instead of mindlessly putting in a code, you have to copy, character for character, the provided words. It’s fully customizable. Here’s mine.
I pay attention to how I spend my time. I prioritize things that feel good and align with my goals. I value myself and engage purposefully.
As you can imagine, that’s a pain to type in, both because it takes a minute and because I know I’m not upholding my values. Make yours something true to you that’ll annoy you enough to give up and go pick up a book.
3. Making it less convenient.
A big part of both the appeal of and the addiction to smartphones is how convenient they are. The whole world at your fingertips! But by making your phone just a little bit harder to use, you’re less likely to grab it while on the toilet.
One of the easiest ways to inconvenience yourself is to turn off tap to wake/rise to wake. Most smartphones now automatically turn on when you pick them up, which makes it easy for you to get sucked in without thinking about it. You can turn that off under the Accessibility settings so you have to actually hit the power button. Sometimes that split second gives you long enough to wonder why you were turning the phone on anyway.
Similarly, removing fingerprint/face unlocking means you have to put in your pin or password, giving yourself one more roadblock to doomscrolling Reddit. Even better, removing apps from your homescreen means you have to go looking for the app instead of mindlessly clicking on it.
You can further inconvenience yourself by carrying your phone somewhere besides your pocket. If your phone rings you’ll probably take the time to dig it out of your bag, but if you’re waiting in line at the bank that just might be too much work.
4. Removing apps.
This is the big boy. If you’re anything like me, one or two apps overwhelmingly make up your screen time. Deleting apps might be the most straightforward way to keep yourself from overuse. For me, it’s YouTube. There are a great many people I love to follow, and I still can, it’s just on my laptop now where it’s much harder to mindlessly scroll. Once I deleted YouTube, my screen time went down by two hours.
5. Replacing! (This one is my favorite :))
Nothing you do is going to keep you off your phone unless you figure out why you keep reaching for it. Yes, it’s designed to be addicting, but what are you getting from it? Unless you can address the specific reason and replace how you reach that need, you’ll always make temporary strides and never permanent progress.
Are you bored? Lonely? Understimulated? Realizing why you’re reaching for your phone means you can begin to replace the activity with something intentional. For me, that meant reading more. Writing. Calling my friends. Swinging outside. Cooking. Maybe for you it means woodworking, or gardening, or knitting, or doing puzzles. It doesn’t matter what it is, it matters that you’re choosing it. It matters that you understand other things besides your phone can help you meet your needs.
I honestly hope you’ll try some of these tips. They’ve worked for me, and I’ve found that my life has expanded in proportion with the time I spend actually engaging with it.
If you decide to “go dumb” like I did — welcome! I promise your life is about to get a whole lot calmer. But even if you opt to stick with your smartphone, you can take charge of it and let it be the tool it should be, instead of a barrier to you living your life.
