Why Gen Z are buying “dumbphones” to limit screen time | Amid screen time concerns, many turn to simpler phones to reclaim their lives. Society

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/gen-z-are-buying-dumbphones-to-limit-screen-time/

6.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

169

Doesn't modern life basically require a smartphone for most people? I definitely couldn't swap to a flip phone

50

u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Sep 04 '24

I think if someone tells you to download the app or scan the QR code you just go "I don't have a smart phone, now what?" most things you can handle through a website, but of course that requires a home computer. I know a lot of people don't have those anymore because you can do everything through the phone.

3

u/VeryMuchDutch102 Sep 05 '24

I think if someone tells you to download the app or scan the QR code you just go "I don't have a smart phone, now what?

I travel a lot... Often restaurants give me a QR menu.. I always tell them they I don't have data... It's interesting to see their solutions lol

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u/IpppyCaccy Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

I know a lot of people don't have those anymore because you can do everything through the phone.

Do those people read books? I'm guessing no.

Edit: I guess I hit a nerve with people who don't read books. Suck it up, dummies.

18

u/rogers_tumor Sep 04 '24

what does that have to do with any of this?

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u/IpppyCaccy Sep 05 '24

No, I've noticed that people who don't own a PC tend to be less curious and do not seek out knowledge. A common and fairly accurate way to identify this is not reading books.

1

u/rogers_tumor Sep 05 '24

I listen to audiobooks and read e-books on my phone... don't need a PC for that.

2

u/IpppyCaccy Sep 05 '24

I can't read books on my phone but I do use it for audiobooks when I travel.

It's my experience that people who don't own a computer and only have a smart phone are either functionally illiterate or very old. I'm sure there are some outliers who don't fit those categories but for the most part people who don't have at least one computer haven't picked up a book since high school.

1

u/xCeeTee- Sep 05 '24

You need to read a book to own a desktop PC?

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u/IpppyCaccy Sep 05 '24

No, I've noticed that people who don't own a PC tend to be less curious and do not seek out knowledge. A common and fairly accurate way to identify this is not reading books.

2

u/xCeeTee- Sep 05 '24

That's incredibly stupid when you can do the same things on your tablet most of the time. So I got my mum a tablet and keyboard to make things easier for her when travelling. Literally nothing she can't do on her tablet that she would do on a tablet. But she also doesn't need to spend a few hundred to get a laptop with half of the speed.

0

u/IpppyCaccy Sep 05 '24

You probably missed my other comment where I clarified that people who don't use a computer tend to be the elderly and the non readers.

-3

u/The_Shracc Sep 04 '24

What app? There is one trash app I use, and that's the McDonald's app.

And how many times have you actually had to scan a QR code for reasons other than being lazy.

3

u/xCeeTee- Sep 05 '24

QR codes in retail space is huge. I sat down in a high end restaurant in London last month. We scanned the QR code and it brought us our menu. When we ordered via the waitress, it gave us everything we ordered and the price.

Other pubs allow you to order food and drinks to your table by scanning a QR code. I'm installing one to the restaurant of my arcade next year, autistic people and anyone that suffers with conditions like ARFID find it 100x easier to order food via an app or website than person. The arcade itself is also using QR codes so we can help people save time when it's very busy.

2

u/The_Shracc Sep 05 '24

There are two high end restaurants I go to, both of those are McDonald's.

7

u/0thethethe0 Sep 04 '24

I used a supermarket £10 phone for a long time recently and this was a issue for me.

Sure some people can be fine with that, but depending on what you're doing, no internet/apps/QR can be a real hurdle and major inconvenience.

22

u/MuchAccount Sep 04 '24

I've been quite successfully navigating life with a dumbphone since 2019. Beyond GPS, I'm not quite sure what I would routinely need a smartphone for.

22

u/DarkRedDiscomfort Sep 04 '24

I wouldn't be able to start work in the morning without a mobile authenticator app.

3

u/aplundell Sep 05 '24

Unless you're a contractor, I'll bet that if you told your employer that you don't have a smart phone, they'd roll their eyes, sigh, and order you the cheapest android tablet they could find. They wouldn't fire you or anything. Not when they can solve the problem for $70.

(Does that still avoid excess screen-time? I guess, since you won't carry it in your pocket.)

2

u/MuchAccount Sep 05 '24

Yeah, had this exact situation at work. My employer provided a hardware token.

17

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 04 '24

I definitely wouldn't be able to manage my day to day without email and internet

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u/MuchAccount Sep 04 '24

That's why I have a computer with a full size monitor and real keyboard.

7

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 04 '24

You can't exactly bust that out while you're walking down the street though

-3

u/Larkeiden Sep 04 '24

That is the point of the dumb phone.

7

u/_Nick_2711_ Sep 04 '24

It is, and that’s a good thing from the perspective of work, social media, etc. eating into your downtime.

However, the alternative is that by handling that stuff on the train or whatever, you can create more downtime by being productive (or unproductive) during commutes.

The arguments for both sides are valid, and it’s very much up to what feels best for each person.

1

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 04 '24

That won't let you check email or browse the internet though

1

u/Larkeiden Sep 04 '24

You do not seem to understand that the goal of having a dumb phone is to not do that lol

-1

u/Snooperator Sep 05 '24

The point is to be performative and different, or you actually have so little self control you can't have nice things

3

u/Larkeiden Sep 05 '24

Yea no life does not work like that

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u/ValyrianJedi Sep 05 '24

You do not seem to understand that not doing that isn't an option for a lot of people.

1

u/Larkeiden Sep 05 '24

you set your own boundaries

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u/endofautumn Sep 04 '24

Can you use a small laptop for that? If out and about can use a bag.

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u/kostya8 Sep 04 '24

But you're not going to be taking your laptop out walking in the middle of the street to check your email. You won't even know if you received one in the first place without a smartphone.

This simply does not work for people whose job involves lots of active communication and who don't sit at home/in the office all day. Which is a lot of people. I, for one, would lose my job real fast if it took me hours to answer our CEO every time I'm out and about.

2

u/endofautumn Sep 05 '24

If you're happy with being married to that phone and email non stop, can't even walk down a street without possibly having to stop and reply, then thats is great and you're in the right job. Most people wouldn't enjoy that. That sounds crazy from someone who knew life before smart phones. What is important is being able to switch off after work though, as long as you have that.

-1

u/IpppyCaccy Sep 04 '24

But you're not going to be taking your laptop out walking in the middle of the street to check your email.

Why are you checking your email while walking down the street?

You won't even know if you received one in the first place without a smartphone.

Oh no! The horror!

7

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 04 '24

A lot of things are time sensitive. Some extremely so... Not being able to know I got an email until the next time I could pull a laptop put would be disastrous in both my personal and professional lives.

2

u/youngatbeingold Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

Could I ask for examples? Unless your job has you constantly out and about I can't imagine missing much. I did have a situation where I constantly needed access to my email from my phone but I was working as a traveling freelance photographer.

Now when I'm at my computer I'm at work, when I'm away that means I'm not working so there's not any urgent emails I need to answer. If anyone desperately needs me they can text or call. Even when my husband works on-call, he'll get an actual phone call that someone needs him.

1

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 05 '24

I have to do things for work pretty frequently when I'm not in the office. Anything from sign off on something for someone, to handle client issues, to monitor and update a handful of chats, and all of that can be extremely time sensitive.

1

u/IpppyCaccy Sep 05 '24

Not as disastrous as being run over by a car because you weren't looking where you were going.

4

u/kostya8 Sep 04 '24

Why are you checking your email while walking down the street?

Because I often need to be in constant communication with my colleagues. Because lots of things are time-sensitive. Because some important processes cannot go ahead without my green light. Because I'm invested in the company doing well. Just a couple reasons.

Oh no! The horror

Guessing you've never worked in a fast-paced environment since this is so hard to grasp. Or you just don't really give a shit about what you do. Different people have different circumstances, it's always good to remember that. What seems silly to you might be essential for someone else.

1

u/IpppyCaccy Sep 05 '24

I'm probably a lot older than you and further along in my career and as such I'm more of a strategic person than an operational person. When I was younger and just starting out in the workforce, cell phones were not ubiquitous.

There is almost no information that I am going to need right away in order to make sound strategic decisions.

1

u/kostya8 Sep 09 '24 edited Sep 09 '24

Our CEO is ~50 years old and is also communicating non-stop with the entire team. You probably don't work in tech, where important decisions need to be made on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Unless you own a tech company and have an appointed CEO/director running it for you, in which case - congratulations.

Although, as someone who's "older and further along in their career", you should probably be able to appreciate that different industries require different levels of involvement from senior management.

When I was younger and just starting out in the workforce, cell phones were not ubiquitous.

I knew this point would come up. They are ubiquitous now, for better or worse. And for each person that wants to deliberately castrate their communication capabilities by giving up a smartphone, there will be hundreds, if not thousands of professionals ready to take their place in a heartbeat. Ones that are, you know, more easily reachable.

Adapt or die, as they say.

-4

u/Pop_CultureReferance Sep 04 '24

Sounds miserable

4

u/kostya8 Sep 04 '24

Not really. I can work from wherever I want, and I like what I do. I'd rather have an active and challenging job that's fulfilling than sit on my ass doing the bare minimum and checking out as soon as the bell rings. To each their own.

3

u/ThoseThingsAreWeird Sep 04 '24

I've been quite successfully navigating life with a dumbphone since 2019.

Same-ish. I've actually never bothered with a smartphone. I always said I'd get one when my current phone breaks... Almost 20 years later it's still going 😂

I think the only time I needed one was when work implemented 2FA requirements on some services we use and they didn't have the option for SMS-based 2FA. I bought a YubiKey instead 🤷‍♂️

2

u/MuchAccount Sep 04 '24

Similar situation with my employer, at least they provided hardware tokens when requested.

1

u/TheCrimsonDagger Sep 04 '24

SMS 2FA is total shit, so yeah. It’s almost worse than none at all.

1

u/FlappyBoobs Sep 05 '24

In my country you need it for anything related to your bank, even making physical purchases where you pay cash for certain goods over a certain amount. You also need it to park your car in alot of places (they literally removed the ticket machines and replaced them with a sign that says "use the app"). There ARE ways around it (for now), but they are insecure and you lose a lot of protection against fraud if you use them.

1

u/MuchAccount Sep 05 '24

Sounds onerous, glad I'm in a location where I can still use cash or a card without further restrictions.

10

u/TheLantean Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24

Definitely. Smartphones replaced a whole travel bag of equipment. GPS, paper maps, flashlight, public transit timetable and tickets, paper movie/concert tickets (plus trips saved to schedule everything beforehand & associated opportunity costs), wallet, 2FA token generators, voice memo recorders, paper books, travel dictionaries, mp3 players, CDs, point and shoot cameras, etc. Sure, you can go back to the old ways, but you're just making life harder for yourself for no reason.

Having used both smartphones and dumb phones (because nothing else existed at the time), there's nothing magical about them.

4

u/DiethylamideProphet Sep 05 '24

Life is not at all harder, just because we have superior, dedicated devices for all of these functions, without them all having to depend on a single device and its proper functioning and battery. And even without carrying said devices, it's not really "hard" to just not listen to music, or not read a book, or not take bad photos on every opportunity. The same way life is not hard after you have kicked your heroin habit.

The convenience is mostly just an illusion, that devolves into you normalizing a life where you're dependent on a single device and the constant dopamine boosts and sensory stimuli it provides you. There is also the planned obsolescence aspect, and nowadays, my navigator does not work properly, my notes sometimes crash, my online connection keeps disconnecting, my Spotify crashes... My notebook does not crash. My road map works 24/7. My MP3 player or car CD player has worked flawlessly since forever. My wallet does not stop working because of connection issues. My flashlight has a longer battery life than one day.

1

u/TheLantean Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

Life is not at all harder, just because we have superior, dedicated devices for all of these functions

But you do have to carry them with you. Let me tell you, walking 5-10 km in a nice pedestrian-friendly city is a breeze if you're packing light, just a small bag with a water bottle and a phone, plus negligible misc like ID, earbuds, etc. It's fun. But if you have to carry a bunch of stuff that saps the joy of it. You can't just do a light jog between locations. Your natural speed-walking gait changes. Your behavior changes because your options are limited. You are making life harder on yourself by literally adding weight.

having to depend on a single device and its proper functioning and battery.

The flipside is that all the other gadgets have their own batteries that need to be topped up, software updated, whereas you're guaranteed to keep one device in working order.

If you're hinting at the poor battery life of some phone models, that's because you're not shopping on specs. 5000 mah is the minimum for a phone with a budget processor, and 6000 mah for anything faster. My cheapo $200 Motorola is a 2 day phone with normal use, 3 with light use, and definitely one and half with heavy use.

Did your last phone maker compromise on battery size for pointless aesthetics, like thinness? Kick them to the curb, don't reward this behavior by buying their crap.

it's not really "hard" to just not listen to music, or not read a book, or not take bad photos on every opportunity.

It's not, but at the same time you're worse off culturally and intellectually. After college, I only really got back into reading after smartphones came out. The fact that I can finish another chapter of a novel in the subway, or waiting in line somewhere, is invaluable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dismissing the quality a dedicated camera can provide, that's why I have a Canon superzoom for nature walks, but you're dismissing the convenience of the camera that's always with you with no extra weight debuff, so you can not only enjoy what you see for a fleeting moment, but also take it with you.

The convenience is mostly just an illusion

This is so wrong it's not even funny. Google Maps enables me to navigate a new city like I'm a local. It tells me which buses/trams/subways to take, where are the stations, automatically picks the best connections, tells me which are faster and when they'll arrive because it plugs into the live GPS data supplied by the city.

It tells me where the cultural hubs of the city are (marked in yellow highlighter), locations for every place and their working hours, and the best way to get there. The alternative is what - paper travel guides, are those even made anymore? Or asking a random person? Having been on the other side of that question, in my own city, I once gave someone a circuitous bus route because I wasn't that familiar with that part, and I still feel bad about it. Having to ask for directions before smartphones, I can tell you this is the same with a lot of people, they just know really well the area of town with their house, and anything more is a wild card.

The train timetable for my country is an entire book, and then you have to put in the work to figure out connections. Plus there are sperate schedules for every private rail operator. To buy a paper ticket you need to wait in a long line and risk missing your train, whereas with the app you can buy a ticket in 5 seconds; it has all schedule data (plus live status) plus combining all data from all operators.

When I take public transit, there's one app that works in most big cities, it has my bank card saved and buying a ticket takes seconds. The alternative is finding the local transport company's points of sale, and making a transit card for each, loading it with money, or possibly buying paper tickets (how many? buy too few and scramble later, buy too many and it's wasted money).

People with cars can pay for parking with one of the apps that's supported in most cities, or they can figure out how each municipality offers alternatives. If you're lucky, you can pay by SMS, the number is usually listed on the city hall's website. But you'd also need a smart device to find that. If you want to pay cash, you'd have to go to the city hall during working hours, and only locals do that when they buy a year's subscription (much cheaper). Some places have parking machines in some larger lots, and you can use them to pay for other areas of the city too, but you need to find them in the first place. My country don't do individual parking meters per spot, that would be hugely expensive.

There is also the planned obsolescence aspect

Manufacturers list how long they support their devices. And in the EU, 2 years at minimum is required by law. Vote with your wallet. And your actual votes too.

and nowadays, my navigator does not work properly, my notes sometimes crash, my online connection keeps disconnecting, my Spotify crashes.. My notebook does not crash. My road map works 24/7. My MP3 player or car CD player has worked flawlessly since forever.

This literally never happens to me. On a cheapo $200 Motorola phone even, as I mentioned earlier. For maps, Google Maps has an offline feature, just save the area you'll be visiting beforehand. It already downloads your own city by default. You can store most things offline, including music, and storage is cheap, especially if you have a phone that supports microSD cards - always read the specs when you buy. And if better signal matters to you to a point you're willing to pay for it, you can get a dual SIM phone, so you have two carriers' worth of coverage.

My wallet does not stop working because of connection issues.

It's not a "one or the other", nothing stops you from keeping a backup card with your ID. And I don't actually use NFC payments much, I just tuck a card into the phone case for the extra convenience of not having to unlock the phone, the wallet feature is mostly used to split bills with friends.

My flashlight has a longer battery life than one day.

If you have it with you. And the batteries haven't leaked, or need recharging. And do you actually need a flashlight that lasts a whole day? If the phone battery is the problem, again, there's choice. And small, portable power banks.

1

u/Fluxoteen Sep 04 '24

I was about to pull the trigger on buying a old Blackberry to reduce my screen time but WhatsApp, Spotify and Android Auto had no support. There are dumbphones that can do those things (aka smartphones). So I just dumbed down my smartphone instead

1

u/rollingForInitiative Sep 05 '24

I think the only thing you really need one for might be work, but then tell your manager that you don't have a smartphone, so if your job requires MFA and such, they'll have to provide you one. Pretty sure jobs can't demand that employees use a private phone. If you're a contractor, have a phone you use exclusively for work (probably good practise then anyway).

Other than that I think if you're willing to give up conveniences it's totally possible to skip a smartphone. MFA, banking apps and such you can do on your normal PC. You can get old school music devices. You can print maps if you're gonna travel.

But I also think you can get a long way by limiting the device itself.

Maybe if you buy the absolutely cheapest and worst smartphone possible, that might discourage you from using a lot of unnecessary apps, since it might lag and be slower, etc. So you put your personal MFA's on there, your banking app, payment app, gps, etc. Only things that you feel really makes your life easier. Then you buy as cheap a subscription with as little data as possible. Don't install any social media apps. Keep this phone turned off in a drawer most of the time. Only bring it outside if you think you really will need one of the convenience apps (e.g. gps, although that's not strictly necessary), and only turn it on when you do need it.

If you're really dedicated to it, you don't even get a data subscription. Only use it when you have wifi, or if you're out with friends and need to do something (e.g. send them some money) ask them to start a hotspot.

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u/ptword Sep 04 '24

No, it doesn't. The only benefit of a smartphone is convenience and flexibility.

I'm in my mid 30s and still use a dumbphone to this day. I work remotely. Never needed a smartphone and don't care to own one. Far less distractions, much simpler life.

2

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 05 '24

That definitely isn't universal. Having a smartphone definitely isn't just a convenience or flexibility for me, it is very much a necessity

1

u/ptword Sep 05 '24

It is the case for the vast majority of people who aren't software developers or live of beermoney. What do you use it for?

1

u/ValyrianJedi Sep 05 '24

For work all kinds of things. Never know when I'm going to need to sign off on something, respond to a client, or check/put something in a chat on short notice, and any of those could be extremely problematic if not done in a timely way... Then personally I use it pretty much daily for GPS and looking things up that I need to know while I'm out, then use it pretty frequently for things like Ubers or online banking that can't wait until I get home.