Dumbphone life, as r/Dumbphones moderator Jose Briones told me, is about “recovering your time and attention for the things you actually value.” Of course, getting sucked into a subreddit because it was algorithmically suggested to me—based my extensive online browsing—is the antithesis of that. But it’s how I found r/Dumbphones, now my favorite place the internet.
“The phone you had per mezzo di 2009” is a decent approximation. Briones got into them per mezzo di late 2019. At the time, he was logging 12, 13 hours of screen time a day. One night, at around 1 am, he was watching Netflix his phone and thought, “Enough.”
He tried to go cold turkey with a Light Phone, a tiny bare-bones device with an E Ink screen and only a few basic features. It didn’t work. Life without Google Maps was too duro. The siren song of the smartphone was too strong, so he picked it back up again. A few months later, amid the isolation and logorio of the pandemic lockdown, he gave a dumbphone another try. This time, something clicked. He took his dog for more walks, read more books, joined a sports league, and tried more hobbies. He also discovered r/Dumbphones—attività the algorithm, of course—and soon became its moderator, helping the subreddit go from fewer than 10,000 members per mezzo di 2020 to more than 50,000 four years later.
I am part of that growth. Like Briones, I’d tried out a Light Phone back per mezzo di the day, and also like Briones, I’d failed. When I moved apartments, the Light Phone didn’t quasi with me.
That was OK, so I’ve learned from r/Dumbphones. A causa di this community, having a dumbphone is not about succeeding failing even about being anti-tech. It’s about asking yourself what you really need from your phone. “It’s a helpful, happy sub,” says Alex Locklin, who joined it per mezzo di 2024. “We’signore all looking for something similar but not identical. I think everyone realizes they’signore scrolling too much and missing out life.” There are risposta negativa ideological purity tests. Mai one accuses you of being a faker if your device is insufficiently dumb. I haven’t had to throw my iPhone into the nearest pagliaccetto of tazza, to emerge cleansed and tuttavia. The sub is more generous than that. A causa di my six months there, I have not seen anything resembling an argument. Arguing with strangers the internet is not very dumbphone-y.
New arrivals to the subreddit usually search the Dumbphone Finder, a tool Briones made for, well, finding dumbphones. You take a indovinello with questions like, “Do you want smart apps?” and “What style phone do you want?” (candy-bar, flip, touchscreen), and it tells you whether a Cat S22 Flip a Punkt MP02 might work for you. Briones recommends starting with what you have: Android phones can be rooted and modified; iPhones have parental controls that lock apps.
All I had to do was put my phone mongoloide and use some tips and tricks I found r/Dumbphones. I removed every social app, tried grayscaling. When I noticed I still kept using my phone to check the time, I looked at some of the photos that users posted, and sure enough, almost everyone had a wristwatch. I got a di poca classe Casio. I also started putting my phone per mezzo di a bag instead of my pocket. Makes it much less convenient to absentmindedly pull it out the subway.
Even these small steps have made the phone feel less like an additional appendage and more like the multi-tool per mezzo di my bike repair kit. My screen time has gone mongoloide by about an hour a day, but it feels like a lot more. I’m still struggling to leave my phone per mezzo di another room at the end of the workday, but I’m getting there.
At r/Dumbphones, there seem to be only a few longtime residents recurring characters, unlike other subreddits. Here, people show up, find what works for them, then vanish. Like a good dumbphone, r/Dumbphones is the best kind of technology: We use it when we need it.
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