Amid growing concerns about smart phone addiction, some Gen Zers are switching to flip phones. But what would the switch entail and what are people willing to give up for it?
By Juliana Krigsman
University of Colorado graduate student Amelia Bretz takes a phone call in her car. (Juliana Krigsman/Radio1190)
This September, Kevin Matisheck, a student at Lewis and Clark University, tired of the constant distractions of his phone and social media, switched to a flip phone. “I definitely wanted to fix my screen time and screen addiction because I felt like all of the time I spent on Instagram was sucking energy out of me and it was active time that I could be using on other stuff,” he told me. “I was really busy this past semester so I was like, I think I could be a lot happier if I cut that out. And for a while I did cut that out.”
Matisheck is part of a recent trend among Gen Zers to ditch their smart phones and go old school.
Many young people feel they spend too much time on their smartphones. “I mean I don’t like spending a lot of time on social media and stuff but it just tends to happen if I’m bored and don’t really have anything else to do,” Amelia Bretz, a graduate student at the University of Colorado told me as we sat in her car. “I just feel like I’m not productive when I’m on my phone a lot.”
According to The Los Angeles Times, Gen Z spends an average of 7.2 hours a day watching videos on their phones. A study conducted by Stanford revealed that most children get their first smartphone around the age of 12. Given that the average life span of most Americans is 76 years, most Americans spend 16 percent of their lives looking at their phones.
According to the NIH, smartphone addiction can cause anxiety, depression, OCD and even alcohol use disorder. It can lead to emotional dysregulation, social anxiety, eating disorders, sleep issues, reduced physical fitness and decreased grey matter volume in the brain.
“Phones can have small, often hidden, costs for well-being that can nonetheless add up over time,” Kostadin Kushlev, an assistant professor of psychology at Georgetown University, told Georgetown University’s online publication in February. “There’s an emerging literature around digital detox. There is evidence that disconnecting from technology can work in the short term, but what we lack is evidence on how to help people build sustainable digital habits that work in the long term.”
All of the people I spoke to for this piece told me that they want to switch to a flip phone, but cited heavy dependency on their smartphones as a reason they wouldn’t do it. “I use it for everything,” Simon Jones, a recent graduate from The New School University in New York told me. “You kind of need it all the time. It would be a disadvantage to not have it at this point.”
Bretz cited similar reasons for not being able to ditch her smartphone as well. “I don’t want to be on my phone as much as I am, but I feel like modern life and going out to eat, having to scan a QR code menu, doing so many things requires being on the phone.”
Matisheck, who had previously switched to a flip phone, but then switched back after it broke, described his experience to be transformative. “There was a week and a half where I had no phone,” he said. “I did the thing where I was constantly grabbing for my phone and I didn’t have it. But eventually I felt way, way more human. I became a lot more focused. Focusing was easy for me. It’s like I had gained a new ability. If I wanted to do homework or read a book, I could just do it. And it wasn’t difficult for me at all.”
Matisheck explained to me how his lack of Google Maps made navigation easier for him. “It forces you to pay attention to where you’re going and actually memorize directions. When you’re paying more attention to the road, you start thinking about how things are next to each other. I went to this one cafe and I noticed there’s a theater right next to it. And then that theater was playing this band I like. And so I went out to a show that I would not have gone to if I was not thinking and paying attention to the road.”
But, after his flip phone broke he returned to the smartphone. This time an iPhone SE instead of his old iPhone 15. When I asked him how he maintained the same habits he had developed from not having a phone, and then having a flip phone he told me he didn’t. “When I got the iPhone SE, I felt like I started getting that pull a little bit more just because I think the screen itself is so interactive. I wasn’t on Instagram, but my friends would make fun of me because I would literally be scrolling on Google Maps. I would look up something on YouTube and then I’d get to Shorts. That screen really pulled me back in.”
A poll conducted by Gallup News found that 48% of Americans agree with the statement “I can’t imagine my life without my smartphone.” An additional Gallup poll found that 58% of Americans feel they use their phone too much, which is up from 39% when the poll was previously conducted in 2013.
“I think a thing that a lot of people really worry about with flip phones is they think that because a lot of people message through WhatsApp and Instagram they will be left out, but I was able to keep up on Instagram and WhatsApp on my computer,” Matisheck said. “When I do it on my computer I never feel like I’m stuck, like I’m trapped to the computer.”
“I would love to switch to a flip phone,” Bretz told me. “I think it’s more of those things like maps and the camera and Spotify. And for making music, I airdrop a lot of stuff from like voice memos to my computer because I record things like singing on my phone and then send it to my computer. I would just have to get a lot of other pieces of equipment because the iPhone really has everything all in one. I would have to figure out ways to accommodate the other needs first.”