Are you one of the many people who finds themselves constantly looking at their smart phone? It might be time for you to take a digital detox. Think of it as going retro for the summer, a trip back to the early 2000s… possibly with an old brick phone as an accessory.
Judson Richards just got the scoop on how to have a “dumb phone” summer from Jennifer Jolly, editor-in-chief of Techish.com, for the Noon Business Hour from WBBM Newsradio.
“This is the time of year people are taking a few days off, hopefully. You know, you’re going outside more, you have more of an excuse to walk away from that phone and just kind of take time to smell the roses, feel the grass and the earth underneath your feet,” Jolly said. “Right now, the search for digital detox ideas has risen 75%, while digital detox vision boards have spiked almost 300%.”
That’s right – people are using tech to use less tech. This might seem strange, but consider this: by fall 2023, four out of 10 people in the U.S. polled by the Pew Research Center said they were on the internet almost constantly. Last year, research from Reviews.org indicated that Americans look at their phones more than 200 times per day on average. It’s hard to break the habit.
According to Jolly, people are searching for things like “how to make a dumb phone, how to go offline and read more, and how to break my phone addiction,” this summer. She’s been advocating for the retro approach for some time – last year she started telling people looking for a digital detox to grab an old Nokia brick phone or a flip phone. Searches for those old flip phones went up 200% over the past month, Jolly added.
“Ah, the Nokia brick phone takes me back to the early 2000s, Jennifer,” said Richards. “What are the signs that someone might need a break from their screens or devices?”
Jolly said people might need phones with nothing more distracting than a game of snake on them if they find themselves on their family vacation with their eyes gazing into a screen instead of squinting into the sun. While younger people might be stereotypically connected to their phones, older generations aren’t exempt from phone addictions, she said.
“A lot of younger people are saying: ‘Hey, wait a minute… we didn’t give these tech companies permission to take all of our time and our energy and… our attention.’ And they’re kind of saying: ‘I want to be in charge of my own attention span, I don’t want a big tech company to be a charge of it.’”
If getting a whole new vintage phone (some options cost around $20 to $30) doesn’t seem like a practical option for some, Jolly has created a plan for putting smart phones on what she calls “landline mode” that is available on Techish.com.
She said the “first thing you want to do is clean up your home screen. You want to make it boring on purpose. Delete or hide the apps that you don’t absolutely need.” That means that some apps can stay if they are essential. For Jolly, one of those apps is Waze, which offers maps and directions.
Next, Jolly recommends clearing off phone home screens to make them purposely boring.
“Turn on grayscale mode,” she said. “When your phone is black and white and you don’t see all those colors, that's part of the psychology that sucks you in and keeps you coming back for more.”
After that step, there are ways to limit and control access to smart phone features. Once phones are given their period makeover, Jolly said it is easier for people to leave them in purses and pockets and engage more with life.