Since giving up my cell phone entirely over 5 years ago, my productivity, memory, and overall happiness are at the highest levels they have ever been, in my late 30s. I no longer apologize to anyone for this lifestyle choice anymore since the benefits are something everyone deserves, but almost all opt out of today for made up reasons.
I take photos with a pocket mirrorless, and take notes with a notebook. I tell time with a self winding mechanical watch. I pay for things at stores with cash instead of tap to pay. Like a cave man, I know.
I am reachable by internet when I am at my desk, and by landline when I am at home. In an actual emergency dial 911, not me. Otherwise it can probably wait until I am at my desktop or a laptop.
I was already sold on raising kids without smartphones on intuition and lived experience, but study after study point at us having access to all humans, all knowledge, and all entertainment at all times as leading to generally bad mental health and cognitive function outcomes. Our brains were simply not evolved for it.
Whenever I see parents scrolling, and handing a kid a phone as well to pacify them, I wish I could report them for child abuse. I feel like I am watching them be given whiskey or cigarettes, except it is socially acceptable and no one cares.
Last Monday in a fit of exasperation I turned my phone into airplane mode. And that's where I left it, for an entire week. I swear this was the most productive week of work I've ever had in my professional career. It's astonishing. On the weekend I wanted to call my mom and yet I dreaded taking it off airplane mode. I'm going to try doing this for the foreseeable future.
You can do wifi calling in airplane mode. Left ours in this mode by default for months at first and then realized we could just cancel the cell phone plan entirely to save money. Wifi is everywhere when you need it.
> Whenever I see parents scrolling, and handing a kid a phone as well to pacify them, I wish I could report them for child abuse.
Consider that you might not have everything figured out for everyone. I'm glad you found something that works, but the will to impose your way on others isn't benevolent.
Many parents used to drink while pregnant and put whiskey in the baby bottle to make kid shut up. We should make decisions based on research, not by emulating other badly informed parents, even if they are the majority.
The study does not point to a cause. The comment I'm responding to is drawing conclusions based on a sensationalist blog post and then wishing they could report other parents for abuse. I think the study is well done, but we can't scientifically draw the conclusions from it that the author (and folks in this thread) are drawing.
This is just one study, that echos dozens and dozens of other studies all pointing at the same things: being reachable and able to reach everything and everyone everywhere all at once is making us all sadder and less productive, and kids are getting the worst of it having been handed this tech from their parents shortly after birth.
Your reply was next to meaningless as it doesn't offer anything above a "well, that's just how YOU feel about it!".
Yes, that's true. That /is/ how the OP feels about it. But at least they were able to articulate their point and get a message across, along with an implied (albeit weak) "call to action", not meant to be taken literally. Although I'm sure, if polled, the majority of folks in this thread would agree with the OP sentiment. I know I do.
“I wish I could have CPS take away their children and put them in foster homes” is a pretty messed up thought to have in response to seeing a kid looking at a phone. It seems pretty reasonable to call that out.
> Your reply was next to meaningless
We’re on a discussion forum. “Here’s how I feel about what said” is basically the point.
The purpose of my comment was to point out that just because you've found a solution that works for you does not mean it is generalizable and should be turned into a rule for the entire population.
1. I am entirely convinced minors should not have smartphones and every study supports this being a net negative.
2. I feel most adults are better off without them too, but it is an adult choice. For most I suggest deleting a frequently used app ever month until you stop seeing benefits.
The study we're discussing drew no such conclusion. There's a very disturbing pattern of studies coming out and being summarized by people with an agenda that choose to draw conclusions that are not supported by the study they're discussing. This is definitely true of social media studies, and I suspect it's true of mobile phone studies as well, although maybe you can provide a couple that you think are airtight and I can take a look.
ALL studies I have seen seem to support the idea that constant connectivity leads to worse mental health outcomes on average.
To get to specific proof though, clinically in the way we could with other addictions like smoking, we would need to look at how individual applications that allow us to outsource various cognitive functions specifically impact our brains.
GPS is a well studied example. Humans that rely on GPS instead of their own brains end up with provably weaker hippocampus.
It is not hard to form a hypothesis from this how letting targeted content algorithms decide what you see instead of making decisions on your own could weaken the portions of your brain that make decisions in a similar way, and all studies we have seen so far seem to support this hypothesis.
I would of course like to see more brain scan research but when all data points to the negative on something only available to humans very recently, and your own lived experience of forgoing that something has had major benefits for your personally, it becomes easy to be a strong advocate for people trying out a reduction of that something.
You seem to be arguing about avoiding constant connectivity. This is very different than not owning a smartphone. I think the conversation has gone off the rails, as I was critiquing your desire to impose a no smartphone lifestyle on others.
I can't reply to you anymore, but the study you cited is at least a couple of steps removed from the discussion.
First, it's about offloading navigation to a computer, and observing that humans use less of their navigation skills when doing so. This is very far removed from "smartphone use causes mental health problems".
Second, you claim it shows a "provably weaker hippocampus". But the study doesn't show that at all. It shows less activity in the hippocampus, which would be entirely expected, much like if we offloaded translation to a computer, we wouldn't see the same level of activity in the language centers of the brain.
The researchers themselves only conclude this from their study:
> These results help shape models of how hippocampal and prefrontal regions support navigation, planning and future simulation.
The data supports exactly the claim I am making: That indeed, offloading basic tasks we could do for ourselves, like navigation, decision making etc, is robbing our brains of mental exercise that would otherwise make them stronger and less dependent on technology.
The study's authors did not even attempt to draw any conclusions about long-term impact on brain health or mental health from their study. You're free to do so, but I don't find it compelling.
You asked for a study supporting our over-use of phones in general is a net negative.
I gave a specific example that is well studied that could allow us to make pretty good guesses about other apps that do our thinking for us, which could explain the types of results we get in these studies.
This is inspiring. I definitely need to look into getting a landline and reducing my cellphone dependence. We’ve been talking about it lately for our daughter to be able to talk to her friends outside of school. Recently another parent had suggested face time calls which we are strongly against (not so much against video calls but rather against child tablet usage).
I started by deleting an app a month until my phone was so boring I kept forgetting it at home, and ultimately abandoned it entirely.
It took a couple years to recalibrate my dopamine reward system gradually until I could enjoy just existing in my own thoughts and brain again while away from the internet, learn to navigate for myself, etc.
For "landlines" I just ported my families cell phone numbers (with their total consent and support) to a voip service, then got VOIP ATA boxes which allows plugging traditional landline phones, including an actual payphone for fun, via ethernet or wifi. Costs a couple dollars a month.
Pro Tip: Other parents sometimes need to be told NO, especially when it comes to matters of tech.
I believe their heart is in the right place but most of them don't know the first thing about the dangers of social media, gps tracking, cellphone addiction, frequent video calls, etc. If enough pressure is applied, then it will be the norm for your local community of kids to spend time in real life together vs. 100% online in a digital scaremongered world. Can there be a balance? Sure. But that balance usually comes only after saying NO to unnecessary tech. NO, kids in elementary school don't need a phone (they really don't). NO, we don't need to digitally track our child's movements down to the meter (we really don't).
But don't take my word for it. In 2025, we now havea sea of well documented research that proves the extremely high cost we all pay (as a society) for damaging our kids this way.
The irony of posting scaremongering about video calls being dangerous on a digital forum while claiming to be offline to avoid scaremongering.
> If enough pressure is applied
You cannot force the rest if your community to align with your personal viewpoints. There is no amount of “pressure” that is going to bend society to your will.
I was perhaps ambiguous. I am not saying societal change is not possible. I’m saying you, personally, will not change your local community as you imagine by simply telling other parents no.
Nowhere in your comment is there any indication you are running some sort of community initiative or anything else that might lead to actual change. Campaigning for a spot on the school board to advocate for banning cell phones in schools might be a useful strategy, for example. Telling parents who ask about FaceTime between friends that tablets are evil seems as effective as telling random smokers on the street that it’s going to kill them.
> Telling parents who ask about FaceTime between friends that tablets are evil seems as effective as telling random smokers on the street that it’s going to kill them.
I would just simply say it is against our lifestyle and suggest alternatives just as a vegan family might suggest alternatives to a BBQ birthday party.
Facetime is not going to happen as my kids will never be be allowed Google or Apple accounts or smartphones, so friends parents will need to explore those alternatives if their kid wants to talk to my kid.
That is how change happens. One social graph node at a time.
Also I did in fact found a security, privacy, and digital sovereignty advocacy community called #! which has been operating for more than 20 years now, and has mentored hundreds of people looking to make healthier technology choices.
You should of course do what you feel is best for your children.
> Also I did in fact found a security, privacy, and digital sovereignty advocacy community called #! which has been operating for more than 20 years now, and has mentored hundreds of people looking to make healthier technology choices.
That’s awesome. I think we do need better choices (not just abstinence from the tech).
I abstain from surveillance capitalism tech which is designed to track and distract. Google, Apple, and Qualcomm controlled devices are a non starter for me. I would rather be 20 years behind in tech and have sovereignty and reasonable privacy.
I am not at all opposed to useful tools in our pockets. Meshtastic messengers and the Precursor are the best candidates right now that might get tech back in my own pocket or that of kids, but they are not mature enough to daily drive just yet IMO.
I co-run two tech companies and am reachable during office hours which are mostly spent at my desk, and when I am not working I am not reachable by work, and I trust my team.
If you modify your preferred lifestyle in any way for work during personal time, you are still working.
If a company wants you to be reachable 24/7 then they need to give you a pager and a salary based on a 168 hour work week, not a 40 hour work week.
Just because everyone else lets themselves be exploited does not mean you need to. Make the ~40 hours count and work circles around everyone else, then disconnect.
I use the app screenzen. It rations distracting apps and retrains you to use your phone as a functional device again. I now only use my phone for messaging, emails, maps and spotify, but can still access Chrome when I need. A perfect balance.
I am near a landline 90% of the time, am reachable by internet during working hours on weekdays, and go to my desk to check emails and chats multiple times a day on weekends. It turns out you do not need to be reachable or online every second of every day to do virtually anything in the modern world including raising kids.
Oh, this sounds like you work from home and can just substitute your landline and PC for 90% of contact, this wouldn't nearly work like this for most people.
I had this lifestyle when I worked from an office, and at home, in both individual contributor and leadership engineering roles. I also travel quite a bit.
Just set expectations with others and it works just fine either way. Only thing in the way is cognitive dissonance for most people.
In my case people absolutely forgive not being able to reach me every second of every day because I am a productivity machine due to being able to actually focus.
Back them, they did called you to work and it was customary to rely message by two other people. There is no such desk anymore and they dont want to be handling your life.
And if your kid needed to go home and sleep in bed, you had to take the day off instead of home office. There was price to that.
Oh, and back then school did not expected parents and kids to have phones, now it does. Information about schedule changes, homework, what needs to be paid and such is broadcasted with the assumption that everyone has a phone.
If you have an unusual lifestyle choice, you simply need to communicate that to all involved. Any that do not respect it, you can seek out alternatives for.
One clinic denied me for not having a Google or Apple account, so I took my business to one that would accommodate me.
Rolling over and doing what the majority of people want you do to is not how change happens.
And to be honest, that reaction is part of the reason I keep doing it.
When people ask for my number and I say I don’t have a phone, 99% of all people say very passionately “omg, I wish I could get rid of this thing”.
Most people don’t like their phone, which confirms my belief it won’t make my life better.
If you wanted to be vegan as a personal choice and everyone in your life wanted you to eat meat anyway, who cares? No one gets to decide your lifestyle but you.
Make them adapt.
You can get landlines (via a VOIP conversion box or otherwise), and beyond that what do you really need if you are honest?
> it’s not manageable to be offline all the time here
> it is if you’re all offline together
> but everyone doesn’t want to be offline with me
> just be offline by yourself; what’s the big deal? <— you
The big deal is all the stuff called out above. My kids school, child care, my work, pizza delivery, everyone has built up infrastructure that assumes virtually always online.
If it works for you to just not be online anymore, cool. But it’s not trivial for many people to make this change.
This is still not an answer to the comment chain. The real answer is “if you want to live this way, you give up a bunch of conveniences and have to deal with it.” It’s less convenient with schools, with childcare, with work, and everything else that assumes always online.
> No one gets to decide your lifestyle but you. Make them adapt.
Make them adapt is some nonsense. You’ve made multiple comments that through sheer force of will you can make other people align with your choices. You’ve posted zero evidence, or even claimed, that you have succeeded in doing this yourself.
Everything I "give up" gives me so much more back.
Now on the outside looking in, it feels like everyone criticizing me for not letting robots lift weights for me at the gym, because everyone else does it that way. I choose what to think about most of the time instead of letting a pocket rectangle decide for me. Plenty of evidence suggests this is good for our brains. Everyone else seems as absurd to me as I probably seem to them. If anything I feel like I am having to constantly accommodate phone addicts that have incredibly short attention spans.
Few in my social or professional life can keep up with my productivity, which I largely attribute to having the ability to focus and think without distraction for hours at a time which most people struggle to do these days without reaching for a phone. I can never even get through a meal with most friends without them checking social media several times.
With more than a few world firsts in engineering under my belt in the years since I gave up my phone, people tend to accept my "unusual" lifestyle choice of not being reachable every second of every day.
Not everyone aligns, and that is fine, just as not every restaurant provides vegan options.
Sometimes I have to go to a different restaurant that has paper menus and accepts cash, or a different clinic because I lack a Google or Apple account, but their loss of business and not a big deal for me given all the major privacy and productivity gains I get.
There are -always- alternatives and I have never been unable to accomplish a goal or do something I wanted to do because of not having a smartphone.
By all means give me a gotcha. I have heard them all and navigated around them without too much trouble.
> The real answer is “if you want to live this way, you give up a bunch of conveniences and have to deal with it.” It’s less convenient with schools, with childcare, with work, and everything else that assumes always online
Without a doubt, there are times where having a phone would be more convenient.
But I don’t want a more convenient life. I want a richer, happier, more rewarding and more fulfilling life. A phone won’t get me those things, and based on how often people tell me they wish they could throw away their phone and how much happier they’d be without it, I’m pretty sure a phone would make my life worse.
> “if you want to live this way, you give up a bunch of conveniences and have to deal with it.”
You would give up conveniences, but you'd be giving up inconveniences as well. It's a trade off that works extremely well for some people who are often surprised by how little effort it takes and how much happier and healthier they are. I doubt it's for everybody, but even then there are a lot of half-measures people can take to reduce the amount harm their cell phones are causing them and improve their lives.
> My kids school, child care, my work, pizza delivery, everyone has built up infrastructure that assumes virtually always online.
Is there actually a pizza place that refuses to bring a pizza to someone without a cell phone app being involved? Like they have no phone number you can call from a landline or a website where you could place an order? Odds are good that you could get by just fine letting your kids school/daycare know your email address/landline phone number. Some people's work is much less flexible, but everything else should be accommodating people without cell phones.
You can surely get pizza delivered, though certainly I’ve had pizza delivery people text me because they couldn’t find my house. So having a cell phone is valuable even then.
Part of my problem with the claims that cell phones are the problem is that the answer often seems to be a landline that you’re still available on. If you replace one phone with another, what’s the difference? This isn’t a sarcastic question, either. The differences are key.
No one worried about the impact of dumb cell phones on our kids. Maybe the texting was a bit annoying but that’s all. What really changed is smart phones, the Internet in your hand all the time. The doomscrolling Instagram or TikTok and completely disconnecting from the real world most of the time. The Facebook-type sites that enable anonymous bullying.
It’s important to understand what the actual problems are because abstaining from phones entirely is just not realistic. Possible? Yes. Realistic? No.
> though certainly I’ve had pizza delivery people text me because they couldn’t find my house.
When you have a landline that still happens, but they call you instead of texting. It works great!
> the answer often seems to be a landline that you’re still available on. If you replace one phone with another, what’s the difference?
There are huge differences. Most of the problems with smart phones aren't "You can call people or get calls". A landline still allows you to make and take calls but avoids every other evil cell phones introduce into our lives. When you're available on a landline it's on your own terms, in a very specific place. Even having both a desktop PC/laptop and a landline, meaning you can take calls and look something up on the internet, is vastly less abusive and harmful than a smart phone.
What changed with the smart phone wasn't that you could go online, it's that the device itself is designed to collect every scrap of personal information it can and then funnel it to other people. It's designed to be as addictive, intrusive, and demanding of your attention as possible. It follows you everywhere, all of the time. It cuts us off from the places we are and the people we are with. Being away from a smartphone fills people with a level of anxiety that never existed with laptops and landlines and that isn't by accident.
abstaining from phones entirely or even setting boundaries and limits to reduce the harms they cause is realistic as evidenced by the people who do it successfully in reality. That doesn't make it easy, or even ideal in some situations, but it might be worth trying just to see where the pain points are and how they can be managed. You might be surprised at how much more capable you are at functioning without one than you thought.
So let’s agree that removing smartphones from one’s life is beneficial.
Why not a dumb (mobile) phone, then? Why the passion for a landline? You can still exercise full control over when/where you answer it, but you gain a lot of useful convenience as well.
A dumb phone seems like a pretty good compromise to me. Especially in situations where you're traveling. You'll get tracked and still have to deal with interruptions from texts, but you can always turn it off and that should keep it from disrupting you when you want to be focused on where you are/what you're doing/who you're with.
Any device connected to cell towers is constantly having its location tracked via triangulation, which is sold to endless surveillance capitalism organizations and governments to monitor where we shop, and where we protest, to optimally manipulate us.
I am specifically opting out of cellular networks for this reason, though open hardware/software wifi and meshtastic solutions I am always open to.
Also whenever possible I do not want to be reachable or distracted, say when having dinner out with my family, at a concert, or just standing in line in the post office. I make the decision when to open a laptop, it cannot summon me, and it takes more intention to use.
Most VOIP services will route SMS to email or a messenger of your choice. I get SMS just fine on my wifi devices, which I monitor when I am expecting a delivery.
I don't think anyone said it's trivial, but they are saying it is 1. possible, and 2. overall a positive change. But merely that has upset people in this thread.
I've also posted in the past about the joys and benefits of either leaving your phone uncharged in your drawer, or at least turning on DND mode 24/7 and turning off all calls and notifications, and for whatever reason, a lot of people here have this visceral reaction to the mere suggestion that it's possible and enjoyable to operate this way. People throw all the predictable excuses up as reasons why it's unmanageable: Kids, daycare, school, the office... all things they imagine are totally unworkable offline.
I think if you toss off the shackles and just try it for a week, you might find that things kind of take care of themselves, the world still turns and life finds a way. Nobody REALLY expects you to be online and reachable 24/7--we just have this weird phone FOMO that makes us think there is this expectation.
It saddens me that this is a real thought of yours. You just need a bit of creativity and trust, my friend. Something it seems people are lacking these days... likely due to the very thing we are discussing now: smartphone addiction!
As has already been pointed out to you here before, these social moves you fear are awkward or impossible were EASILY handled by generations before you... and all without cellphones. Go figure.
I live in silicon valley, have an active social life, travel frequently, have a family I spend time with every day, and am co-running two tech companies.
People did all of these things before smartphones and all those methods still work just fine today.
Any device connected to cell towers is constantly having its location tracked via triangulation, which is sold to endless surveillance capitalism organizations and governments to monitor where we shop, and where we protest, to optimally manipulate us.
I am specifically opting out of cellular networks for this reason, though open hardware/software wifi and meshtastic solutions I am always open to.
You can top-up Oyster with cash at machines and counters. Oyster cards are better as they are ~500ms quicker when tapping !
Cash is still pretty viable in the UK. I can't think of a single place the past decade where they've not taken cash and I've been sad about it or massively inconvenienced - but then again I don't get out much ;)
If a restaurant thinks it can get away with just tiny text on a menu informing that it's cashless, you could give them a lesson in the law.
The article is already fairly sensationalist in its conclusions and language, but avoiding tap-to-pay because you don't have a phone is a non-sequitur; debit and credit cards support tap to pay just fine. Similarly with folks saying they don't carry a phone so they ask others for the time. One option is to wear a watch.
When you use tap to pay, you are sending information about your purchases and location to dozens of ad tech companies, and are still participating in the very surveillance capitalism that makes everyone stupider for money.
I also pay with cash for privacy, and to use my privilege to constantly demand it as an option so the unbanked who cannot advocate for themselves can still participate in society.
Somewhat privacy. When you take cash out of an ATM, surely the serial numbers will be recorded as being dispensed to you. And when the shop pays those notes into the bank, they will be connected to the shop's account. "lrvick took this note out November 4th on Main Street, Pretend Grocery Store on West Street paid it in on November 7th". Maybe the note will be given in change and pass through a few places, but over months and years, you and Pretend Groceries will be more and more strongly connected.
"Yesterday Dad went out to buy a hardcover novel. He said he wanted to read something long, rich and thought provoking for a change. He also said he was going to buy the book with cash, so nobody could trace the purchase to him and exploit his interests for commercial purposes" - Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson, December 1993.
> Somewhat privacy. When you take cash out of an ATM, surely the serial numbers will be recorded as being dispensed to you.
For large bills that is true to some extent, but having worked closely with secret service in the past at multiple points, they have confirmed my suspicion that $20s and below are virtually impossible to track and they do not bother unless they are specifically giving you marked bills because you are already suspected of a crime.
Also avoiding tracking by a governments and tracking by surveillance capitalism are very different threat models.
Getting down to 0 tracking is of course impossible, but the less data we leak the less clear of a picture third parties get on how to predict and manipulate our behavior. Why help them?
A bank knowing what bills were issued at an ATM is not the same thing as someone being able to tell which vending machine I put it into with good cross indexing to know which bill purchased which thing, as is the case with centralized credit card networks.
> I also pay with cash for privacy, and to use my privilege to constantly demand it as an option so the unbanked who cannot advocate for themselves can still participate in society.
Good for you! I so wish more people would think and act this way. Most people don't realize that in a world without cash, government and large businesses can shutdown your entire with the push of a button without any sort of due process.
I think it is totally related. The more information you give surveillance capitalists about what you buy at the drug store, or liqueur store, or movie theater, when you leave home, etc. the more power you give them to manipulate you and keep you addicted to their platforms.
As a former professional magician with a background in studying mentalism, I can assure you ALL of us can be manipulated and distracted by entities that have enough seemingly small and insignificant bits of information about our daily routines in their widely sold and cross-indexed databases.
The less data you give these entities, the more boring targeted content and ads become, and the more attention you will have left for things that matter.
I use cash all the time all over the world. I do sometimes have to walk out of a restaurant that refuses cash to find one that accepts it, but that sort of thing is memorable and often changes behavior in those businesses. Companies hate losing customers for easily fixable things like that.
I take photos with a pocket mirrorless, and take notes with a notebook. I tell time with a self winding mechanical watch. I pay for things at stores with cash instead of tap to pay. Like a cave man, I know.
I am reachable by internet when I am at my desk, and by landline when I am at home. In an actual emergency dial 911, not me. Otherwise it can probably wait until I am at my desktop or a laptop.
I was already sold on raising kids without smartphones on intuition and lived experience, but study after study point at us having access to all humans, all knowledge, and all entertainment at all times as leading to generally bad mental health and cognitive function outcomes. Our brains were simply not evolved for it.
Whenever I see parents scrolling, and handing a kid a phone as well to pacify them, I wish I could report them for child abuse. I feel like I am watching them be given whiskey or cigarettes, except it is socially acceptable and no one cares.