For the previous few months, a shadowy firm referred to as Dumb and Co. has been convincing individuals in Washington, DC, to ditch their smartphones for a month. It’s a part of a venture referred to as Month Offline, the place individuals get a flip cellphone and entry to a assist group to speak about algorithms, doomscrolling, and why smartphones make us really feel so lonely.
This isn’t simply one other digital detox retreat. To me, it sounds extra like a hip social membership. The house base is a bar referred to as Hush Harbor, the primary phone-free bar in DC, and early on, the expertise of becoming a member of concerned calling a 1-800 quantity and leaving a voicemail software.
The native motion goes nationwide. There’s now a web site and an choice to hitch a cohort from wherever in the USA. For $100, you get the Dumb Cellphone 1, which is actually only a TCL flip cellphone; a brand new cellphone quantity with a 404 space code; and a curriculum of types to information you thru the month. There are additionally weekly dial-in radio packages that take the place of the in-person conferences. The primary in-person cohort outdoors of DC can also be accepting functions: Month Offline Brooklyn begins in January 2026.
All of it smacks of the identical nostalgia that led to the resurgence of CDs and the return of compact digital cameras. The thought of a chunk of expertise that does one factor and doesn’t take over our whole consideration span is interesting.
“The cellphone definitely amplifies a few of our avoidant tendencies,” stated Grant Besner, one of many co-founders of Month Offline. “Simply changing it even for a bit of bit and needing to take a seat with your individual ideas to be bored generally is a transformative and actually constructive expertise in somebody’s life.”
Month Offline is a part of a brand new technology of options to your smartphone-addled existence. These embrace fastidiously designed smartphone alternate options, just like the Mild Cellphone 3. There’s additionally the Brick, an NFC-enabled magnet that blocks entry to sure apps while you faucet your cellphone towards it. You can even discover loads of apps, like Freedom, One Sec, or Forest, that can accomplish comparable ends. The overarching idea is that hiding out of your cellphone for a weekend gained’t do a lot to alter your habits long-term. It is advisable discover ways to be extra intentional about your cellphone use.
“That is AA for smartphones”
I first discovered about Month Offline from Brittany Shammas, a Washington Submit reporter who participated in one of many DC-based cohorts and wrote a function concerning the expertise. One thing that stood out in her protection was the extent to which individuals weren’t simply searching for a cellphone quick. They needed neighborhood and connection.
“It positively had parts that made it really feel like a assist group,” Shammas advised me. “Individuals within the group typically would say, ‘That is AA for smartphones.’”
After speaking to a number of different individuals who did the Month Offline program, it was clear that some did wish to go full flip cellphone, whereas others simply wanted a break from their iPhone. Considered one of them, Lydia Peabody, stated she stop her smartphone for a month as a result of she was struggling together with her psychological well being and “scrolling [her] life away.” Then she switched to a flip cellphone, and every part modified.
“I didn’t know life might really feel this manner,” stated Peabody, who now works for Month Offline. “I didn’t even know I might exist in the sort of approach.”
For many who don’t wish to do the entire month-long problem, the organizers of Month Offline will promote you a Dumb Cellphone 1, with the brand new cellphone quantity and cell service, for $25 a month. Additionally they make an app, Dumb Down, that makes it simpler to sync calls and texts between an iPhone and a flip cellphone. Even with out the assist group element, switching to a flip cellphone can deepen your present friendships and enhance your consideration span.
For about so long as smartphones have existed, there have been packages designed to assist us cease utilizing them. Greater than a decade in the past, you might spend a whole bunch to go to Camp Grounded, an grownup summer time camp in California the place all digital gadgets had been banned. The group that sponsored it, Digital Detox, impressed teams worldwide to assist individuals disconnect. The Offline Membership, for instance, hosts phone-free occasions and retreats throughout Europe. There’s even a particular pageant that occurs yearly on the primary weekend of March referred to as the International Day of Unplugging. Verizon is a company sponsor.
However what was as soon as a wellness pattern is rapidly turning right into a full-blown social motion. After Jean Twenge requested “Have smartphones destroyed a technology?” in The Atlantic in 2017, the concept that tech use had created a youth psychological well being disaster went mainstream. It didn’t assist, when, a couple of years later, the Wall Avenue Journal reported that Instagram knew its product was dangerous to teenagers, citing inner paperwork. That was across the identical time that the Wait Till eighth pledge to maintain smartphones out of children’ palms till they’re 13 or so popped up, and a few households even employed consultants to assist them ditch their smartphone habits. Then got here the pandemic, when everybody’s lives grew to become much more mediated by screens.
Now, faculty cellphone bans are a significant legislative precedence. Florida grew to become the primary to push telephones out of school rooms in 2024, and there are actually 35 states with legal guidelines or guidelines limiting or outright banning telephones in faculties. We don’t know all of the methods it will rework training, however at the least in a single Kentucky faculty district, the statewide cellphone ban correlated with a spike within the variety of books checked out of the library.
You need to marvel what a college cellphone ban for adults would seem like. Over half of US adults are anxious about being hooked on their smartphones, in response to a 2024 Harris Ballot, however it appears unlikely all of them wish to throw them into the ocean. Spending a weekend on a digital detox retreat will be stress-free, and analysis even suggests that these sorts of interventions may help scale back the time individuals spend on their telephones when this system is over. Staying off social media positively appears to be good in your psychological well being.
“Total, there’s now rising proof that digital detox can and does work,” stated Kostadin Kushlev, a Georgetown psychology professor who leads the Digital Well being and Happiness Lab. However a lot of the analysis focuses on quitting a single function, like social media, Kushlev added.
Let me confess: I haven’t accomplished the Month Offline. I didn’t final every week utilizing only a Mild Cellphone 3. An enormous purpose why is simply that it’s not time for me to reorganize my digital life. Although the Month Offline organizers have made it simpler, switching to a flip cellphone is difficult.
However I did get a Brick. Anytime I wish to forestall myself from reflexively scrolling by means of Reddit at night time, I simply faucet my cellphone on a bit of gray sq. and the app stops working. To get it working once more, I’ve to stand up, stroll throughout my condo, and faucet it once more. It sounds easy, just a bit little bit of friction to snap me out of stupor. And that’s all I would like proper now to really feel extra current.
Replace, November 6, 9:25 am ET: This story was initially revealed earlier on November 6 and has been up to date with information of Month Offline Brooklyn’s launch.
A model of this story was additionally revealed within the Person Pleasant e-newsletter. Enroll right here so that you don’t miss the subsequent one!
