{"id":627618,"date":"2023-04-10T09:49:15","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T14:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/10\/in-celebration-of-the-dumb-phone-a-rare-sanity-saving-gadget\/"},"modified":"2023-04-10T09:49:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T14:49:15","slug":"in-celebration-of-the-dumb-phone-a-rare-sanity-saving-gadget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/10\/in-celebration-of-the-dumb-phone-a-rare-sanity-saving-gadget\/","title":{"rendered":"In celebration of the dumb phone, a rare sanity-saving gadget"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I miss the phone. No, not that<\/em> slab in my pocket that we call the smartphone.<\/p>\n

Yes, that device can act<\/em> like a phone. But it also doubles as a portable laptop, camera, alarm, console, TV, wallet, and so many other things \u2014 I\u2019m not sure what it is. But one thing\u2019s for sure: calling an iPhone just a \u201cphone\u201d has never felt quite right.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to lose sight of just how utterly vast a smartphone\u2019s capabilities are. Hidden inside our pockets is a powerful machine that seems like it really can do everything, everywhere, all at once. <\/strong>There\u2019s a reason the courts recently restricted<\/a> FTX founder\u00a0Sam Bankman-Fried to just a dumb phone. A smartphone is a powerful tool, especially in the hands of a math nerd who lost billions of other people\u2019s money overnight.<\/p>\n

And while my smartphone has improved my life immensely \u2014 and I\u2019m not about to get rid of it \u2014 it\u2019s also made some things worse. Namely, my brain. The smartphone lets us easily check on things constantly and immediately, whether that\u2019s the news or our loved ones, but at the expense of our attention spans, mental health, and relationships. Hell, recently, I realized I barely remember most of the concerts I\u2019ve gone to, and why? I was too busy taking hundreds of videos and sharing them on Instagram with my phone. Funnily enough, I never even watched the videos after and only did when I needed to delete them to free up storage. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I want the cheap dumb phone to make a comeback, and I\u2019m so excited it\u2019s on the verge of potentially doing so as more Gen Zers increasingly embrace it<\/a>. I need a break, and as long as my iPhone is this good, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to immediately give it to myself. I need a phone that, while waiting in line to fuel my caffeine addiction, lacks apps so I can\u2019t whip it out and distract myself with the news or FOMO-inducing vacation photos. A phone, ideally, with no camera, either, that won\u2019t pull me away from enjoying the present moment with my baby nephew as he flashes me one of his first toothy smiles. <\/p>\n

I want it to be a Thing, too. Something common again so I don\u2019t feel like a freak as I draw attention pulling out a dumb phone that looks like it\u2019s from the early 2000s, which has actually happened. I also want it to be affordable so everybody can own one, not a couple of hundred bucks, as many popular dumb phones like the Light Phone<\/a> currently cost.<\/p>\n

And yes, I know what you\u2019re thinking. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just put your phone on \u2018Do Not Disturb\u2019?\u201d I have. Multiple times. On good days when my willpower is high, sometimes it helps. But I\u2019m only human, and smartphones<\/a> and apps<\/a> are designed to be addictive. On those days when I\u2019m already feeling down or exhausted, the temptation to pull out my smartphone for a quick and easy dopamine rush gets too strong. I know I\u2019m not alone.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve proposed bringing<\/a> dumb phones back before, back in the days when Trump ran the country by Twitter and rattled our collective nerves with each new tweet. The need to log off was great, and now it feels even greater. <\/p>\n

\n

Since then, we\u2019ve suffered a global pandemic while the US witnessed a literal attempted coup<\/a>. Russia invaded Ukraine<\/a>, which has cost well over 200,000 people<\/a> their lives, destabilized the region, and contributed to major food shortages. As that conflict continues to unfold, we\u2019ve also recently<\/a> hit our \u2014 what? \u2014 millionth major financial crisis in 15 years? Every other week, we live in unprecedented times, and it\u2019s no wonder depression diagnoses are on the rise<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

At the same time, technology is just getting better \u2014 and even more distracting. There are even more addictive apps as well as more capable smartphones and AI tools to polish up our lives. And as social media companies continue to add more and more distracting features, research increasingly demonstrates the negative impact it\u2019s all having on the mental health of young people<\/a> and adults<\/a> alike. It\u2019s no wonder: reading the news sometimes makes it feels like the world\u2019s about to end, yet somehow Instagram and LinkedIn feeds make it feel like everybody\u2019s winning at life every day and all the time. And they\u2019re doing it all while looking like supermodels<\/a>, too, thanks to incredibly good AI filters.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why I \u2014 no, we \u2014 need the dumb phone to make a comeback. We need something to help us temporarily disconnect from a fake digital world so we can be more connected to the real one. It used to be getting out of the house was how I could unplug, but now I never can with my smartphone in my pocket and tech everywhere. We can\u2019t hit a pause button on the world, but we can forcibly log off by using a dumb phone instead of a smart one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong: I don\u2019t want smartphones to go anywhere, and I don\u2019t want them to stop getting better, either. Rather, I imagine a world where we have our smartphones, but it\u2019s also normal to have cheap dumb phones to use while, say, out of the house or just whenever you need a break. Just a basic phone that we can all use to just text and make calls with. No cameras, no apps, no internet, no none of that stuff. Just a phone \u2014 not another constant distraction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Sheena Vasani<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I miss the phone. No, not that slab in my pocket that we call the smartphone.Yes, that device can act like a phone. But it also doubles as a portable laptop, camera, alarm, console, TV, wallet, and so many other things \u2014 I\u2019m not sure what it is. But one thing\u2019s for sure: calling an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":627619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2889,978,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-627618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebration","8":"category-phone","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}