For the past few months, a shadowy company called Dumb and Co. has been convincing people in Washington, DC, to ditch their smartphones for a month. It’s part of a project called Month Offline, where participants get a flip phone and access to a support group to talk about algorithms, doomscrolling, and why smartphones make us feel so lonely.

This isn’t just another digital detox retreat. To me, it sounds more like a hip social club. The home base is a bar called Hush Harbor, the first phone-free bar in DC, and early on, the experience of joining involved calling a 1-800 number and leaving a voicemail application.

The local movement is going national. There’s now a website and an option to join a cohort from anywhere in the United States. For $100, you get the Dumbphone 1, which is really just a TCL flip phone; a new phone number with a 404 area code; and a curriculum of sorts to guide you through the month. There are also weekly dial-in radio programs that take the place of the in-person meetings. It all smacks of the same nostalgia that led to the resurgence of CDs and the return of compact digital cameras. The idea of a piece of technology that does one thing and does not take over our entire attention span is certainly appealing.

“The phone certainly amplifies some of our avoidant tendencies,” said Grant Besner, one of the co-founders of Month Offline. “Just replacing it even for a little bit and needing to sit with your own thoughts to be bored can be a transformative and really positive experience in someone’s life.”

Month Offline is part of a new generation of solutions to your smartphone-addled existence. These include carefully designed smartphone alternatives, like the Light Phone 3. There’s also the Brick, an NFC-enabled magnet that blocks access to certain apps when you tap your phone against it. You can also find plenty of apps, like Freedom, One Sec, or Forest, that will accomplish similar ends. The overarching concept is that hiding from your phone for a weekend won’t do much to change your habits long-term. You need to learn how to be more intentional about your phone use.

“This is AA for smartphones”

I first learned about Month Offline from Brittany Shammas, a Washington Post reporter who participated in one of the DC-based cohorts and wrote a feature about the experience. Something that stood out in her coverage was the extent to which people weren’t just looking for a phone fast. They wanted community and connection.

“It definitely had elements that made it feel like a support group,” Shammas told me. “People in the group sometimes would say, ‘This is AA for smartphones.’”

After talking to several other people who did the Month Offline program, it was clear that some did want to go full flip phone, while others just needed a break from their iPhone. One of them, Lydia Peabody, said she quit her smartphone for a month because she was struggling with her mental health and “scrolling [her] life away.” Then she switched to a flip phone, and everything changed.

“I didn’t know life could feel this way,” said Peabody, who now works for Month Offline. “I didn’t even know I could exist in this type of way.”

For those who don’t want to do the whole month-long challenge, the organizers of Month Offline will sell you a Dumbphone 1, with the new phone number and cell service, for $25 a month. They also make an app, Dumb Down, that makes it easier to sync calls and texts between an iPhone and a flip phone. Even without the support group component, switching to a flip phone can deepen your existing friendships and improve your attention span.

Digital detoxes work

For about as long as smartphones have existed, there have been programs designed to help us stop using them. More than a decade ago, you could spend hundreds to go to Camp Grounded, an adult summer camp in California where all digital devices were banned. The organization that sponsored it, Digital Detox, inspired groups worldwide to help people disconnect. The Offline Club, for example, hosts phone-free events and retreats all over Europe. There’s even a special festival that happens annually on the first weekend of March called the Global Day of Unplugging. Verizon is a corporate sponsor.

But what was once a wellness trend is quickly turning into a full-blown social movement. After Jean Twenge asked “Have smartphones destroyed a generation?” in The Atlantic in 2017, the idea that tech use had created a youth mental health crisis went mainstream. It didn’t help, when, a few years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram knew its product was harmful to teens, citing internal documents. That was around the same time that the Wait Until 8th pledge to keep smartphones out of kids’ hands until they’re 13 or so popped up, and some families even hired consultants to help them ditch their smartphone habits. Then came the pandemic, when everyone’s lives became even more mediated by screens.

Now, school phone bans are a major legislative priority. Florida became the first to push phones out of classrooms in 2024, and there are now 35 states with laws or rules restricting or outright banning phones in schools. We don’t know all the ways this will transform education, but at least in one Kentucky school district, the statewide phone ban correlated with a spike in the number of books checked out of the library.

You have to wonder what a school phone ban for adults would look like. Over half of US adults are worried about being addicted to their smartphones, according to a 2024 Harris Poll, but it seems unlikely they all want to throw them into the sea. Spending a weekend on a digital detox retreat can be relaxing, and research even suggests that these kinds of interventions can help reduce the time people spend on their phones when the program is over. Staying off social media definitely seems to be good for your mental health.

“Overall, there is now emerging evidence that digital detox can and does work,” said Kostadin Kushlev, a Georgetown psychology professor who leads the Digital Health and Happiness Lab. But much of the research focuses on quitting a single feature, like social media, Kushlev added.

Let me confess: I haven’t done the Month Offline. I didn’t last a week using just a Light Phone 3. A big reason why is just that it’s not a good time for me to reorganize my digital life. Even though the Month Offline organizers have made it easier, switching to a flip phone is hard.

But I did get a Brick. Anytime I want to prevent myself from reflexively scrolling through Reddit at night, I just tap my phone on a little grey square and the app stops working. To get it working again, I have to get up, walk across my apartment, and tap it again. It sounds simple, just a little bit of friction to snap me out of stupor. And that’s all I need right now to feel more present.

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