I Switched to a Flip Phone for a Month

AND FLIPPED OUT –

Jan. 6, 2024 – Was it inconvenient? Yes. Did T9 texting drive me crazy? Definitely. Was it worth doing? Absolutely. My biggest regret of 2023 was my relationship to my smartphone, or my “tech appendage” as I’ve named it in my iPhone settings. That’s only an hour more than the average American, but I still found it staggering to think that I spent the equivalent of January, February and half of March looking at that tiny screen (April too, if we only count waking hours). Sure, some (much?) of that time was gainfully spent on activities that enrich my life or are unavoidable: work, family text threads, reading the news and keeping up with far-flung friends. But I reached for the device more than 100 times each day according to my report. And that grasping was increasingly accompanied by the kind of queasy regret that I associate with unhealthy behavior — that feeling I get after I drink too many glasses of wine, finish the whole bag of sour gummies or stay at the poker table when I’m on tilt.

So this December, I made a radical change. I ditched my $1,300 iPhone 15 for a $108 Orbic Journey — a flip phone. It makes phone calls and texts and that was about it. It didn’t even have Snake on it.