{"id":266849,"date":"2025-11-06T16:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266849\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:12:11","slug":"brick-month-offline-and-the-many-ways-to-quit-your-smartphone-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266849\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick, Month Offline, and the many ways to quit your smartphone addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past few months, a shadowy company called Dumb and Co.<\/a> has been convincing people in Washington, DC, to ditch their smartphones for a month. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just another digital detox retreat. To me, it sounds more like a hip social club. The home base is a bar called Hush Harbor<\/a>, the first phone-free bar in DC<\/a>, and early on, the experience of joining involved calling a 1-800 number and leaving a voicemail application.<\/p>\n

The local movement is going national. There\u2019s now a website and an option to join a cohort from anywhere in the United States<\/a>. For $100, you get the Dumb Phone 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. The first in-person cohort outside of DC is also accepting applications: Month Offline Brooklyn starts in January 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It all smacks of the same nostalgia that led to the resurgence of CDs<\/a> and the return of compact digital cameras<\/a>. The idea of a piece of technology that does one thing and does not take over our entire attention span is appealing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phone certainly amplifies some of our avoidant tendencies,\u201d said Grant Besner, one of the co-founders of Month Offline. \u201cJust 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\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. There\u2019s also the Brick<\/a>, 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<\/a>, that will accomplish similar ends. The overarching concept is that hiding from your phone for a weekend won\u2019t do much to change your habits long-term. You need to learn how to be more intentional about your phone use.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is AA for smartphones\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. Something that stood out in her coverage was the extent to which people weren\u2019t just looking for a phone fast. They wanted community and connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely had elements that made it feel like a support group,\u201d Shammas told me. \u201cPeople in the group sometimes would say, \u2018This is AA for smartphones.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cscrolling [her] life away.\u201d Then she switched to a flip phone, and everything changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know life could feel this way,\u201d said Peabody, who now works for Month Offline. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know I could exist in this type of way.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those who don\u2019t want to do the whole month-long challenge, the organizers of Month Offline will sell you a Dumb Phone 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<\/a> and improve your attention span<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, an adult summer camp in California where all digital devices were banned. The organization that sponsored it, Digital Detox<\/a>, inspired groups worldwide to help people disconnect. The Offline Club<\/a>, for example, hosts phone-free events and retreats all over Europe. There\u2019s even a special festival that happens annually on the first weekend of March called the Global Day of Unplugging<\/a>. Verizon is a corporate sponsor.<\/p>\n

But what was once a wellness trend is quickly turning into a full-blown social movement. After Jean Twenge asked \u201cHave smartphones destroyed a generation?<\/a>\u201d in The Atlantic in 2017, the idea that tech use had created a youth mental health crisis went mainstream. It didn\u2019t help, when, a few years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram knew its product was harmful to teens<\/a>, citing internal documents. That was around the same time that the Wait Until 8th pledge<\/a> to keep smartphones out of kids\u2019 hands until they\u2019re 13 or so popped up, and some families even hired consultants<\/a> to help them ditch their smartphone habits. Then came the pandemic, when everyone\u2019s lives became even more mediated by screens.<\/p>\n

Now, school phone bans are a major legislative priority. Florida became the first to push phones out of classrooms<\/a> in 2024, and there are now 35 states with laws or rules restricting or outright banning phones in schools<\/a>. We don\u2019t 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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<\/a> 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<\/a> for your mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, there is now emerging evidence that digital detox can and does work,\u201d said Kostadin Kushlev<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Let me confess: I haven\u2019t done the Month Offline. I didn\u2019t last a week using just a Light Phone 3. A big reason why is just that it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s all I need right now to feel more present.<\/p>\n

Update, November 6, 9:25 am ET: This story was originally published earlier on November 6 and has been updated with news of Month Offline Brooklyn\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> so you don\u2019t miss the next one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past few months, a shadowy company called Dumb and Co. has been convincing people in Washington,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,63,34439,8280,203,105,155852],"class_list":{"0":"post-266849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-even-better","11":"tag-life","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-user-friendly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}