When a buzzing smartphone started to feel like a weight she couldn’t put down, Grace Freeman bought a flip phone on a dare.
Freeman, a full-time seminary teacher, had joked with her students about trading in her iPhone. They laughed and said she would “never survive.”
“I just bought one right then,” she said. “I got it in December and I wanted to do it until the end of the year. And then after I finished like the first three weeks, I was like, I’m gonna do this till spring break. And then after spring break, I was like, I’m gonna do it till I can’t.”
For months, the plastic clamshell replaced the glowing rectangle that had been glued to her palm for years. What surprised her most wasn’t what she lost, but what she says she felt she got back.
“I lived life more presently,” Freeman said. “I stopped caring about unimportant things. I feel like I had less anxiety, I feel like I was less stressed about things. I feel like I was just overall, honestly happier.”
She’s not alone.
From college apartments in Utah county to online communities around the world, a growing number of youth and young adults are intentionally swapping smartphones for “dumb phones” — flip phones and minimalist devices that call and text, but don’t scroll.
A trend with numbers behind it
“Dumb phones” still only make up a small slice of overall handset sales, but recent data suggests interest is rising, especially among Gen Z and young millennials. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cited Counterpoint data that showed sales of basic “feature phones” in Canada rose 25% between 2022 and 2023.
Globally, companies making minimalist phones — like Light Phone and Punkt — report increased demand from younger users who want fewer apps and less distraction. The Washington Times said sales of “brick phones” among 18 to 24-year-olds jumped by 148% from 2021 to 2024, describing the shift as a kind of “dopamine diet” from constant notifications.
At the same time, parents, doctors and policymakers are sounding alarms about youth screen time and social media. Utah health officials have named lack of sleep, mental health struggles and screen time among the top challenges faced by Utah youth.
A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 44% of U.S. parents see social media as the most harmful factor affecting teen mental health, and nearly half of teens say it mostly has a negative effect.
Those concerns helped fuel Utah’s first-in-the-nation social media regulations for minors, which require parental consent and limit overnight use.
Against that backdrop, some young adults aren’t just talking about cutting back on screen time — they’re changing the device itself.
‘We’re experiencing a third of what life could be’
Freeman is candid about how strong her feelings became after making the switch.
“I think that, and I say this boldly and confidently, that I genuinely believe that we are experiencing a third of what life could actually be because two-thirds of it, we’re wasting it on our phone,” she said.
Even people with relatively low daily screen time, she argued, underestimate how much their phones shape their thoughts and attention.
“Even if your screen time is less than three hours, even if your screen time is like really low, really minimal, the effects your phone has on your mind is diminishing the rest of your life,” she said. “No matter what you’re doing.”
Multiple studies have found that the mere presence of a smartphone can reduce cognitive capacity.
Freeman said her mental health changed in ways she could feel physically.
“I don’t even deeply struggle with anxiety or depression,” she said, but “Immediately when I had a flip phone, the immediate amount of anxiety that I lost was — I don’t even know if I could explain it to you. My insides felt physically different."
She also noticed a difference in the classroom.
“I was a significantly better teacher with a flip phone,” she said. With a smartphone, “if I check my phone as the teacher, everyone in my class thinks, ‘Oh, it’s acceptable for me to check the time’ — that’s also checking all my notifications and if someone interesting texts you, you’re gonna look. I would never open up my flip phone in class.”
As a podcaster and influencer, Freeman still needed her smartphone for certain tasks — social media work, podcast duties and other job responsibilities. So she turned her old iPhone into what she said was “basically an iPod.” She left it at home, disconnected from cellular service, and used it in short, scheduled bursts.
“I would just work on my phone at home for like 45 minutes a day,” she said.
She points out that not always having access to work was better for her as well.
“It’s actually so unhealthy that your work has access to you 24/7 and you feel required to respond 24/7. If it’s not worth them calling you on the phone, then you’re probably fine to not respond.”
The hardest trade-off was relational. She was left off group texts. Friends forgot to include her in last-minute plans. She discovered who would call and who simply stopped reaching out.
“What I started realizing, is it’s not healthy to expect that we will be invited to everything. And it’s actually really a normal human experience to realize, I actually don’t need to be invited to everything to have friends.”
The painful part, she said, was realizing how much some of her own relationships had depended on constant digital contact. When one close friendship faded after she switched phones, she said, “I realized, ‘Oh, that’s so superficial. If that is what was keeping us friends, what a joke.’”
Four roommates, no phone November and a sticky-note wall
For four Utah college roommates — Alexa Plyer, Katrina Hafen, Hallie Martinson and Anika Gross — the shift started on a Florida beach.
Plyer said she had been “for months on end” in a season where “everything was just a million miles an hour.” On a trip, she left her phone in the sand and walked.
“I’m just gonna set my phone down and I’m gonna go for a walk,” she said. She prayed, collected shells and kept going until she realized she’d walked about six miles in three hours without noticing.
“It was just like this super mindful experience that I was like, ‘This is what I’ve been missing,’” she said. “I need more of this in my life.”
Back in Utah, she and her roommates stayed up late talking about how much time they spent on their phones — especially on social media apps like Instagram, scrolling reels.
“We were just like, ‘Don’t you ever just wish, like, you lived in the ’80s where it’s like, there’s no phone?’” Plyer said.
By 1 a.m., the conversation turned into a plan: “No Phone November.” They would move their SIM cards into flip phones and hand their smartphones to neighbors for safekeeping.
Gross, who’s from Canada, was unable to switch her SIM card, so instead, she got a Brick — a device that was able to block distracting apps and essentially restricted her smartphone to the capacity of a flip phone.
“We all felt so good about it and then all got super nervous the day of,” Hafen said. “We were like, ‘How are we actually gonna live?’”
The first day, the novelty felt fun. The inconvenience set in quickly.
“I didn’t realize how many things I looked up during the day,” Hafen said. “Definitions of a word in a book I’m reading or a medical thing I hear in class or at work or a movie thing — anything, all the time. … That was frustrating, just being like, ‘I just have to forget about this or sit with not knowing.’”
Texting also changed.
“The No. 1 thing I learned is that I send too many unnecessary texts,” Hafen said. “The majority of texts I send, I can wait till I see someone.”
All three said they started calling more — and talking longer.
“I call so many people,” Martinson said. “I’ve felt a deeper connection with the people too, because I’m not just, ‘Oh, how’s your day going?’ and then get straight to the point. I actually hear about their day and what’s happening in their life.”
They began keeping a sticky-note wall in their apartment, writing down “blessings” and changes they noticed: extra time for naps and books, more meaningful conversations, more scripture study, more quiet.
“I just sit with my thoughts a lot. But I’m never bored,” Martinson said. “I just have so much time … I didn’t think I had that much time until I got rid of all the stuff.”
Their spiritual habits shifted too.
“When you turn off all of the things you’re filling your brain with, you’re like, ‘Wow, I was not filling it with — I wasn’t giving God the time that I thought I was,’” Hafen said. “When you kind of take out a bunch of things you were filling your time with, you’re like, ‘Wow, it really wasn’t as much as I thought it was.’”
Plyer added, “Before, I was trying to scatter and make time for scripture study and it was stressing me out. Now I feel I’m like, ‘Oh, I have this extra 30 minutes. Let me open my scriptures.’”
FOMO, Find My and friendship tests
Freeman said when she had a smartphone, she checked friends’ locations constantly.
“I used that to see where my friends were at all times,” she said. “If they were together, I could text and be like, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing? Can I come?’ Immediately I would get an invite, even if I wasn’t invited initially, because I didn’t want to be left out.”
With a flip phone, that disappeared.
“The first week I was so sad because … no one has my location, no one cares where I’m at anymore,” she said. “And then all of a sudden after a week, I felt so much peace. … The fact that no one knows where I’m at, and I can do whatever I want, and it’s not my business, and I don’t need to know what they’re doing, was so freeing to me.”
Plyer, Hafen and Martinson said they’ve also had to wrestle with being left out — and with how friends respond to their choice.
“It’s interesting to see the friends that are super unsupportive of it,” Plyer said, describing people who get mad or annoyed when she can’t scan a QR code or instantly look something up. “I’m like, ‘How is this affecting you?’”
For Martinson, the flip phone became a filter for friendship.
“If they actually want to hang out with me, be with me, they would find a way to get a hold of me,” she said. “And if they don’t, then I’ll sit here by myself and watch TV.”
Hafen added, “People will call you if they really feel like they need to.”
‘Seeing life in color again’
Though, a flip phone isn’t a magic cure. Anxiety and depression have many causes, and researchers say smartphones can both help and harm, depending on how they’re used. Still, multiple studies tie high social media use and late-night screen time to higher rates of anxiety, depression and loneliness in teens.
Recent coverage of the “appstinence” or digital minimalism movement notes that most people who buy minimalist phones don’t abandon smartphones forever. Many use them as “weekend phones” or keep a smartphone at home on Wi-Fi for specific tasks — much like Freeman did.
There are practical hurdles: digital tickets, banking apps, two-factor authentication, navigation and music streaming. Hafen said she’s already thinking about how she’ll handle an upcoming trip that relies heavily on digital passes.
“I think I’m gonna try and go through mid-December,” she said. “Because I want to keep using the flip phone. I really do. But then there’s weird implications. ... I have a bunch of tickets on Apple Pay. … There are things on iPhone that are helpful on certain things.”
For some, the goal isn’t to live in 2005 forever, but to reset a relationship with technology that feels out of control.
“It’s an act of faith,” Hafen said to other young adults considering a switch. “You have to be, like, ‘It’s OK to sit in the scared feeling for a second or like, I’m gonna feel really anxious for a second. I’m gonna feel helpless without this thing that I constantly have. It’s like almost an emotional support thing that we have on us all the time. And so I think it’s an act of faith to get rid of that.”
Freeman said she plans to go back to a flip phone “immediately” when she becomes a parent.
“I think the saddest thing, to be honest,” she said, was a day when she and a friend went out for frozen yogurt after school and saw a shop full of moms, all scrolling while their children ate.
“If you can’t even talk to your kid on the first day of school, because you want to be on your phone after they’ve been gone all day, that’s a major, major societal issue,” she said.
She doesn’t pretend she’s solved her own phone habits. Right now, she has a new iPhone in her pocket and jokes that she upgrades every year. But the flip phone months changed how she sees the glowing screen.
“The best comparison that I’ve ever had to getting a flip phone is the book ‘The Giver.’ And the boy that starts seeing in color,” she said. “I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m seeing life in color again.”