Dumbphones: A Potential Answer To The Smartphone Addiction Epidemic

Smartphones are a great boon to people everywhere. Almost everything can be done using them. They can be used to buy groceries, get a cab, catch up with friends, do a course online, and more. Even entire business can be run with just a smartphone. This is all not to mention their access to the internet, which allows people to access any and all information out there.

There is a price to all these features, and it's not just the huge monetary cost. Smartphones have a tendency of making users dependent on them. Sharing stories on social media has become the norm, and not using apps like X, formerly known as Twitter, or Instagram can lead to a sense of seclusion from friend groups. Workplaces also often require some use of social media and other apps in order to promote their business or perform certain tasks. Smartphones have also been integrated so much into the day-to-day workings of our lives that most payments people conduct are done through e-wallets rather than actual cash.

This is why some people are opting to switch out their smartphones for 'Dumbphones'.

'Dumbphones' are phones that don't have the typical features of smartphones. They usually don't have touchscreens, and are restricted to the features that phones had back in the early 2000s, which mainly consisted of voice calls and messages through text. Even getting emails on one's phone was a rare feature back in those days.

An article by CNBC from March wrote on how the 'Gen Z' population in the U.S. had started to adopt dumbphones in order to give themselves a break from the addictive nature of smartphones.

The article even got a statement from a moderator of the 'r/dumbphones' subreddit, Jose Briones, who reviews these types of phones on YouTube as well. He said, "I think you can see it with certain Gen Z populations - they're tired of the screens. They don't know what is going on with mental health and they're trying to make cutbacks."