Everything You Wanted to Know About My Dumbphone, but Were Afraid to Ask by Julianne Bell For the last few years, I’ve carried around a primitive mobile device called the Light Phone II, otherwise known as a “dumbphone.” It’ s a tiny hunk of gray plastic approximately the size of a credit card, with a backlit e-ink screen and the ability to send texts and make phone calls. Its other features include an alarm clock, calculator, calendar, directions, directory of local businesses, music, notes, podcasts, a hotspot, and a timer. That’s it. It doesn’t have a camera or an internet browser or social media or an app store. It can’t receive images or videos or links—those are forwarded to email. It costs $299. Seeing the reactions to my Light Phone has been interesting. It draws attention, starts conversations. Strangers are immediately fascinated by it and ask what it is, and I show them the menu screen and let them try the text keyboard. Most people say, “Oh, I would love to do that, but…” and name the one app they couldn’t live without. The most common culprit is “maps,” with “Spotify” coming in as a close second. (Kind of like saying, “I’d love to be vegetarian, but I could never give up bacon.”) There’s always a tone of longing in their voice, a distant, wistful look in their eyes as they briefly imagine their life without being tethered to a pocket-sized Skinner box for all their waking hours. Maybe finally finishing that novel draft, or learning to meditate, or reading Anna Karenina. Some people ask me why I don’t just block my apps or grow a modicum of self-control. The answer to that is that I’ve tried, and every proposed solution is just too easy for my dopamine-starved ADHD brain to maneuver around—like a rat pressing a lever for food, I will just hit “15 more minutes” or figure out how to bypass any shortcuts automatically. I’ve tried app blockers like Freedom and the app OneSec that makes you take a deep breath before opening apps, even going so far as to trap my phone in a box with a timed lock. It never stuck. Others ask why I didn’t just buy an old flip phone—as much as I would love to go back to the orange LG enV I toted in high school, the antiquated 2G and 3G networks that allowed phones like it to work are no longer available in the US. The dumbphone life is messy and imperfect and not for the faint of heart. The Light Phone’s small screen is often laggy and difficult to text on (possibly a feature, not a bug?). I can’t send photos and can only use a handful of emojis. The battery life is minimal. I still can’t figure out how to get group chats to work consistently and sometimes miss important messages as a result. The limitations often mean having to give embarrassing, convoluted explanations to other people that I’m not on a smartphone. I carry a digital camera if I want to take a photo. And I do still need to use my iPhone (by swapping my SIM card in or connecting to the Light Phone’s hotspot) to call Lyfts or go anywhere requiring a QR code or digital ticket, or even to use my building’s app-activated laundry machines. It adds friction to my life constantly. Occasionally, I wonder whether it might be more trouble than it’s worth. There is also the worry that it might actually be more inconvenient for the other people in my life than it is for me. Even if you extricate yourself from social media and smartphones, you still live in a world being actively shaped by them, and the truth is that most people expect near-constant availability these days. I’ve risked losing friends over being more difficult to reach. I find this acts as a useful filter—the ride-or-dies have always found ways to keep up with me. I make more phone calls, send more snail mail, send messages from my computer like I’m a teen on AIM again. There is sometimes a feeling of FOMO, but my online friends keep me caught up on what I’m “missing” (“Everyone is posting photos of themselves from 10 years ago”). I’m rarely far from someone else holding a smartphone, I’m still online on my computer far more than I would like, and I still check in on social media every once in a while. As a writer who is obligated to “build a platform” (ugh), this will probably remain an inevitability. When I first switched to my Light Phone, I immediately felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I started getting bored more often, but was surprised to find it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. I noticed myself daydreaming and staring out the window at fluffy clouds, the way I did as a kid. I’d forgotten the way I used to get so bored I would challenge myself to count to 1,000 or reread the same book over and over. I went on walks without checking notifications and noticed the dusky lilac-tinged skies and cats in windows and the people all around me staring vacantly into their phones. Live music became a transcendent, immersive, quasi-psychedelic experience. As corny as it is to say, it felt like going from black-and-white to seeing in color. I began reading more, writing more. I felt like I had suddenly added six hours to my day or turned into Bradley Cooper in Limitless. Now, it seems that “analog” and “offline living” are the buzzwords of 2026. Our collective digital fatigue has reached a critical mass. When I do check them, my feeds proliferate images of pristine leather-bound journal “ecosystems” (a complex system of multiple notebooks, each with a dedicated purpose), “analog bags” stuffed with jigsaw puzzles and crosswords, and people taking up “analog” hobbies like knitting. It was no sooner than this trend started that it began to draw detractors, who accused it of encouraging overconsumption and performativity. There is credence to these critiques, I think. Capitalism loves to cannibalize an anti-capitalist movement. While I hope that people will use what they already have and source their physical media from the library and thrift stores and eBay, I fear that this will become just another flash-in-the-pan personality to buy and that Urban Outfitters will soon sell MP3 players and DVDs. I myself am not immune—in a fit of nostalgia, I broke down and succumbed to a $100 hot pink Barbie-themed HMD flip phone, which comes with adhesive rhinestones and greets me with “Hi, Barbie!” when I turn it on. Cynics are suspicious that the Light Phone is yet another product full of empty promises, tricking you into buying something else you don’t need. While I get that, I find it satisfactory for my purposes when there are currently so few alternatives. I also like that the Light company seeks to “future-proof” their phones to resist planned obsolescence, promising to “continue to support our products as long as we can” with updates, and improving the phone’s ability to be repaired over and over. Still, I understand $299 is an exorbitant price to swallow for what is essentially little more than a glorified calculator. The newer Light Phone III, which features a larger OLED display and a camera, will set you back $699. Is it worth it? That all depends on your perspective. I think of Kurt Vonnegut’s famous anecdote, in which he praises the glorious inefficiency of going out to purchase a single envelope, after his wife asks him why he doesn’t just go online to buy 100 envelopes to keep on hand: “I pretend not to hear her. … I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is—we’re here on Earth to fart around. Of course, the computers will do us out of that. But what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.” Vonnegut’s words came to mind last night as I walked through Capitol Hill in the waning golden-hour light without checking my phone. I saw a big family crowding the sidewalk to take a group photo and smiled at two scruffy terriers and smelled the scents of cooking dinners wafting from open windows. My dumbphone might not be a perfect solution, but it gives me these little slices of my life back. And I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s all about. ...read more read less