Can a Dumb Phone Make You Smarter?

I'm fascinated by the idea of dumb phones. The Light Phone 3 looks like a sexy French cigarette case. The Minimal Phone is a throwback to the Blackberry. The idea behind some of these phones is to cure you from the brain-rot of the always with you social media apps. The usual suspects are Tik Tok and Instagram as the apps you won't be able to install on these un-intelligent mobile telephones.

Listen, I'm a sucker for a single-serving device. I got a record player and I got some vinyl. On weekends when I sweep and mop the apartment I like to blast Metallica's Black album on my Victrola. I prefer reading printed books over ebooks, especially for fiction, but when I do ebooks I'll always prefer to use my Kindle instead of my iPad.

But these devices are not single-serving devices. They don't do a single thing really well at all and they are not the solution to the problems of the anxious generation. They are technically still smartphones if we go with the original meaning of a phone that can do many, many more things than just making phone calls.

Many of the YouTube reviewers problems with these dumb phones are that they are always missing something that's essential to them. Other people seem to love them and they do enough of what they need.

If I had extra cash to burn, I would certainly like try one as a daily driver. But while I occasionally get sucked in with Instagram Reels and the Threads For You stream, I'm still a Web 2.0 guy. Leave my reverse chronological stream alone and let me follow who I want to follow. Thank you Mastodon, the Fediverse, and Ivory from Tapbots for existing.

Overall, I'm still unsure if there's anything smart by dumbing down the smartphone, by having it do 10 fewer things instead of 20 fewer things. Our phones can do a lot — but that doesn’t mean you have to.

You can still uninstall Tik Tok and Instagram from them. That won't necessarily make you smarter, or dumber, but it's good a start.