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Have you heard of the dumb phone craze? Well, I don’t know if there are enough people for it to be called a craze, but there are a decent amount of folks on the dumbphones reddit longing to return to a simpler time.

My daughter and I would really like to switch. We got really excited about the Punkt phones because they’re still cute (Nokia is making some cute dumbphones too), but we’d have to change our cell phone plan and we are grandfathered into such a sweet deal with Cricket ($130/mo for 5 lines). She might still pull the trigger, but I have additional barriers. I have to have access to (the extremely annoying) Microsoft Authenticator for work.

I poked around and found the Dumb Phone app (here’s one for Android), but thought I’d try easing myself in first. I deleted all social media from my phone months and months ago, forcing myself to use the browser if I wanted to scroll. Using Instagram and Facebook on Safari on my phone is pretty miserable (posting or even commenting is super buggy and frustrating) so it cut my screen time down a lot.

After several months of that, I followed most of these steps on Lifehacker to strip my phone down to the bare minimum, set my icons to dark mode and (this is key!) turned off all notifications except for the phone and text messages. I even went into Safari and blocked any time-suck sites, and stripped the empty browser page/start page of all suggestions & bookmarks so it’s just a blank page.

I didn’t realize this before, but you can set an image for your start page and it’s just the dreamiest to have NOTHING screaming at me when I open a new browser window or tab.

Any apps for things I really didn’t need forever and immediate access to and could reasonably accomplish on my computer, I ruthlessly deleted.

I organized everything so that only my most frequently used/needed apps are front & center. On the next screen, folders exist to corral everything else.

It’s only been a couple of months, but it’s working really well. I still mindlessly pick my phone up out of habit, but there’s literally nothing to do on it. I can almost feel my brain healing as I put it down and do something more useful with my time, even if it’s just sitting with my own thoughts (aka staring out a window).

*Note, the above-linked Lifehacker article recommends turning your phone greyscale, which I still might do! I currently like the darker, yet still colorful, icons without any labels or text; if I feel like they are still pulling too much attention, I’ll try stripping everything of color.

Browser/Search Engine

I’ve tried a few other browsers on the iPhone, but keep going back to Safari. I do use an adblocker, but also turned on some accessibility features that allow me to use a ‘reader’ on most web pages (it also lets me increase the font size and/or will read the page to me if I don’t have my glasses on). The reader strips any ads and other distracting banners/colors, and fixes issues if the site isn’t optimized for mobile. I LOVE IT.

I even switched my default Safari search engine to Ecosia. I’m not that fussed about privacy (I have paranoia fatigue from my father), and have no idea if Ecosia is better in that regard. I like that they plant some trees, but mostly, their search results are just a little worse. So even if I grab my phone during a movie to search up how old an actor is or what else they’ve been in, it’s harder to disappear into an accidental deep dive.

Often, I can’t find what I’m looking for at all and after setting the phone down, forget what I was searching for altogether. I like this! So many things I search up don’t matter AT ALL and I don’t need to bog my brain down with so much immediate information. Besides, if the thing is important, I’ll remember later and can look it up on a computer instead.

Anyway, this post was just going to be a bullet list of thoughts from my notes app (the first of which says “dumbphone”) and here we are, a million words later on just the one point.

Links:

Here is a de-influencing link for a change:

• Have you seen all the ads for the fancy ultrasonic retainer cleaners? You don’t need that. Get yourself a big box of Retainer Brite tablets and a little bowl or a cheap plastic denture case. Water and a tablet plunked in with your retainers and they’re spotless, this way, the clear ones never yellow or get all clouded, and you save a bunch of money and don’t have to plug in another dumb thing. I’ve had braces a billion times and will have to wear retainers for the rest of my life, so trust, is what I’m saying.

Reading:

• My friend Sheri recommended Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi and I really loved it. It’s so different than anything else I’ve read, even her other, much longer, Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norell, and I have no idea how to even describe it. It’s mysterious and weird. I recommend!

• I had never read Middlemarch before and really enjoyed myself. It’s long and takes a while to get oriented in the world, but once you do, it’s pretty spectacular. There’s a 1994 series that stays really close to the book and I had a great time watching it.

Bonus silliness:

I went as Helly R from Severance for Halloween. Only a few people knew who I was without explanation 🫠 & I didn’t win anything at work, which is honestly the only reason I dress up, but this is hands down, the most comfortable costume I’ve ever worn (well, aside from the wig). Helly knew what was up in office wear.

Endnotes:

It’s November and we’re eleven days away from Eric’s FIFTH year time. 💔 It’s just as unreal as it has ever been and I’m sleeping HORRIBLY, but what do you do? Carry on because there’s no other option, really.

xo