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Gen Z, Dumb Phones, and the Choice to Disconnect
When I was in high school, smartphones were just arriving. My first phone was a silver BlackBerry with a smooth ball in the middle. I got it when I was sixteen because I was trying out for track and needed a way to communicate with my parents if practice got cancelled or something was wrong. I thought it was so cool that I could use my phone to text and call my friends. Shortly, however, it wasn’t enough. I needed a device that was easier to use and could hold social media.
Over the next 4 years, I navigated between Androids, flip phones, and iPhones. All my friends were new to things like Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, but I wanted to communicate with them. I wanted to fit in. Be cool. See what I was missing that everyone else was experiencing.
Two years later, I realized that while my iPhone was useful, it didn’t uphold the hype everyone had been talking about. Instead of feeling connected, I felt disconnected and empty. Every time I liked a photo or scrolled, I wondered why I didn’t look like that person or have the funds to go on the exotic vacations and trips they seemed to take every weekend.
Today, I primarily use social media as an author. I aim to create content that resonates with my audience, and I rarely scroll. But when I do, I find myself feeling the same emotions I did as a teen: unloved, not enough, and missing out.
Thankfully, today’s teens are noticing this pattern. While they are addicted to their phones and social media, going offline has become one of the most popular wellness trends of the year. Gen Z is trading in their smartphones for simple, feature-limited mobile phones, often coined “dumb phone,” because all they can do is call, text, or access very basic internet. They’re also exchanging cameras for polaroids, apps for notebooks, and an analog bag to reach for instead of their phone. The bag typically contains crafts, crossword puzzles, journals, and books. It seems that a generation that was raised by technology is searching for something beyond it.
If what we repeatedly give our attention to forms us, how should people of faith discern what deserves access to their minds and hearts?
Pushing Back Against Constant Connectivity
In Matthew 6:21, we read these words: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (NIV). While most people associate this Scripture with money, many of us tend to treasure jobs, status, or even social likes. It isn’t always bad to value these things, but it becomes a problem when we prioritize them over God.
In a similar notion, Gen Z is pushing back against culture’s constant connectivity through devices because of endless notifications, algorithmic identities, and performance-based online existence. Social media can be nice, but it also comes with its immense downfalls: comparison, envy, and insecurity are just a few to top the list.
While young adults are trading their smartphones in for dumb ones, or using the ones they do have in this manner, it’s important to note that this trend is being framed as boundary-setting and not nostalgia. Gen Z knows the importance of technology and loves it. They appreciate all that it does for them. I don’t believe most of them wish to live in a prehistoric world without these devices. But they do desire not to have to be “on” all the time. Constant connectivity blurs rest, identity, and worth, and it seems that this generation has finally had enough to draw a line.