Why switching to a dumbphone is easier said than done

Some say they're seeing renewed interest in simple phones as technology addiction concerns mount. Reuters

There’s a collective backlash brewing, or so we’re told, against smartphones, which in turn, is leading to ample consumer interest in what’s become known colloquially as dumbphones.

Indeed, in the past couple of years, a growing chorus of customers, critics and mental health experts have been voicing concern about increasingly distracted smartphone users, and what that distraction is doing to us personally and collectively.

The argument is clearly resonating, and not without merit. It’s safe to say that because of smartphones, we’re a more distracted society than we used to be. The constant distractions can lead to isolation, poor people skills, and in terms of distracted driving, can even be deadly.

Look no further than the current crop of best-selling books to see proof of the concerns about smartphones. For several months now, American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, which largely seeks to indict smartphones and social media for causing an increase in mental illness, has enjoyed sustained success on the charts.

Coinciding with this concern are the various media reports complemented by data from technology research firms that show renewed, albeit still small, interest in what many in the technology industry call “feature” phones, a polite way of saying dumbphones.

Make no mistake, it’s refreshing to see stories about people wanting to do a digital detox from being connected all the time.

It’s often said that the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one, and that definitely holds true for many of us who struggle to disconnect from the digital world.

Yet removing the smartphone from the equation, at least for adults, and replacing it with a dumbphone, doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter.

Part of the problem with this idea starts with the harsh realities that come with the territory of dumbphone ownership.

Before we address the oversold concept of ditching our smartphones, let’s start by defining what we’re talking about with regard to phone classification.

Reasonable minds would probably agree that a dumbphone should be described as a mobile phone without a Qwerty keyboard, without apps and without a sophisticated operating system that essentially puts the entire internet in all of our pockets. Instead of a display that takes up most of the phone, you have a display that takes up about half and sometimes one third of the device, with the rest consumed by a numeric keypad.

They allow you to make calls and if you’re feeling ambitious, send a text message on the cumbersome keypad.

To older millennials, generation Xers and baby boomers, of course we’re describing the mobile phones that paved the way for the smartphones we all carry today.

This works well in theory if you want to simplify things, but what often happens, again, is that you soon run into a harsh reality – the world we live in runs on smartphones, so to speak.

For instance, to protect passwords for various internet portals and apps in corporate settings, many companies require employees to use password authenticators. If you need access to one of your corporate accounts on a different computer, you need a password authenticator app that, you guessed it, often needs to run on iPhone or Android smartphone platforms. Good luck getting it to work on a dumbphone.

This is just one many examples of how digital infrastructure for day-to-day activities has tied us into the smartphone ecosystem, but what it translates to, even for those who often insist on using dumbphones, is that inevitably you need to carry around two devices, a dumbphone and a smartphone, which defeats the whole point.

Yet there is clearly a market, however small, for stripped-down smartphones. According to Counterpoint, a global technology research firm, feature phones have witnessed growth in the past few quarters. Those sales are still mostly overshadowed by smartphone sales, but when you look at the sheer size of the mobile phone market, it’s easy to rationalise manufacturing a feature phone given the dedicated user base, and the market is responding to an extent.

There are companies like Nokia, TCL, Punkt, Jitterbug and Jio to name a few, with plenty of dumbphone models to choose from. However, upon closer inspection, even dumbphone offerings seem to suffer from feature creep. In some of these stripped-down phones, you have options to add apps like WhatsApp and Facebook. Again, this completely nullifies the very idea of phone simplification.

Some do manage to make it work, however. It’s been widely reported, and witnessed in various photographs and even news conferences, that Democratic US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer still uses a flip phone.

While this might vindicate dumbphone advocates, this still doesn’t sell me on the idea that most people can get away with getting rid of their smartphone on a regular basis. It actually proves otherwise, because Mr Schumer, unlike most smartphone users, has a deep bench of staffers helping to co-ordinate his schedule, contacts and telephone calls. Of course it’s easier for him to use a flip phone.

I should point out that I’m not trying to shame anyone who tries to use these stripped-down phones, nor am I trying to criticise those who seek to live life with fewer digital distractions. Quite the contrary, I admire and respect it. Focus is far too scarce, and we should try to do everything in our power to reclaim it.

I am, however, against smartphone shaming. Those who can get away with not using them often have very special circumstances or are in positions of incredible privilege.

While dumbphones aren’t for most people, there’s definitely a case to be made for teens and pre-teens using them until parents decide they’re ready for smartphones.

That said, I’m not ready to abandon my smartphone any time soon. They’ve definitely enriched our lives more than hindered them.

And if you’re not ready to downgrade to a dumbphone, I don’t blame you. Especially since it’s easier than ever in recent years to tweak the settings in your smartphone to bring all those distractions to a halt. Most of us are aware of those settings, yet for some reason, we curiously don’t touch them.

All in all, the dumbphone isn’t our saviour, and the smartphone isn’t the enemy. Minimising distractions without changing our phones is well within our power.