A practical guide to shutting down your smartphone

Last May, Fabuwood, a kitchen cabinet manufacturer in Newark, implemented a new company policy: no phones allowed during meetings.

To enforce this, the company installed “appliance shelves” outside each of the six glass-walled conference rooms. On a recent Wednesday morning, there were lively meetings in three of the conference rooms, and the shelves outside were packed with '90s-style smartphones, tablets and flip phones. The 1,200-employee company will cover the cost of a flip phone for anyone who gives up his smartphone, and 80 people responded to the offer.

Surprisingly, the employees say they like it. Rena Stoff, a project manager, said she initially hated the idea of ​​losing her smartphone, but now finds that meetings – which she once found boring and unnecessary – have become engaging and productive.

“Not having the phone on me has almost made my brain more open to information,” she said.

Fabuwood founder and CEO Joel Epstein was motivated by his personal belief that smartphones are “destroying our personal and professional lives..”

He started using a flip phone seven years ago after developing carpal tunnel symptoms in his hands from near-constant use of his BlackBerry. He said he slept better, felt more productive at work and had more meaningful communication. Mr. Epstein, a Hasidic Jew, said his choice of device was not unusual in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which encourages the use of “kosher phones” with limited Internet access.

Last year, Mr. Epstein asked Fabuwood managers how often their employees were on their phones; they estimate an average of two hours per day. He asked a warehouse safety officer, whose job typically involves monitoring unsafe conditions, to secretly document every time he saw an employee use a phone in the office. Mr Epstein said many of the company's worst performers were on the list.

Mr. Epstein decided to fight back against the devices competing for his employees' time and attention with a “InFocus” initiative, asking employees to keep personal devices out of sight while at work. No one is punished for breaking the rule, but managers send email reminders if they notice a lapse.

There was some grumbling when the initiative was proposed, with some predicting that people would quit. But that didn't happen, Mr. Epstein said. Instead, the poor performers improved. “Within six months, productivity had increased by 20 percent,” he said, citing internal company figures.

What has surprised him most, he said, has been the steady stream of messages from employees saying the program has been life-changing.

I heard about Fabuwood's initiative after I published an article about combating my own iPhone addiction by switching to a flip phone for a month. Abraham Brull, a software development manager at Fabuwood, emailed me saying that he had struggled with smartphone dependency in the past and that this had helped him join a company where healthier technology use was encouraged.

It was among the hundreds of emails I received. Many were from flip phone enthusiasts who disagreed with my suggestion that using a “dumb phone” indefinitely was not an option. Longtime flip phone users of all ages and professions said their lives were better without smartphones, and that their marriages, relationships with their children and mental health had flourished as a result.

Alba Souto, 29, from Spain, said not having a smartphone had made her relationship with her husband, who had also switched to an old Nokia, “more mysterious and exciting”.

“Not always having access to each other through messaging apps has improved the quality of the time we spend together,” she wrote in an email. “We have more to talk about.”

“I love it,” wrote Christopher Casino, 29, of Brooklyn, NY, who switched to one in October Cat flip phone which gives him access to Uber, Maps and Spotify, but not social media or news apps. “I do my hobbies more consistently. I read on the subway. I talk to my husband more. I don't feel the crushing pressure to know everything right away and say the perfect thing online.”

Advice for 'Flip Phone February'

Sarah Thibault, 43, an artist from Los Angeles, said she planned to participate in “Flip Phone February,” an idea I suggested to follow Dry January. She was inspired to give up her smartphone a viral video of a crowd of telephones ringing in the new year in Paris.

She made a Flip Phone February community on Reddit to share messages and tips with other participants. I signed up and posted a link to one contest that Siggi's Yoghurt recently announced offering $10,000, flip phones, smartphone lockboxes, and of course, free yogurt to 10 people who commit to a month-long digital detox. The company spokeswoman told me that 322,935 people had entered the competition.

Longtime flip phone users advised newbies to “look things up” before leaving the house, carry a pen and notebook, and alert friends, coworkers, and family members about the decision to go smartphone-free.

My own advice is to… Dumbphone finder to see the options on the market; Sunbeam And Kyocera were popular recommendations from readers. But be sure to check with your carrier to find out which “feature phones” – industry lingo for non-smartphones – your network supports.

You may also need to purchase other technology to fill in the gaps. I turned to a digital alarm clock I got in high school in the 1990s. (It still works!) Kelin Carolyn Zhang, a product designer who does an annual smartphone detox, wrote that this year she used an old digital camcorder so she could TikTok her way through the flip-phone journey.

The cons

Those making the switch, be warned: I've had quite a few complaints popping into my inbox about our increasingly smartphone-centric world.

“The issue that concerns me most, and that I wish journalists and regulators would focus their attention on, is the ever-increasing need for a smartphone to navigate everyday life,” wrote a 47-year-old father with no mobile phone. “Ten years ago, not having a phone meant some minor social challenges; nowadays it can be difficult to go about life as usual.”

He is frustrated by the now common use of QR codes to enter sporting events and access restaurant menus. He and many others said payment machines in parking lots often instruct people to pay via smartphone.

“I just got a parking ticket this week because I couldn't go online and pay via their QR code or app,” wrote a 31-year-old mother from Missouri using a flip phone. But she said it was worth it.

“Even at these moments I wouldn't want to go back to the smartphone. I'm done being addicted to a piece of technology that has robbed me and my children of my attention,” she wrote. 'Your growing up years are short. Your children need you. Do you want to be a good mother? Do you want to raise healthy children? The best thing you can do is throw your smartphone in the toilet, even if just for a moment.”

(But don't exactly throw your smartphone in the toilet. You may need to connect it to Wi-Fi at some point to get a two-factor authentication code.)

Some readers, like a business executive and mother of three, said they could “never turn around.”

“The invention of the smartphone has enabled work-life integration in ways I couldn't imagine!” she wrote.

She said her hacks to make it less addictive include turning off notifications and deleting social media apps. She and others thanked me for pointing it out A study which showed that switching a smartphone from color to grayscale mode helped people significantly reduce their screen time. “I pumped the grayscale tip,” she wrote, “and am turning it on today!”

For those wondering, I've been using my flip phone as my headphones for two months now. But I did get a second line for my smartphone, which I can use when internet access is a necessity. For example, I'm not sure I could have found Fabuwood's headquarters on unfamiliar roads in industrial Newark without this office.