Only the essentials

Bridget Bogan stared at her empty home screen, just to have something to look at.

It was 2024, and the strawberry-­blond college student at Ave Maria University in Florida had removed all the apps from her iPhone’s home screen. If she wanted to send a text, for example, she had to swipe down and search for the Messages app.

Bogan, who got her first iPhone halfway through high school, knew that she spent too much time scrolling on social media. Her average screen time was four to five hours per day. In college, she decided to do something about it: She tried grayscaling (setting her display to monochromatic tones) and powering off 30 minutes before bedtime.

Still, her social media addiction continued and started to damage her in-person friendships. “I stopped being my true, authentic self,” says Bogan. “And I started trying to make myself more like the images that I saw on my screen.”

That’s when she simply deleted all of the apps from her home screen, including Instagram. “And I survived,” she jokes.

Excessive smartphone use has taken a toll on people like Bogan. Evidence of smartphone addiction has mounted since the 2007 introduction of the iPhone. According to Priori Data, the average American spends nearly five hours daily on smartphones alone.

Screen time overload seems to correlate with a widespread collapse of mental health. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt reported that rates of anxiety and depression among U.S. undergraduates increased by 134% and 106% respectively in the decade following 2010, around the time when what Haidt calls “phone-based childhoods” began to emerge. According to Common Sense Media, the average age to receive a first smartphone is 11.

Realizing how their phones are affecting them has led some teenagers and young adults to cut back on screen time voluntarily. They do it either on their own or in low-tech communities.

After minimizing dependence on her smartphone, Bogan noticed improvements in her ability to concentrate on tasks and to enjoy the people she was with. That’s why she decided to serve during her senior year as the founding president of the Humanality club at her school.

Humanality, a nonprofit with clubs on a half-dozen college campuses, helps students to coordinate low-tech communities or “villages.” The organization also recently began facilitating villages for friends, family members, and high schoolers. Some village members delete social media, and others purchase devices like the Light Phone or Wisephone, minimalistic smartphone alternatives loaded with only essential apps. Members are encouraged to eat meals phone-free, set digital bedtimes, and spend in-person time with friends.

Students hang out in real life at Ohio’s Franciscan University of Steubenville. Courtesy of Humanality

“The whole idea is, how do we get back to our local environment and live more humanly while using technology for good and putting it back in its proper place?” says Andrew Laubacher, the organization’s executive director.

Humanality began as a scholarship program in 2022 at Ohio’s Franciscan University of Steubenville. The Catholic university offered $5,000 in tuition assistance for students who agreed to give up their smartphones during their undergraduate years. Only 30 students received the scholarship, but an additional 50 participated in the smartphone-free challenge anyway.

It isn’t the only such club. At the Offline Club, with chapters in eight countries, leaders organize ticketed, screen-free hangouts like reading parties and picnics. The group’s events often attract young adults, but some middle-aged participants attend as well.

Clubs such as these help to alleviate one of the pain points of minimizing screen time: missing out. “When you’re doing it with a group of 30 other students who also aren’t on their smartphones … it makes it a lot easier to have people to hang out with in real life,” says Clare Morell, a Humanality board member, Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow, and author of The Tech Exit.

Some groups aim at even younger students. The Luddite Club, active in several U.S. states, British Columbia, and Brazil, is a nonprofit led by self-­proclaimed “former screenagers.” Many of its chapters are based at high schools. The group encourages members to limit phone use, publishes a print newsletter, and facilitates pen pal connections.

For children unable or unwilling to curb phone use, some support groups aim to motivate their parents. More than 120,000 parents have taken the Wait Until 8th pledge, promising to delay giving their children smartphones until at least the eighth grade. In the U.K., parents of over 150,000 children signed a similar pledge through a group called Smartphone Free Childhood.

Outside of support groups, some phone addicts have embarked on solo, low-tech journeys. T.J. Miller, a student at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga., swapped his iPhone for a Light Phone in 2022. “I’m able to just sit, be very present, not worry about anything I see on my screen at all, and just enjoy what I have around me,” says Miller. He still has an iPhone for the occasional hot spot, but he keeps the device in his desk drawer. Miller now collects CDs, wears a wristwatch, and checks emails on his laptop.

Bridget Bogan still has an iPhone too—with select items like Spotify and airline apps on the home screen—but it’s “very dumbed down,” without email or web browsers. “People learned that if they wanted to get in contact with me, they had to either give me a call or just wait for me to respond to the emails,” says Bogan.

She’d like to unplug even more. If she didn’t need it to navigate, she’d get rid of Google Maps. And she’d delete Spotify if she didn’t love music so much: “I probably should just delete my subscription. … It still has that hold on me.”