Former “screenagers” embrace dumb tech on purpose to escape digital addiction

A growing number of Gen Z individuals are embracing a modern “Luddite” movement, deliberately choosing scaled-down technology like tiny smartphones and flip phones to resist addictive digital platforms. This tech backlash is gaining momentum as social media feeds become increasingly flooded with AI-generated content, prompting young people to seek authentic alternatives to what they view as exploitative technology designed primarily for corporate profit.

What you should know: The modern Luddite movement isn’t about rejecting technology entirely, but rather opposing how it’s been designed to exploit users.

• The Luddite Club, founded by “former screenagers” in Brooklyn, has expanded to more than 20 chapters at high schools and colleges across the US.
• Dumbphone sales are surging as research links excessive screentime to poor sleep and mental health, especially among children.
• Several dozen people gathered in New York last month for a “Luddite Renaissance” rally, signaling organized resistance to current tech paradigms.

The tiny phone trend: Credit-card sized smartphones like the Jelly Star are becoming popular among young people seeking to break phone addiction.

• The Jelly Star features a 3-inch screen that’s “too small to get addicted to” and “even gives me a headache—perfect for negative reinforcement,” according to users on the r/dumbphones subreddit.
• The device handles essential functions like emails, calls, texts, and GPS, but its tiny screen discourages prolonged usage.
• Young people are also gravitating toward flip phones, point-and-shoot cameras, vinyl records, CDs, and even cassette tapes.

Why this matters: Tech journalist Brian Merchant, author of “Blood in the Machine,” explains that modern Luddites are “not anti-technology but anti-exploitation,” drawing parallels to 19th-century textile workers who opposed automated machines.

• “I think it ultimately comes down to a frustration with a profoundly undemocratic development and deployment of technology for profit,” Merchant said.
• Users have become unpaid workers in what he calls “the internet factory,” supplying content and engagement that enriches companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon while receiving addictive products in return.

The AI acceleration: Social media platforms are increasingly replacing human content with AI-generated material, potentially driving more users away.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a future where AI “friends” outnumber human companions on social platforms.
• “You’ll be scrolling through your feed, and there will be content that maybe looks like a Reel to start, but you can talk to it, or interact with it, and it talks back, or it changes what it’s doing. …That’s all going to be AI,” Zuckerberg said.
• The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka warns we may be approaching “Posting Zero,” where normal people stop sharing on social media, leaving only “dry corporate marketing, AI-generated slop, and dreck from thirsty hustlers.”

What they’re saying: Comedian Caleb Hearon, 30, represents the sentiment many young people feel about their devices.

• “I turn it off, put it in a drawer, leave the house. I do that multiple days a week,” he said in a recent podcast interview.
• Merchant believes “a lot of people are just reaching the breaking point now” with current technology.
• “If AI generated misinformation is just everywhere, it will make it that much easier to say, ‘to hell with it’ and just opt out of stuff all together,” he added.