Going Phoneless
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
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Digital MinimalismPhone AddictionProductivity
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Digital Minimalism
Phone Addiction
Productivity
The author shares their experience of going phoneless and explores the implications of living without a smartphone, sparking a discussion on the benefits and challenges of digital minimalism.
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- 01Story posted
Oct 7, 2025 at 12:34 PM EDT
3 months ago
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Oct 7, 2025 at 12:40 PM EDT
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ID: 45505335Type: storyLast synced: 11/17/2025, 11:08:24 AM
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Also, I hate how smartphones are a necessity in todays world, you usually need them for verification, paying bills, etc.
There are definitely lots of things you need a smartphone for today, but fortunately few enough that it's practical to not have a smartphone with you most of the time, even if you own one.
Hopefully if enough people go phoneless, society will adapt to require smartphones less often.
Actually Apple seems decent with storing personal information on-device, or at least giving the user options to control it. As shown in my pi-hole, my Apple devices send way less requests to tracking and data harvesting domains compared to Microsoft and Google/Android products.
Isnt that just the APIs retrying when blocked?
I did my usual investigation of flip phones and dumb phones; couldn't find one that ran Android or basic apps like Spotify and podcasts that I use every day *and* worked on major US cell carriers. There's some cool E-Ink phones out of China, but AFAIK they don't have full compatibility on US cell networks.
I ended up with an iPhone and I just dumb it down. Black background, installed only like a dozen apps, removed a bunch of the preinstalled ones, aggressively culled notifications.
Actually I've been thinking of removing the web browser from my iPhone. Your post inspired me to do it. Settings --> Screen Time --> Content & Privacy --> Allowed Apps, disable Safari. Let's see how I manage!
But I have buried it on the third page of a sub-folder, so I'm not tempted to randomly open it.
I think the most important thing is to just not /usually/ have the phone in your pocket, so you break the habit of reaching for it.
The trick is to find ways to carry it with you less.