"Dumb" phones are in trend around the world: what they are and why teenagers are running away from smartphones

In Western countries, "dumb" phones are coming back into fashion, as people try to break their addiction to social media and unload their brains. Among other things, old Nokia push-button phones, which were extremely popular at one time, are coming back into fashion.

According to The Sun, using old phones, Generation Z (the so-called buzzers) was able to better understand what the world and social communications were like before people's entire lives were spent on social media.

The rejection of smartphones in favour of push-button phones, which do not have social media as a phenomenon, helped teenagers avoid the so-called FOMO syndrome (fear of missing out) and the so-called "doomed scrolling", when people spend hours just scrolling through their social media feeds.

This kind of movement was a response to the impact of smartphones and social media on users' mental health.

Experts call giving up smartphones a "dopamine diet" because giving up social media helps you seek happiness in real life, rather than provoking the production of dopamine, the hormone of happiness, through social media browsing or gaming.

Giving up smartphones also allows you to be present in the "real world".

The trend for "dumb" phones, paradoxically, has already appeared on social media, where users talk about their experience of using old-fashioned gadgets. In particular, 18-year-old TikTok user @skzzolno Sammy Palazzolo said that she and her friends have switched to clamshell phones, which they use when they go to bars and clubs. With these phones, they can only make calls to each other, not post on social media.

Before Palazzolo changed her phone, she noticed that her evenings on campus often ended in tears because of an unwanted post on social media or a text from her ex-boyfriend.

"The root cause was our phones," she says.

She also noticed that, thanks to the strange phone in her hands, other teenagers who were also interested in such gadgets began to meet her.

Another advantage of "dumb" phones is their price. According to CNN, some of these devices can be purchased in the US for as little as $20 at major retailers such as Walmart and Amazon.

Actress Dove Cameron, who gained popularity thanks to her Disney Channel show, recently said that she switched to a flip phone after realising that she was spending too much time on her smartphone and that browsing social media was having a "very bad" effect on her.

"I found a small flip phone in the style of the 90s, like in the film The Matrix. I have a separate number for it, it's very cheap and probably really lousy," Cameron said.

The actress noted that she disconnected from social media because her presence on social networks was "misleading". Psychologists note that this feeling is widespread among Generation Z, and its impact is associated with an adolescent mental health crisis.

In particular, experts note that since 2012, when smartphones and social media became more widespread and accessible, the level of depression among teenagers has increased. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the rate of adolescent depression almost doubled from 2004 to 2019.

Earlier, OBOZREVATEL told how to stop spending hours on social media and learn to live without a phone.

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