Log off. Look up.
How to be less online, and what to do with the time you get back.
Six ways to start living slower
- Quiet the phone you own Nine steps, from deleting the apps to a bowl by the door. Most people should start here. free settings first
- Fill the hours Film, letters, long walks, bread, a library card. Ideas for the time that comes back. or leave them empty
- Start a club where you live How to run a regular meetup where the phones go in a box. There's a zine you can print. two people is a club
- Read something long Books on attention and slowness, plus the articles and profiles that made this a movement. books, and the internet
- See what the evidence says Peer-reviewed studies on sleep, notifications, kids and social media. The pushback is in there too. caveats included
- Get a smaller phone Every dumbphone worth knowing about, with prices and what each one can't do. compare them side by side
The hours you get back
all of them
None of these need an app or a subscription.
What the studies found
every paper, with caveats- 2x The odds of not sleeping enough, for a child who uses a phone at bedtime. Pooled from 20 studies and 125,198 children, all of it correlational. sleep
- 10 min A cap of ten minutes a day on each social app left students less lonely and less depressed after three weeks than carrying on as usual. social media
- 2 weeks Long enough to lift attention, mood and mental health in a randomized trial where 467 people blocked mobile internet and kept their calls and texts. cutting back
- 52 Studies of phubbing, the habit of checking a phone while you're with your partner. Pooled, it goes with less satisfaction and more conflict. phones and partners
- 0 The difference a silenced phone on the desk made in a preregistered replication. The famous 2017 experiment found one. Both stay on the page. the phone on the desk
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
If you want a dumber phone
see the whole listI check the specs by hand. These are the ones I keep coming back to.
Books I'd start with
the reading list
There are more on the reading list. Every book gets a note on what it does well and what it gets wrong.
Meet people who are doing the same thing
A Slower Living Club is a regular, in-person meetup for people who want to be less online. Phones go in a box by the door. The guide covers how to invite people and how to run the first one, and it prints as a zine.
