for any samsung users trying to curb their phone addictions but cannot switch to a dumb phone, utilize ultra power saving mode!!! it limits your phone to 8 apps, only 4 of which you can chose. I personally keep my music app, the camera, a messaging app, and I rotate the last app between a clock for study timers, occasionally social media to text friends, and an ebooks app. you could easily adjust it for your needs, like keeping emails for work or an authentication app, and you can always switch out apps. as someone who's still struggling to find a healthy relationship with my phone, this has been a really powerful self-control tool *and* saves my battery so I can use my phone the whole day! amazing video, thank you for the non-judgmental and honest approach. it's so rare and such a treat. thanks for showing us it's possible to find a balance with life and tech, and showing us the ups and downs!!! your videos are so amazing.
Unfortunately they removed it in newer models. There's a "Limit apps and Home screen" switch in the Power Saving settings menu, but it doesn't seem to support choosing which apps are allowed.
Regarding the library point at 9:50, a library gets funded based on the volume of checkouts. So please, check things out! Even if you're not gonna take a book out of the library but instead just read it at a table, check it out! It may not be much individually, but the more people do it, the more it'll benefit free and open information.
"We need to allow complicated things to be complicated" is such a good mantra. Nuance doesn't sell advertisements, so it has fallen out of favor in the era of the Attention Economy, but it is *so* necessary. Thanks for doing your part to keep it alive!
New viewer and subscriber here! In Uni, i used a dumbphone which helped me so much. After graduation, i got back into social media to show the world how life was after college. Its been 5 years now and I'm slowly transitioning back to my dumbphone era; popped out my Nokia, bought a sim, bought a sony walkman and a pocket camera. Its an expensive transition but I know it's going to be worth it in the long run. Thank you for your video!
I lost my phone today, I placed it down and in less than a minute, I could not find where I put it in my tiny apartment. when to class without it, and for the first time in a while, I had no problem paying attention. it's not even like I take it out much during class, it was just the fact that the option wasn't there. never realized how much energy I waste on fighting the small amount of urge I have to take it out. and then this video was recommended to me when I found it again. I'm going to take this as a sign to never bring a smart phone with me to class again :) I already have two dumb phones on my desk, so I'll just switch to that
I am considering switching to the bank my boyfriend uses just for SMS banking, if my current bank pulled that face scan thing I would 100% ditch them, that's asking too much.
I saw an article a few weeks ago about young people switching to dumb phones (ap news?) mostly it boiled down to avoiding social media by not carrying it with you everywhere. I think one girl reported she had been spending upwards of 10-20 hours a week on social because of the phone.
I've made the deleting socials from my phone move, but I still struggle by being on RUclips too much. I should delete all browsers from my phone, that would help solve the YT on the go issue
@@ambiarock590 I don't consider being on YT a downside(at least until today, that half an hour without wifi made me notice how addicted to socialize 24/7 through my phone on wsp and coping on YT i am now), but i did notice i slowly started to hate having social media on the phone, and i've been unable to delete them merely bc my mom, and all my friends, send me there links to IG posts, and i was only able to delete tiktok and bluesky without it affecting my social flow during chatting, and that's mostly bc my friends ONLY NOW, TODAY, got into making BlueSky accounts!!! The solution i found was to remove all social media from my immediate screen, just leaving the YT and some other notes and astrology apps, and despite being only an extra step to open the menu, that already decreased DRASTICALLY how much time i spent on social media. Baby steps people, baby steps.
My friends and I (in highschool) used to share screenshots showing how many hours we'd been on our phones/instagram (the app we used to keep in touch), and each of us spent about 15 hours a day! We'd share these screenshots, like, weekly. It was very bad.
I'm not exactly sure why rejecting convenience becomes complicated when it involves disrupting your daily life. I would think that goes without saying and is part of the process.
I really appreciate this video. This and the other video 2 years ago has inspired me to delete all social media apps on my phone. My screen time has been reduced from 7 hours to around 4 hours. Of course, I now watch youtube on my desktop, but much less than I did on my phone.
I don’t use any social media, only yt But sometimes I caught myself spending a lot of time here too… which it is good to learn something, but I think my brain wants to absorb a lot of things in a short amount of time and I think it ends being the same as if I would watch short videos… Too much info, I get overwhelmed
im in the same boat now!! sometimes my screen time gets to 6-7 hours, but thats only when im drawing on my ipad or using gps. much better than capping at 15-17 hours before
Can certainly agree that having my phone on me causes me to implulse buy things online that I wouldn't otherwise. I'll go down a rabbithole of thinking about something and then ill end up convincing myself i need a certain item. i have a number of ipods (only bought 1, the rest i saved from work scrap) and 2 minidisc walkmans (also saved from work scrap), but i find myself just using my phone even though i love the experience of an ipod, odd.
I had the same problem for sure, but accounting for the cost of impulse buys would have been impossible to track, so I left it out of the savings argument. I have greatly improved my ability to think before I buy, and many times, forget what I was even looking to buy thanks to clearing my cookies/history every time I close Firefox. Makes it a lot harder to obsess if the tab goes away every time I turn on my computer!
Thank you for making these videos! I haven't tried a dumb phone yet, but I am on very much a similar journey. I do still use my smartphone, but I am doing quite a bit to make sure I am using it as little as possible. A bunch of my friends are annoyed that it takes me 1 day to check my Facebook on my desktop and they have to call me if they have urgent information for me, but I definitely feel MUCH more present and have much better mental health now. Of course, it is also a struggle. I do have periods where I "relapse" and doomscroll, but I also have periods where I forget about my phone and just stay bored, and it's AWESOME. I am convinced that everyone will benefit greatly from being bored much more of the time, but I also feel that it is near impossible to convince my friends to reject convenience. It feels like I know the solution to a lot of worries in our lives nowadays, but I don't know how to convince people to try it. 😢 It is pretty frustrating, but I also understand their addiction to phones because I have felt it too and still do sometimes.
i highly recommend trying a dumbphone, i bought a new Nokia 215 2024 a few months ago as my dayoff/evening/weekend phone and honestly i love it even though i recently got a new smartphone aswell because my previous phone was long overdue for an upgrade but having the ability to physically avoid social media and constant notifications does wonders, yeah my dumbphone still has internet access but its so hopeless that i just left the data permanently off (this causes some issues when receiving MMS but whatever), yeah i have to carry my wallet now so i have my drivers license and bank cards (i don't need to when i have my smartphone since we have digital licenses in Australia) but it's a minor inconvenience that i'm happy to go back to (it was normal less than 10 years ago) and having a phone that is smaller than my palm is just great.. if i want to listen to music, i just tune into radio in the car or i don't listen to anything at all (i like my car making turbo noises) as for being reachable, if it's important enough people would call, while i don't give anyone (Except family) my secondary phone number, i've set up my primary one to redirect if needed.. so if work calls me in for an emergency i can still respond..
Ive been putting a lot of thought into moving towards single use devices and dumb phones and your videos are just proving to me how this is a direction i wanna take in my tech use
one of the best videos on this topic. you touch on things that people just don’t talk about when it comes to switching to a dumbphone. i guess its because of your 2 year experience, most ytubers use their dumbphone for 7/30 days and that’s it. btw how did you make the projection screen look so realistic like there is a real light pointing at it creating a glare such a neat touch!
Ah yes! I love it when people ask technical questions haha I'll put a screenshot to what the exact node setup in the forum somewhere rejectconvenience.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28 but essentially, the screen itself is the emission point. In the original video, it was an actual light projection using cycles, but it took FOREVER to render, so I opted to figure out how to do it in Eevee, and its pretty simple. Image texture get split a few ways, one to handle emission (so the actual "glowing"), and then the other is for the blacks to be the same material as the rest of the projector screen, which gives it that "light projected on a screen" feel, because the darkest values on a projector are only as dark as the surface you're projecting on!
@@rejectconvenience oh my god thank you SO MUCH for taking the time and explaining this in such detail !! i want to start learning 3d, just starting out in Blender so your thorough explanation WITH a node setup from the forum post is extremely useful for me (at least will be in near future). definitely trying this out real soon! i thought youd reply cuz you read all the comments but i didn’t expect a literal text guide. you’re a legend for that! and for making great videos, so glad i discovered ur channel today
I am blind, so just never made the jump to smartphones after they came out. Yes, they do make TTS programs for them but that's yet more cost for the ap/software. No, the onboard speech isn't enough for someone without any sight at all to use any smartphone. Anyway, I love my dumbphone and i see more and more folks are returning to them. I have a nice PC and a modern laptop computer. Those do plenty for my needs. Why do i need another device that does the same stuff only not as well and that costs $1k+? I take my dumbphone hiking and camping a lot. I use those 'tough' phones and have yet to break one. Last one hung on for 8+ years. My current is still good at over 3 years.
Hey man! I wanted to discuss my patented (not really) "middle way" approach. I keep "offloading" functions from my phone, since I still need it for the stuff you mentioned. Instead, I got a wristwatch (not a smartwatch), that way, instead of checking the time on your phone you look at your shiny watch (and also don't then proceed to doomscroll). Instead of a "notes" app, I got 2 PHYSICAL notepads: 1 for daily "todo" and one for "longer term memory" stuff. Instead of a music player, I got an mp3 player (I plan to expand it later so I have 1 dedicated for podcasts, 1 for the current book I'm listening to and 1 for music). Instead of your phone's camera, a digicam, and so forth! This way, you use your phone less and less so it's not as habit-forming
I love that you call them dumbphones lol! Anyways, this video has genuinely made me reconsider some things. I have been very frustrated over my own clingy relationship to my phone for... well, for years now. So I think I'll take your advice, try to adjust some of my settings and set boundaries with myself. I need to breathe and my phone being glued to my hand, eyee glued to the screen, it's suffocating. Cheers!
In the last two years there have been MULTIPLE price increases for different plans for Spotify (duo is still the cheapest and is the one that's least touched).
Thank you for the update, I thoroughly enjoyed this video as well as your original video about making the switch. I gave up owning a smartphone several months ago. Personally, I don't own a computer at all, mostly due to cost. I simply go to the library and use the computers there, it's how I pay my rent and bills. While I'm there I will borrow books and DVDs and take that time to chill out and relax. I will note though that doing so involves me driving for about 30 minutes, but it's also a town I work in for 2 of my weekly shifts, so I work it around that. I love my dumb phone, I bought an AGM M8 Flip, a super basic but rugged flip phone. It's durable and I love that aesthetic whilst also being very basic with no internet apps at all. I use it purely as a tool for communication as well as a calculator, alarm and calendar which has led me to feel much freer and with much less anxiety. I'm much the same in that I enjoy daydreaming now and boredom, but when I need to fill in time I usually read, write in a journal, draw or colour, work on a jigsaw puzzle or simply go outside. In terms of music I generally listen to FM radio, I live in Australia and I'm lucky to have a few local hard rock/metal stations that I enjoy, so when at home the radio will be on and of course when driving. I want to thank you for your inspirational and informative videos, I wish you all the best!
when you said you found yourself just picking up your work phone and doing nothing that hit me way too hard i still have a smart phone but when im at work or my personal phone is dead sometimes ill just look at it swipe around a couple times and close it and im like i know i wasnt gonna do anything but god its so shiny and for reference i hate my work phone i try to use it as little as possible for me its mainly just there so i can give it to my trainees and say go nuts without worrying what theyll see on there lmao
Thank you for such an informative video! I'm trying to start small (mainly deleting social media apps and regulating them to desktop), which I believe primarily would fix my problem, but im really considering the jump to a Dumbphone because I'd really, truly, as hilarious as this sounds, love to be bored and see what I can get up to again, like I did as a kid. I'm still a bit worried about what taking the plunge would mean for how my internet pals would communicate with me (I don't know what Dumb phone brands would let me at least download Discord, which i purely use to message others), but I'm glad you brought up using an iPad for the 2FA apps, that's huge, I don't know why I didn't consider that! Seriously, thank you for the video!
You have a very good outlook, on both how to tackle tech and on life in general. It's great you delve into the multiple facets of an issue and encourage people to do the same.
Just found your channel after seeing your initial switch to your feature phone. As someone who is trying to become less tech immerse and more tech savvy your channel is goated, dude.
Thank you for this update. I watched your first dumb phone video last year and it made me reconsider how I used my phone. Last week I tried to remove all apps off my phone. Unfortunately you can't remove the Google play store on android. It surprisingly reduced my screen time. I spent more time just listening to music. I also found I had frequent cravings to find stimulation from apps on my phone
Thanks for the video. Jus wanted to tell you your videos are always so...cozy to me, even tho you're talking about like serious topics and stuf. Especially your outro of being kind to each other. So thanks for that.
Thanks for the update video, really interesting stuff. I've been trying to make routine adjustments to accomplish my personal goals, but the allure of going all in with a dumbphone is still appealing to me, until I remember how much personal messaging I do through smartphone apps like whatsapp, discord, etc. that I just can't access with a phone only. this video did help me realize that watching youtube has been a problem for me in my daily routine though, so I disabled the youtube app on my phone and am about to log out of my youtube account on my computer. i'd say I'll update with progress, but
I really would love to switch to a dumb phone - I don't use social media and I usually just end up scrolling Wikipedia or TVTropes or something. I think the big things preventing me from making the switch is 1: Most dumb phones are really cheaply made, or at least the dumb phones that I've seen for sale locally. They don't feel as robust as some of the older ones (e.g. compare a new Nokia dumbphone to an older Nokia, the older one is much more durable and higher quality) 2: I need discord. Discord is basically my main way of communicating w/ friends and family and being unable to do that is a bit of a problem, especially if I were in a really bad situation. I have seen a handful of fan-made discord clients, but they're usually a bit iffy.
I have to admit, while they are cheaply made, that's kind of fine because they are cheap. I don't care if it falls down a flight of stairs, it'll survive, it's just plastic. But I understand what you mean, there are different qualities of plastics, and the older ones were absolute tanks compared to these ones. In regards to things like discord, I'd encourage trying to be available when you want to be. One of the perks to a phone in general is getting phone calls. If something truly urgent comes up, you'd be a quick phone call away. One of the most beneficial side effects of using this dumb phone has taught me that it's okay to not be connected all the time. Everyone knows that I'll respond when I jump on the computer. They're not worried that I'm not responding fast enough or whatever, and I'm not constantly stressed by being "dinged" all day when I don't want to be dinged lol. Also foreshadowing to an upcoming video I'm writing still, I encourage you continue your search for alternative Discord platforms. There are lots of really good privacy forward options (though, i understand that Discord has it advantages). If you happen to find one you like, let me (or the folks on the forum) know! I'd love to include it in that video.
On the cost side of things I do want to point out that you really don't have to get a new smartphone every year. With a little bit of care your phone can easily last up to 6 years or even a decade before it starts to become unusable. Especially if you're okay with using a portable battery pack to extend the battery life once the internal battery starts to degrade too much.
100% I just fell into the trap of peer pressure through tech enthusiasts. I was just public about that in hopes that someone who was in a similar boat as me could see that it doesn't have to be that way.
@@rejectconvenience That's totally understandable yeah. I have no reason to give a fuck so it's easier to ignore but even then it's still annoying how often I feel implicitly pressured to buy the newest phone when I really don't need one at all.
Honestly I've been wanting to stay off my phone more so for about a year now I've been reducing my screen time for my phone and I even have a pocket notebook now that I'm trying to use over my phone. Plus whenever I leave my phone somewhere I feel free for once. Thanks for making content that I can actually relate to and is an interesting topic to talk about :).
Companies should have contingencies. It’s a big issue in the uk right now. Carparks are often used by the elderly, and a lot of them don’t have a smart phone. They have recently removed a lot of pay machines from these locations and only have an app available for payment. So… now these elderly people can’t use the carparks anymore. It’s not as easy as just saying “get a phone”, costs aside, it’s not that easy to learn how to use a phone. iPhones are pretty good at being simple to use but for someone who didn’t even grow up with a home computer, this is a lot to force on a struggling population.
Yes am addicted to internet, devices, phones tablets & buying from Amazon, eBay. Getting help for all this would put me in 12 steps meetings or therapy 24/7. I will keep my iPhone & Apple Watch for health/ safety purposes but have to get off this merry go round. True waste of a life. Appreciate you sharing this journey.
1:45 - type the link on your desktop browser 3:06 - return with a camera, take a picture, upload to desktop, scan QR from picture The challenges can be straightforwardly solved if you're a dedicated dumb phone user. You can bring a portable camera, a notebook with a pen, and cash with you at all times and that should cover you in most cases. Smartphone is just extra convenience that we all got accustomed to.
-Use EMACS on your PC, limit your time to 1 hour weekday, 2 hours weekend. Its shocking how productive you can be on a computer with a text only interface! -I would recommend you start to build a reference library of textbooks and encyclopedias, books not the computer help you learn very fast and encyclopedia books help enable discovery so may be worth buying a set of worldbook to help get you started. (Wikipedia does not cut it, and some articles compared to a traditional encyclopedia are bad and inaccurate). -Drill your maths every 5 years, pre-algebra -> Calculus and beyond (It will keep your skill set in sharp and give you a competative advantage and confidence over others your age). -MOST IMPORTANT: Get into the habbit of continuous learning, make it a hobby in the subjects of Science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM), its literally given me extra hours in the day, you know like when you were young and time just seems to stand still! That's the most valuable thing I've come across living an analog life!
i know this is old but if anybody is still ready comments, as somebody who simplified my normal smartphone, here are some tips 1. delete any apps you can just use the browser for, ie any social media app you can just hop on the browser and log on normally is better than having the app 2. mute any notifications that aren't important or requires immediate attention, any email, app notifications or unfamiliar messages should be muted 3. keep your phone charged on a corner in a room or living room and anything specific you want to do, do it on a computer/laptop, don't get a tablet, because the object you are using is too big to carry around it will keep you from holding the device every time you are doing something else,
The answer to you wondering how to fix texting and driving: - high fines - high cost of having a car - ban of car traffic in cities except really essential services - good public transit - good biking and pedestrian infrastructure Maybe i'm an extremist but I never plan on owning a car, my grandma is happy that she sold hers and i feel privileged that it's possible where i live
I really like your honesty about the adiction. I was looking to get a dumb phone but got turned away by the fact most of my texting and calls are over discord and whatsapp. Even my sports and work stuff is on whatsapp. And a lot of your strategies for getting yourself off the screen is what I'll be trying. That said I feel like a new iphone every year is a crazy ammount of money wasted when you can get a 200 euro motorola and have it last 3 to 4 years easy.
This is an interesting video. As an online artist- I have to use social media, which is mostly for phones. Instagram doesn’t have a good alternative for desktop. I also send images to my laptop from my phone, for references. Having a smart phone also helps with my adhd, I find it redundant to set numerous timers to remind myself to do things on a non phone. I usually have my phone near me anyways. If I don’t have a phone with notifications set up, I will forget to check in with friends as well. As much as I would love to say I could do everything from my laptop- I objectively can’t. I prefer using a laptop but smart phones work better for the things I need to do.
I actually wanted to buy a dumb phone to got away from all the social media, privacy invasive stuff and all the subscriptions, but most of the dumb phone had stuff like google or facebook preinstalled and no way to tweak OS or remove them, so yeah, I just dumbed down my pixel phone with graphene OS - i now have nothing, but banking apps, signal and telegram
I wish dumb phones came with a hotspot built in. That way I could turn on the hotspot and use a laptop if I need to. I always have my laptop with me. I enjoy using it. I don't really enjoy using my phone anymore.
There are some dumb phones that have that function if fact if you get one and some data you can cancel home.internet. I use a Sonim XP5 plus it works great as a hotspot
12:47 it's just easier to remember. I have a pair of bluetooth overhead headphones (Major 2), it lasts like half a year with my use pattern. I obviously use it on battery very rarely, it's connected to a laptop with a 3.5mm jack 99% of the time. The point is, each time it dies is the worst time possible, on an uninhabited arctic island in the middle of a fight to death with a polar bear level of the worst. And I don't see it coming as last time I thought about charging them was in the same situation 9 months ago. But my phone, I just do it every day, there are no surprises.
I actually didn't have internet on my phone until a few years back. Partially because I didn't want to become addicted, partially because mobile internet was expensive. I could connect to the internet at home or at university, or use few available public wifi. I gave in because mobile internet is just dirt cheap these days (For a perspective I pay for unlimited mobile internet access, plus 400 minutes the amount of money that equals 3 medium lattes a month). Also I was fed up with me being the only one who doesn't have internet on their phone. There'''s also a lot of perks too. I no longer needed to activate grocery coupons on the go.
I've never had any phone, period. Not even a landline. I used various niche media players for a while, but now that AI took my job they've all eventually broken. I don't have hot water or food at the end of the month, either. Just the money you saved makes me salivate thinking of the meat and vegetables I could buy...
Im struggling with same issues! I have a career in tech but I also hate using modern technology like smartphones. Ive been trying to grapple with it, but I feel better using my dumbphone compared to my Unihertz Titan Pocket
That iphone daily battery drain surprised me, as a samsung user i cant relate 😂 (once every 3-4 days) but that 15 day battery life BLEW me out of the park. Thats crazy
Loved this video! I’m wondering if you’ve read or heard of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism? It’s a book that talks about many of the similar ideas you’ve laid out here and it’s what inspired me to completely revamp my relationship with technology
Hey: Cat S22 Flip. It's a nice in-between for smart and dumb. Hard to use, but capable (if somewhat frustrating) for most dumb things. I've been using it for a year or so.
the us carrier prices are insane, I currently pay 6€ a month for my plan with texts, calls, and 16GB of data, and I know many of my friends have gotten better deals
Treating people with low self control like it's their own moral failing is such a terrible thing to do. Like, do you think that people choose to have low self control? Do you think anybody enjoys not having control over the things they do?
this is pretty neat, i never really need to do this sorta thing tbh, not addicted to my phone or social media in general, i just gotta get a job so i can have stuff to do finally lol
Tbh i cant live without my phone with a calender on my first page and the weather app. I rely so much on my phone I even track my period with it. I have adhd and I try to remember stuff like this idk
I get it for sure - if you're curious to try other things, try using a physical notebook for those things. You can certainly do the phone too, but just try it for one thing, like maybe groceries or song recommendations from other people. I think diving in head first like I did is generally a bad idea, and I would greatly discourage it. But if you want to reduce your dependency on the phone, there are certainly lots of options that can be done in bite-sized chunks.
@@rejectconvenience I use a physical calender for work stuff, but I try to avoid paper as much as I can since I work outside. When I'm with friends I'm never on my phone. I have a really bad habit of having youtube as a background noise all the time tho. The thing about just looking at your phone even if theres nothing to look at - I do that too. I just look at my screen a lot for some reason
Btw when you said for the first time "i went out to visit friends" i understood "france" and i was a bit confused that you didn't mention language bareer or something but QR codes 😂
Changing my android launcher to Niagara and using a grayscale icon pack has helped me avoid popping open apps unnecessarily/just because they're there.
just buy the cheapest modern small phone at the time you buy a new phone and keep it until it stops becoming useful, you don't need the new one every year, in fact the old one you have is probably perfect for using your phone less because it'll be slower. the cool thing about iphones is that they last for at least 6 years before going kaput. you can do other things like enabling grayscale and using a matte screen protector to make the screen less appealing to look at. keep the battery saver mode on at all times to make it as slow and last as long as possible. delete all your apps and only install the ones you KNOW you'll need immediately, otherwise delete the app when you're done with it. use the web browser versions of some apps to make them aggravating to use. any app you get annoyed by, disable their notifications, turn on Do not disturb mode and/or focus mode. here's a big one; set app time limits or if you have a partner, have them set up a parental account with you put your phone in your backpack instead of your pocket so you're not tempted to take it out every 5 seconds. there's so many small changes you can do to drastically make your experience less phone tied while still not giving up your smartphone.
I used grayscale, and it didn’t do much for me besides highlighting how absurdly colorful and bright some apps are and that I appreciate some dullness in color which is less eye straining
I use my smart phone for videos, art/animation, and bank info. I used to play games, but games don't bring me the same joy, from when i first got a phone. Nobody to play with 😢
18:00 I became one of those people accidentally. I have a laptop but it is a decade old and slow as hell. Over its life I ended up using it less and less and now never. I watch things on the tv or phone and I have classic consoles for gaming. When thinking about upgrading the laptop I decided nah, I'll get a steam deck instead.
Thankfully I hate doing anything on my smartphone. I have a high-end Sony smartphone (Xperia 1 VI) and the battery lasts me about a week without charging. But I just find using such a small screen (small compared to a computer monitor) is so claustrophobic, and I find using a touch screen with no real tactile feedback is super uncomfortable to use. So I only use it when I really have to - like banking, or receiving calls/texts, and GPS, and using it as an music player when I'm out of the house (I have the phone with me anyway and playing music doesn't meaningfully drain the battery more than not doing so - there's no point in paying for and carrying a separate device). Having a smart watch also helps, I suppose. It means that when I get a notification I can just see what it is on my watch, and that way I only actually get my phone out if it's something that I ACTUALLY need to respond to like an important text or phone call. I have games on it, I occasionally attempt to look for SOMETHING I'd want to play, but on the very rare occasion that I find a good game I find myself not wanting to play it for the aforementioned reasons (plus holy hell it hurts my neck to stare down at my phone for extended periods of time). I also buy my own music. I put all of my music onto my phone (I have a 1TB MicroSD card in my phone to store it all). I find that there's not a single streaming service that has a all of the music that I listen to, and the audio quality is pretty poor compared to what I'm used to.
With that charging everyday thing that's why I couldn't switch to a smartwatch XD one of the most important perks of my watch is that its battery lasts 30 years. Like come on.... The only thing that i am jealous of when it comes to smart watches is that they sync while my watch shows one minute later after ~3 months. And it doesn't change the time itself during the dumb change of time which my country does every half a year even though they said they would stop. My clock however is able to sync with radio which is really awesome. Old technology with modern additions is most of the time superior to fully new solutions
I switched from a flip phone to a smart phone when I was 15. But was grounded from 16 to almost 18. I will admit, I'm addicted to my smartphone and technology. I'd get away from it all if work and hobbies would let me
My main issues is for health reasons i can't go to work or go have an adventure. So being stuck at home with a dumbphone and a kindle sounds miserable but I'm taking it. My brain is tired of the excess of social media (everything is sexualised,liars, being concerned with things that don't matter)
I recognize that I have an issue with my screen time and whenever I find my strength of will being a bit stronger, I delete my time sink phone games and apps and I keep my phone on greyscale. Eventually things ease back, but I hope to find my own balance.
i keep saying that when my current smartphone wears out/stops working, ill switch to a flip phone. but the truth is, i dont think i can. i rely too heavily on my phone to remember things for me. i have calenders and alarms on there to tell me i have an event no matter where i am (and i cant use a watch, becuase those are soso so uncomfortable. i suppose i could put it in my pocket actually...?). i use my music app to organize and listen to music on the go, i use the gps app to navigate (i get lost unless ive travelled the route several times. tho i could very much use a gps mounted in the car.), i use my notes app to jot things down to remember later. basically, i would need to replace this one thing i take everywhere with a dozen things that i would need to remember to bring, which would make getting out of the house much more of a hassle. as it is, im pretty happy with the phone i have. it lasts about a day and a half with continuous usage, IT HAS A HEADPHONE JACK, i can talk to all my online friends with it
You talking about making my phone grayscale got me thinking of how much that would actually impact my phone usage over the day. I feel like I use my phone is a primary communication device, but really I've been watching RUclips all day without accomplishing much of anything. I used to watch RUclips Shorts a lot, that kept me in bed when waking up for about 4-5 hours, and now I'm just doing it with long form content, patting myself on the back for 'getting rid of my RUclips Shorts addiction' .. I do commissions for 3D Models in my free time, and it's my primary source of income. I got no work done today despite telling myself I'd work on it today. Procrastination is a problem, and I think I will give the grayscale thing a try!
Congratulations on your profile picture, it's a shame that RUclips shows them in such a small space (on the phone at least). Procrastination is unfortunately a real problem. Knowing that you end up procrastinating after starting a project does not help either. I wish you good luck with a grayscale phone to improve it. I hope this comment helps with that and doesn't have the opposite effect.
That's totally fair, you can totally get an older smartphone at a similar price - heck, you could even do the no-data plan, saving a bunch of money there too, so you just have a smart phone when you're on Wifi
@@rejectconvenience I'm not at all saying what you've done is not right, because in many ways, it is right, it lets you experience the things around you again, it doesn't make you reliant on tech for all your needs, but it does surprisingly still come at a high cost which I cannot understand for such devices hardware being quite, mediocre, therefore should be of cost of about 50 USD
i never pay for subscription services. things will either be free or i will buy them. i am currently on my parents' various streaming service accounts, but if/when i move out, the only one i might pay for is Netflix, and even then its a big maybe (they just dont have the range of movies and tv shows they had when they first launched, because theyve all moved to their own streaming services). supposedly, tho, streaming services are still a lot cheaper than cable (i dont know for sure tho, as i was at most a middle schooler when we last had cable). i sometimes use the library to find stuff i cant get (tho i should use it more often) or use... other methods of watching movies. the movies i really like, i buy physical copies of, because then i own them forever AND i get special features. i always buy music. i have a playlist on RUclips of songs i want but have yet to buy (i dont know if i like them enough to buy, i havent gotten around to it, or i cant figure out where to buy them from. some foreign songs i have no choice but to pirate because i cant navigate the foreign music-buying-sites. i do look around before resorting to piracy.)
The only monthly fee I have with my phone is the carrier... that's it, I don't pay for anything else... maybe a new phone or phone battery every 2-3 years...
I think I have been a little lucky with where I was born. I'm in a country where we value going out in the woods and bragging about how low tech it was. So I get to have an excuse for going off the grid. Though we still have some of the issues you have in the US, where you kinda need to have a phone to get things done. It's beginning to feel that everyone is expecting you to have some app. For example, the busses here require an app now to have a ticket that lasts more than just one trip, but a few years ago you could have a card thing you just had to bring with you. And I actually ran into some issues related to my SIM card not working properly, so I sometimes lost internet access, and I was unable to show the ticket I had paid for, because the app required a constant internet connection. Through luck I have been able to avoid a lot of the addictions and pitfalls of technology, but I am not perfect, there are still things I would like to be less dependent on.
I use a smartphone for things like 2fa, but I live day to day life as if I don't even have a phone. For the most part it stays on a desk even if I'm going out unless I'm expecting the need to use it
I love the idea of rolling around with a dumbphone but as someone with ADHD I do get some great uses out of smartphones and smart watches like reminders and my watch vibrating when a timer goes off so I don't leave the pot of water boiling on the stove or the pizza in the oven burning to a crisp. I wonder if you could make reminders and calendar notices work by running a Mac Mini.
@@rejectconvenience I have some iPod touches in my rotation so those could help. They're synced with my account so they could receive calendar updates when I'm at home, and the timer app on the watch is self contained. Great that iPods can do calendars, I love using these things.
@@dprofielenk1940 There might be a way to do it without iTunes Match also, I think if you right click "Make AAC version" should do the same thing (but I'm not sure if that only appears with the iTunes Match thing enabled)
for any samsung users trying to curb their phone addictions but cannot switch to a dumb phone, utilize ultra power saving mode!!! it limits your phone to 8 apps, only 4 of which you can chose. I personally keep my music app, the camera, a messaging app, and I rotate the last app between a clock for study timers, occasionally social media to text friends, and an ebooks app. you could easily adjust it for your needs, like keeping emails for work or an authentication app, and you can always switch out apps. as someone who's still struggling to find a healthy relationship with my phone, this has been a really powerful self-control tool *and* saves my battery so I can use my phone the whole day!
amazing video, thank you for the non-judgmental and honest approach. it's so rare and such a treat. thanks for showing us it's possible to find a balance with life and tech, and showing us the ups and downs!!! your videos are so amazing.
Not just sansung, almost every phone has a similar mode.
Unfortunately they removed it in newer models. There's a "Limit apps and Home screen" switch in the Power Saving settings menu, but it doesn't seem to support choosing which apps are allowed.
that is a great idea, i never thought of that
Regarding the library point at 9:50, a library gets funded based on the volume of checkouts. So please, check things out! Even if you're not gonna take a book out of the library but instead just read it at a table, check it out! It may not be much individually, but the more people do it, the more it'll benefit free and open information.
Thanks for letting us know this! I had no idea. I'll definitely be checking out books that I read while I'm AT my local library 😊
YES! I love my local library and I go there often!
Didn't know this, thanks for the information!
@FOJO27 I read 📚 so many so that wouldn't be a problem for me. Love to read!❤
"We need to allow complicated things to be complicated" is such a good mantra. Nuance doesn't sell advertisements, so it has fallen out of favor in the era of the Attention Economy, but it is *so* necessary. Thanks for doing your part to keep it alive!
That’s a great reflection
you argued for both sides which made it seem less biased, it really makes your points more concrete
New viewer and subscriber here! In Uni, i used a dumbphone which helped me so much. After graduation, i got back into social media to show the world how life was after college. Its been 5 years now and I'm slowly transitioning back to my dumbphone era; popped out my Nokia, bought a sim, bought a sony walkman and a pocket camera. Its an expensive transition but I know it's going to be worth it in the long run.
Thank you for your video!
If my bank asked me to make a face scan, im withdrawing all my money immediately.
Yes!
Literallyyyyy
I would have switched banks over that. 4 years happily dumbphoning, personally.
i love how calm and reasonable you are in this video, you are so understanding to how different everyone is.
Quit the bank and go to one that doesn't require a "creepy" face scan.
I lost my phone today, I placed it down and in less than a minute, I could not find where I put it in my tiny apartment.
when to class without it, and for the first time in a while, I had no problem paying attention.
it's not even like I take it out much during class, it was just the fact that the option wasn't there.
never realized how much energy I waste on fighting the small amount of urge I have to take it out.
and then this video was recommended to me when I found it again.
I'm going to take this as a sign to never bring a smart phone with me to class again :)
I already have two dumb phones on my desk, so I'll just switch to that
I am considering switching to the bank my boyfriend uses just for SMS banking, if my current bank pulled that face scan thing I would 100% ditch them, that's asking too much.
THERE IS SMS BANKING WHAT???
Wait what bank is it?
Is that safe from sim-swapping??
Sms isn't as safe as people think xD
I love the personal tangents; it's crazy how relatable some of your experiences are
I saw an article a few weeks ago about young people switching to dumb phones (ap news?) mostly it boiled down to avoiding social media by not carrying it with you everywhere. I think one girl reported she had been spending upwards of 10-20 hours a week on social because of the phone.
I've made the deleting socials from my phone move, but I still struggle by being on RUclips too much. I should delete all browsers from my phone, that would help solve the YT on the go issue
@@ambiarock590same, I deleted fb but I still can’t get off RUclips
@@ambiarock590
I don't consider being on YT a downside(at least until today, that half an hour without wifi made me notice how addicted to socialize 24/7 through my phone on wsp and coping on YT i am now), but i did notice i slowly started to hate having social media on the phone, and i've been unable to delete them merely bc my mom, and all my friends, send me there links to IG posts, and i was only able to delete tiktok and bluesky without it affecting my social flow during chatting, and that's mostly bc my friends ONLY NOW, TODAY, got into making BlueSky accounts!!!
The solution i found was to remove all social media from my immediate screen, just leaving the YT and some other notes and astrology apps, and despite being only an extra step to open the menu, that already decreased DRASTICALLY how much time i spent on social media.
Baby steps people, baby steps.
@@ambiarock590 use a blocker like Cold turkey to just block youtube so you can still use the blocker
My friends and I (in highschool) used to share screenshots showing how many hours we'd been on our phones/instagram (the app we used to keep in touch), and each of us spent about 15 hours a day! We'd share these screenshots, like, weekly. It was very bad.
I'm not exactly sure why rejecting convenience becomes complicated when it involves disrupting your daily life. I would think that goes without saying and is part of the process.
I really appreciate this video. This and the other video 2 years ago has inspired me to delete all social media apps on my phone. My screen time has been reduced from 7 hours to around 4 hours. Of course, I now watch youtube on my desktop, but much less than I did on my phone.
Basically same boat as you
I don’t use any social media, only yt
But sometimes I caught myself spending a lot of time here too… which it is good to learn something, but I think my brain wants to absorb a lot of things in a short amount of time and I think it ends being the same as if I would watch short videos…
Too much info, I get overwhelmed
What are your hobbies?
im in the same boat now!! sometimes my screen time gets to 6-7 hours, but thats only when im drawing on my ipad or using gps. much better than capping at 15-17 hours before
Can certainly agree that having my phone on me causes me to implulse buy things online that I wouldn't otherwise. I'll go down a rabbithole of thinking about something and then ill end up convincing myself i need a certain item. i have a number of ipods (only bought 1, the rest i saved from work scrap) and 2 minidisc walkmans (also saved from work scrap), but i find myself just using my phone even though i love the experience of an ipod, odd.
I had the same problem for sure, but accounting for the cost of impulse buys would have been impossible to track, so I left it out of the savings argument. I have greatly improved my ability to think before I buy, and many times, forget what I was even looking to buy thanks to clearing my cookies/history every time I close Firefox. Makes it a lot harder to obsess if the tab goes away every time I turn on my computer!
Im guilty of impulse buying via my phone
Adding friction to your life isnt necessarily a bad thing. Id argue that certain things having friction improves your life drastically.
Thank you for making these videos! I haven't tried a dumb phone yet, but I am on very much a similar journey. I do still use my smartphone, but I am doing quite a bit to make sure I am using it as little as possible. A bunch of my friends are annoyed that it takes me 1 day to check my Facebook on my desktop and they have to call me if they have urgent information for me, but I definitely feel MUCH more present and have much better mental health now.
Of course, it is also a struggle. I do have periods where I "relapse" and doomscroll, but I also have periods where I forget about my phone and just stay bored, and it's AWESOME. I am convinced that everyone will benefit greatly from being bored much more of the time, but I also feel that it is near impossible to convince my friends to reject convenience. It feels like I know the solution to a lot of worries in our lives nowadays, but I don't know how to convince people to try it. 😢 It is pretty frustrating, but I also understand their addiction to phones because I have felt it too and still do sometimes.
i highly recommend trying a dumbphone, i bought a new Nokia 215 2024 a few months ago as my dayoff/evening/weekend phone and honestly i love it even though i recently got a new smartphone aswell because my previous phone was long overdue for an upgrade but having the ability to physically avoid social media and constant notifications does wonders, yeah my dumbphone still has internet access but its so hopeless that i just left the data permanently off (this causes some issues when receiving MMS but whatever), yeah i have to carry my wallet now so i have my drivers license and bank cards (i don't need to when i have my smartphone since we have digital licenses in Australia) but it's a minor inconvenience that i'm happy to go back to (it was normal less than 10 years ago) and having a phone that is smaller than my palm is just great.. if i want to listen to music, i just tune into radio in the car or i don't listen to anything at all (i like my car making turbo noises)
as for being reachable, if it's important enough people would call, while i don't give anyone (Except family) my secondary phone number, i've set up my primary one to redirect if needed.. so if work calls me in for an emergency i can still respond..
If you are bored when you are not on the phone you should find a hobby, or talk with friends maybe
Instructions unclear, I just bought 2 new smartphones
Two wrongs make a right, right?
Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't know what was going on.
@cineblazer right.
@@cineblazerInstructions unclear, the house is filled with bootleg calculators now.
Ive been putting a lot of thought into moving towards single use devices and dumb phones and your videos are just proving to me how this is a direction i wanna take in my tech use
I hope this becomes a trend.
one of the best videos on this topic. you touch on things that people just don’t talk about when it comes to switching to a dumbphone. i guess its because of your 2 year experience, most ytubers use their dumbphone for 7/30 days and that’s it.
btw how did you make the projection screen look so realistic like there is a real light pointing at it creating a glare such a neat touch!
Ah yes! I love it when people ask technical questions haha
I'll put a screenshot to what the exact node setup in the forum somewhere rejectconvenience.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28 but essentially, the screen itself is the emission point. In the original video, it was an actual light projection using cycles, but it took FOREVER to render, so I opted to figure out how to do it in Eevee, and its pretty simple.
Image texture get split a few ways, one to handle emission (so the actual "glowing"), and then the other is for the blacks to be the same material as the rest of the projector screen, which gives it that "light projected on a screen" feel, because the darkest values on a projector are only as dark as the surface you're projecting on!
@@rejectconvenience oh my god thank you SO MUCH for taking the time and explaining this in such detail !!
i want to start learning 3d, just starting out in Blender so your thorough explanation WITH a node setup from the forum post is extremely useful for me (at least will be in near future). definitely trying this out real soon!
i thought youd reply cuz you read all the comments but i didn’t expect a literal text guide. you’re a legend for that! and for making great videos, so glad i discovered ur channel today
@@tigranendinyan5166 When you do make stuff, make sure you share it somewhere! I love seeing what people make with Blender, it's my favorite thing.
I am blind, so just never made the jump to smartphones after they came out. Yes, they do make TTS programs for them but that's yet more cost for the ap/software. No, the onboard speech isn't enough for someone without any sight at all to use any smartphone. Anyway, I love my dumbphone and i see more and more folks are returning to them. I have a nice PC and a modern laptop computer. Those do plenty for my needs. Why do i need another device that does the same stuff only not as well and that costs $1k+? I take my dumbphone hiking and camping a lot. I use those 'tough' phones and have yet to break one. Last one hung on for 8+ years. My current is still good at over 3 years.
Hey man! I wanted to discuss my patented (not really) "middle way" approach. I keep "offloading" functions from my phone, since I still need it for the stuff you mentioned. Instead, I got a wristwatch (not a smartwatch), that way, instead of checking the time on your phone you look at your shiny watch (and also don't then proceed to doomscroll). Instead of a "notes" app, I got 2 PHYSICAL notepads: 1 for daily "todo" and one for "longer term memory" stuff. Instead of a music player, I got an mp3 player (I plan to expand it later so I have 1 dedicated for podcasts, 1 for the current book I'm listening to and 1 for music). Instead of your phone's camera, a digicam, and so forth! This way, you use your phone less and less so it's not as habit-forming
I love that you call them dumbphones lol!
Anyways, this video has genuinely made me reconsider some things. I have been very frustrated over my own clingy relationship to my phone for... well, for years now. So I think I'll take your advice, try to adjust some of my settings and set boundaries with myself. I need to breathe and my phone being glued to my hand, eyee glued to the screen, it's suffocating. Cheers!
In the last two years there have been MULTIPLE price increases for different plans for Spotify (duo is still the cheapest and is the one that's least touched).
Thank you for the update, I thoroughly enjoyed this video as well as your original video about making the switch.
I gave up owning a smartphone several months ago. Personally, I don't own a computer at all, mostly due to cost. I simply go to the library and use the computers there, it's how I pay my rent and bills. While I'm there I will borrow books and DVDs and take that time to chill out and relax.
I will note though that doing so involves me driving for about 30 minutes, but it's also a town I work in for 2 of my weekly shifts, so I work it around that.
I love my dumb phone, I bought an AGM M8 Flip, a super basic but rugged flip phone. It's durable and I love that aesthetic whilst also being very basic with no internet apps at all. I use it purely as a tool for communication as well as a calculator, alarm and calendar which has led me to feel much freer and with much less anxiety.
I'm much the same in that I enjoy daydreaming now and boredom, but when I need to fill in time I usually read, write in a journal, draw or colour, work on a jigsaw puzzle or simply go outside. In terms of music I generally listen to FM radio, I live in Australia and I'm lucky to have a few local hard rock/metal stations that I enjoy, so when at home the radio will be on and of course when driving.
I want to thank you for your inspirational and informative videos, I wish you all the best!
when you said you found yourself just picking up your work phone and doing nothing that hit me way too hard i still have a smart phone but when im at work or my personal phone is dead sometimes ill just look at it swipe around a couple times and close it and im like i know i wasnt gonna do anything but god its so shiny and for reference i hate my work phone i try to use it as little as possible for me its mainly just there so i can give it to my trainees and say go nuts without worrying what theyll see on there lmao
Thank you for such an informative video! I'm trying to start small (mainly deleting social media apps and regulating them to desktop), which I believe primarily would fix my problem, but im really considering the jump to a Dumbphone because I'd really, truly, as hilarious as this sounds, love to be bored and see what I can get up to again, like I did as a kid.
I'm still a bit worried about what taking the plunge would mean for how my internet pals would communicate with me (I don't know what Dumb phone brands would let me at least download Discord, which i purely use to message others), but I'm glad you brought up using an iPad for the 2FA apps, that's huge, I don't know why I didn't consider that!
Seriously, thank you for the video!
You have a very good outlook, on both how to tackle tech and on life in general. It's great you delve into the multiple facets of an issue and encourage people to do the same.
Just found your channel after seeing your initial switch to your feature phone. As someone who is trying to become less tech immerse and more tech savvy your channel is goated, dude.
Thank you for this update. I watched your first dumb phone video last year and it made me reconsider how I used my phone.
Last week I tried to remove all apps off my phone. Unfortunately you can't remove the Google play store on android. It surprisingly reduced my screen time.
I spent more time just listening to music. I also found I had frequent cravings to find stimulation from apps on my phone
Thanks for the video. Jus wanted to tell you your videos are always so...cozy to me, even tho you're talking about like serious topics and stuf. Especially your outro of being kind to each other. So thanks for that.
I like your channel a lot! I'm glad you uploaded again it made my day😊
Thanks for the update video, really interesting stuff. I've been trying to make routine adjustments to accomplish my personal goals, but the allure of going all in with a dumbphone is still appealing to me, until I remember how much personal messaging I do through smartphone apps like whatsapp, discord, etc. that I just can't access with a phone only.
this video did help me realize that watching youtube has been a problem for me in my daily routine though, so I disabled the youtube app on my phone and am about to log out of my youtube account on my computer. i'd say I'll update with progress, but
So if you're still here do you use other social media?😅
I really would love to switch to a dumb phone - I don't use social media and I usually just end up scrolling Wikipedia or TVTropes or something. I think the big things preventing me from making the switch is 1: Most dumb phones are really cheaply made, or at least the dumb phones that I've seen for sale locally. They don't feel as robust as some of the older ones (e.g. compare a new Nokia dumbphone to an older Nokia, the older one is much more durable and higher quality) 2: I need discord. Discord is basically my main way of communicating w/ friends and family and being unable to do that is a bit of a problem, especially if I were in a really bad situation. I have seen a handful of fan-made discord clients, but they're usually a bit iffy.
I have to admit, while they are cheaply made, that's kind of fine because they are cheap. I don't care if it falls down a flight of stairs, it'll survive, it's just plastic. But I understand what you mean, there are different qualities of plastics, and the older ones were absolute tanks compared to these ones.
In regards to things like discord, I'd encourage trying to be available when you want to be. One of the perks to a phone in general is getting phone calls. If something truly urgent comes up, you'd be a quick phone call away. One of the most beneficial side effects of using this dumb phone has taught me that it's okay to not be connected all the time. Everyone knows that I'll respond when I jump on the computer. They're not worried that I'm not responding fast enough or whatever, and I'm not constantly stressed by being "dinged" all day when I don't want to be dinged lol.
Also foreshadowing to an upcoming video I'm writing still, I encourage you continue your search for alternative Discord platforms. There are lots of really good privacy forward options (though, i understand that Discord has it advantages). If you happen to find one you like, let me (or the folks on the forum) know! I'd love to include it in that video.
On the cost side of things I do want to point out that you really don't have to get a new smartphone every year. With a little bit of care your phone can easily last up to 6 years or even a decade before it starts to become unusable. Especially if you're okay with using a portable battery pack to extend the battery life once the internal battery starts to degrade too much.
100% I just fell into the trap of peer pressure through tech enthusiasts. I was just public about that in hopes that someone who was in a similar boat as me could see that it doesn't have to be that way.
@@rejectconvenience That's totally understandable yeah. I have no reason to give a fuck so it's easier to ignore but even then it's still annoying how often I feel implicitly pressured to buy the newest phone when I really don't need one at all.
Honestly I've been wanting to stay off my phone more so for about a year now I've been reducing my screen time for my phone and I even have a pocket notebook now that I'm trying to use over my phone. Plus whenever I leave my phone somewhere I feel free for once. Thanks for making content that I can actually relate to and is an interesting topic to talk about :).
Companies should have contingencies. It’s a big issue in the uk right now. Carparks are often used by the elderly, and a lot of them don’t have a smart phone. They have recently removed a lot of pay machines from these locations and only have an app available for payment. So… now these elderly people can’t use the carparks anymore. It’s not as easy as just saying “get a phone”, costs aside, it’s not that easy to learn how to use a phone. iPhones are pretty good at being simple to use but for someone who didn’t even grow up with a home computer, this is a lot to force on a struggling population.
As a music producer who releases music, I can relate to how much you really don’t get paid by streaming services, especially Spotify 😅
Love this channel! Glad I found you! Very helpful
Yes am addicted to internet, devices, phones tablets & buying from Amazon, eBay. Getting help for all this would put me in 12 steps meetings or therapy 24/7. I will keep my iPhone & Apple Watch for health/ safety purposes but have to get off this merry go round. True waste of a life. Appreciate you sharing this journey.
1:45 - type the link on your desktop browser
3:06 - return with a camera, take a picture, upload to desktop, scan QR from picture
The challenges can be straightforwardly solved if you're a dedicated dumb phone user. You can bring a portable camera, a notebook with a pen, and cash with you at all times and that should cover you in most cases. Smartphone is just extra convenience that we all got accustomed to.
I just realized your character's model uses Mii assets. lol
-Use EMACS on your PC, limit your time to 1 hour weekday, 2 hours weekend. Its shocking how productive you can be on a computer with a text only interface!
-I would recommend you start to build a reference library of textbooks and encyclopedias, books not the computer help you learn very fast and encyclopedia books help enable discovery so may be worth buying a set of worldbook to help get you started. (Wikipedia does not cut it, and some articles compared to a traditional encyclopedia are bad and inaccurate).
-Drill your maths every 5 years, pre-algebra -> Calculus and beyond (It will keep your skill set in sharp and give you a competative advantage and confidence over others your age).
-MOST IMPORTANT: Get into the habbit of continuous learning, make it a hobby in the subjects of Science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM), its literally given me extra hours in the day, you know like when you were young and time just seems to stand still! That's the most valuable thing I've come across living an analog life!
Around 2 minutes. You weren't the problem
i know this is old but if anybody is still ready comments, as somebody who simplified my normal smartphone, here are some tips
1. delete any apps you can just use the browser for, ie any social media app you can just hop on the browser and log on normally is better than having the app
2. mute any notifications that aren't important or requires immediate attention, any email, app notifications or unfamiliar messages should be muted
3. keep your phone charged on a corner in a room or living room and anything specific you want to do, do it on a computer/laptop, don't get a tablet, because the object you are using is too big to carry around it will keep you from holding the device every time you are doing something else,
Instructions confused, am now uploaded into the Matrix
Bruh I actually got rickrolled by a QR code
most of my life has been scraping to get a decent computer granted i wanted something i can game on but this is the ultimate budget gaming setup
At this point my country is too digitized to switch to a dumbphone my old phone was from 2019 and was too old to use important government stuff
The answer to you wondering how to fix texting and driving:
- high fines
- high cost of having a car
- ban of car traffic in cities except really essential services
- good public transit
- good biking and pedestrian infrastructure
Maybe i'm an extremist but I never plan on owning a car, my grandma is happy that she sold hers and i feel privileged that it's possible where i live
High fines do not work when there is no enforcement. So I say lower the fines and higher the chance of getting caught.
I really like your honesty about the adiction. I was looking to get a dumb phone but got turned away by the fact most of my texting and calls are over discord and whatsapp. Even my sports and work stuff is on whatsapp. And a lot of your strategies for getting yourself off the screen is what I'll be trying.
That said I feel like a new iphone every year is a crazy ammount of money wasted when you can get a 200 euro motorola and have it last 3 to 4 years easy.
This is an interesting video. As an online artist- I have to use social media, which is mostly for phones. Instagram doesn’t have a good alternative for desktop. I also send images to my laptop from my phone, for references.
Having a smart phone also helps with my adhd, I find it redundant to set numerous timers to remind myself to do things on a non phone. I usually have my phone near me anyways. If I don’t have a phone with notifications set up, I will forget to check in with friends as well.
As much as I would love to say I could do everything from my laptop- I objectively can’t. I prefer using a laptop but smart phones work better for the things I need to do.
I actually wanted to buy a dumb phone to got away from all the social media, privacy invasive stuff and all the subscriptions, but most of the dumb phone had stuff like google or facebook preinstalled and no way to tweak OS or remove them, so yeah, I just dumbed down my pixel phone with graphene OS - i now have nothing, but banking apps, signal and telegram
Check out the Sonim XP3plus and the Kyocera DuraXA Equip
I wish dumb phones came with a hotspot built in. That way I could turn on the hotspot and use a laptop if I need to. I always have my laptop with me. I enjoy using it. I don't really enjoy using my phone anymore.
The one I use has that setting! I just don't pay for data, so I never use it.
There are some dumb phones that have that function if fact if you get one and some data you can cancel home.internet. I use a Sonim XP5 plus it works great as a hotspot
Nokia 4G feature phones have this...
12:47 it's just easier to remember. I have a pair of bluetooth overhead headphones (Major 2), it lasts like half a year with my use pattern. I obviously use it on battery very rarely, it's connected to a laptop with a 3.5mm jack 99% of the time.
The point is, each time it dies is the worst time possible, on an uninhabited arctic island in the middle of a fight to death with a polar bear level of the worst. And I don't see it coming as last time I thought about charging them was in the same situation 9 months ago.
But my phone, I just do it every day, there are no surprises.
I actually didn't have internet on my phone until a few years back. Partially because I didn't want to become addicted, partially because mobile internet was expensive. I could connect to the internet at home or at university, or use few available public wifi. I gave in because mobile internet is just dirt cheap these days (For a perspective I pay for unlimited mobile internet access, plus 400 minutes the amount of money that equals 3 medium lattes a month). Also I was fed up with me being the only one who doesn't have internet on their phone. There'''s also a lot of perks too. I no longer needed to activate grocery coupons on the go.
Multibillion dollar industry?
Sorry bud, thats a mistake.
Its a multi trillion dollar industry you're going up against
I've never had any phone, period. Not even a landline. I used various niche media players for a while, but now that AI took my job they've all eventually broken. I don't have hot water or food at the end of the month, either. Just the money you saved makes me salivate thinking of the meat and vegetables I could buy...
Im struggling with same issues! I have a career in tech but I also hate using modern technology like smartphones. Ive been trying to grapple with it, but I feel better using my dumbphone compared to my Unihertz Titan Pocket
That iphone daily battery drain surprised me, as a samsung user i cant relate 😂 (once every 3-4 days) but that 15 day battery life BLEW me out of the park. Thats crazy
And that's a 2 year old battery, it used to be 20 days on a charge when I first got it!
Loved this video! I’m wondering if you’ve read or heard of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism? It’s a book that talks about many of the similar ideas you’ve laid out here and it’s what inspired me to completely revamp my relationship with technology
I have not, but I will check it out :)
I'm happy I'm not the only one who feels like an iPad baby after moving to a dumb phone.
Hey: Cat S22 Flip. It's a nice in-between for smart and dumb. Hard to use, but capable (if somewhat frustrating) for most dumb things. I've been using it for a year or so.
the us carrier prices are insane, I currently pay 6€ a month for my plan with texts, calls, and 16GB of data, and I know many of my friends have gotten better deals
Treating people with low self control like it's their own moral failing is such a terrible thing to do. Like, do you think that people choose to have low self control? Do you think anybody enjoys not having control over the things they do?
(This is a response to the comments mentioned in the video. I feel like the video doesn't call this out, even though it maybe should have.)
comment for the algorithm. thanks for uploading!
this is pretty neat, i never really need to do this sorta thing tbh, not addicted to my phone or social media in general, i just gotta get a job so i can have stuff to do finally lol
Tbh i cant live without my phone with a calender on my first page and the weather app.
I rely so much on my phone I even track my period with it. I have adhd and I try to remember stuff like this idk
I get it for sure - if you're curious to try other things, try using a physical notebook for those things. You can certainly do the phone too, but just try it for one thing, like maybe groceries or song recommendations from other people. I think diving in head first like I did is generally a bad idea, and I would greatly discourage it. But if you want to reduce your dependency on the phone, there are certainly lots of options that can be done in bite-sized chunks.
@@rejectconvenience I use a physical calender for work stuff, but I try to avoid paper as much as I can since I work outside. When I'm with friends I'm never on my phone. I have a really bad habit of having youtube as a background noise all the time tho.
The thing about just looking at your phone even if theres nothing to look at - I do that too. I just look at my screen a lot for some reason
I just use limiters on my media. I wanted to get a dumbphone but it simply isnt realistic if you are in school and are in a large city
Say you have a 'land line' phone. They understand it - its the phones you plug into the wall.
Haha I would love one of those, but they cost wayyy too much per month
Btw when you said for the first time "i went out to visit friends" i understood "france" and i was a bit confused that you didn't mention language bareer or something but QR codes 😂
Changing my android launcher to Niagara and using a grayscale icon pack has helped me avoid popping open apps unnecessarily/just because they're there.
just buy the cheapest modern small phone at the time you buy a new phone and keep it until it stops becoming useful, you don't need the new one every year, in fact the old one you have is probably perfect for using your phone less because it'll be slower. the cool thing about iphones is that they last for at least 6 years before going kaput.
you can do other things like enabling grayscale and using a matte screen protector to make the screen less appealing to look at.
keep the battery saver mode on at all times to make it as slow and last as long as possible.
delete all your apps and only install the ones you KNOW you'll need immediately, otherwise delete the app when you're done with it.
use the web browser versions of some apps to make them aggravating to use.
any app you get annoyed by, disable their notifications,
turn on Do not disturb mode and/or focus mode.
here's a big one; set app time limits or if you have a partner, have them set up a parental account with you
put your phone in your backpack instead of your pocket so you're not tempted to take it out every 5 seconds.
there's so many small changes you can do to drastically make your experience less phone tied while still not giving up your smartphone.
I really like the look of your videos
I used grayscale, and it didn’t do much for me besides highlighting how absurdly colorful and bright some apps are and that I appreciate some dullness in color which is less eye straining
I use my smart phone for videos, art/animation, and bank info. I used to play games, but games don't bring me the same joy, from when i first got a phone. Nobody to play with 😢
18:00 I became one of those people accidentally. I have a laptop but it is a decade old and slow as hell. Over its life I ended up using it less and less and now never. I watch things on the tv or phone and I have classic consoles for gaming. When thinking about upgrading the laptop I decided nah, I'll get a steam deck instead.
Thankfully I hate doing anything on my smartphone. I have a high-end Sony smartphone (Xperia 1 VI) and the battery lasts me about a week without charging. But I just find using such a small screen (small compared to a computer monitor) is so claustrophobic, and I find using a touch screen with no real tactile feedback is super uncomfortable to use.
So I only use it when I really have to - like banking, or receiving calls/texts, and GPS, and using it as an music player when I'm out of the house (I have the phone with me anyway and playing music doesn't meaningfully drain the battery more than not doing so - there's no point in paying for and carrying a separate device).
Having a smart watch also helps, I suppose. It means that when I get a notification I can just see what it is on my watch, and that way I only actually get my phone out if it's something that I ACTUALLY need to respond to like an important text or phone call.
I have games on it, I occasionally attempt to look for SOMETHING I'd want to play, but on the very rare occasion that I find a good game I find myself not wanting to play it for the aforementioned reasons (plus holy hell it hurts my neck to stare down at my phone for extended periods of time).
I also buy my own music. I put all of my music onto my phone (I have a 1TB MicroSD card in my phone to store it all). I find that there's not a single streaming service that has a all of the music that I listen to, and the audio quality is pretty poor compared to what I'm used to.
With that charging everyday thing that's why I couldn't switch to a smartwatch XD one of the most important perks of my watch is that its battery lasts 30 years. Like come on....
The only thing that i am jealous of when it comes to smart watches is that they sync while my watch shows one minute later after ~3 months. And it doesn't change the time itself during the dumb change of time which my country does every half a year even though they said they would stop. My clock however is able to sync with radio which is really awesome. Old technology with modern additions is most of the time superior to fully new solutions
I switched from a flip phone to a smart phone when I was 15. But was grounded from 16 to almost 18. I will admit, I'm addicted to my smartphone and technology. I'd get away from it all if work and hobbies would let me
The problem with modern data privacy is finding your place on the AI techbro - Richard Stallman scale
My main issues is for health reasons i can't go to work or go have an adventure. So being stuck at home with a dumbphone and a kindle sounds miserable but I'm taking it. My brain is tired of the excess of social media (everything is sexualised,liars, being concerned with things that don't matter)
I wonder what you would think of feature phones, since these act more as an in-between of smartphones and dumb phones.
good video alert 🚨
Jesus, spending $5600 on your phone while in debt. I'm glad you got out of that.
Me too lol
Thank you for making this
I recognize that I have an issue with my screen time and whenever I find my strength of will being a bit stronger, I delete my time sink phone games and apps and I keep my phone on greyscale. Eventually things ease back, but I hope to find my own balance.
i keep saying that when my current smartphone wears out/stops working, ill switch to a flip phone. but the truth is, i dont think i can. i rely too heavily on my phone to remember things for me. i have calenders and alarms on there to tell me i have an event no matter where i am (and i cant use a watch, becuase those are soso so uncomfortable. i suppose i could put it in my pocket actually...?). i use my music app to organize and listen to music on the go, i use the gps app to navigate (i get lost unless ive travelled the route several times. tho i could very much use a gps mounted in the car.), i use my notes app to jot things down to remember later. basically, i would need to replace this one thing i take everywhere with a dozen things that i would need to remember to bring, which would make getting out of the house much more of a hassle. as it is, im pretty happy with the phone i have. it lasts about a day and a half with continuous usage, IT HAS A HEADPHONE JACK, i can talk to all my online friends with it
You talking about making my phone grayscale got me thinking of how much that would actually impact my phone usage over the day.
I feel like I use my phone is a primary communication device, but really I've been watching RUclips all day without accomplishing much of anything.
I used to watch RUclips Shorts a lot, that kept me in bed when waking up for about 4-5 hours, and now I'm just doing it with long form content, patting myself on the back for 'getting rid of my RUclips Shorts addiction' ..
I do commissions for 3D Models in my free time, and it's my primary source of income. I got no work done today despite telling myself I'd work on it today.
Procrastination is a problem, and I think I will give the grayscale thing a try!
Congratulations on your profile picture, it's a shame that RUclips shows them in such a small space (on the phone at least).
Procrastination is unfortunately a real problem. Knowing that you end up procrastinating after starting a project does not help either. I wish you good luck with a grayscale phone to improve it. I hope this comment helps with that and doesn't have the opposite effect.
I remember watching the original video, so this was great. One question: how do you sync your iPod? Is there a better way than using iTunes?
If you flash the firmware on the iPod to use RockBox, you can just plug it into any computer and click and drag the music files over :)
@@rejectconvenience Will try
Seeing how a google pixel 6 is 135 USD, then a Nokia is similarly priced, idk mate
That's totally fair, you can totally get an older smartphone at a similar price - heck, you could even do the no-data plan, saving a bunch of money there too, so you just have a smart phone when you're on Wifi
@@rejectconvenience I'm not at all saying what you've done is not right, because in many ways, it is right, it lets you experience the things around you again, it doesn't make you reliant on tech for all your needs, but it does surprisingly still come at a high cost which I cannot understand for such devices hardware being quite, mediocre, therefore should be of cost of about 50 USD
i never pay for subscription services. things will either be free or i will buy them. i am currently on my parents' various streaming service accounts, but if/when i move out, the only one i might pay for is Netflix, and even then its a big maybe (they just dont have the range of movies and tv shows they had when they first launched, because theyve all moved to their own streaming services). supposedly, tho, streaming services are still a lot cheaper than cable (i dont know for sure tho, as i was at most a middle schooler when we last had cable). i sometimes use the library to find stuff i cant get (tho i should use it more often) or use... other methods of watching movies. the movies i really like, i buy physical copies of, because then i own them forever AND i get special features. i always buy music. i have a playlist on RUclips of songs i want but have yet to buy (i dont know if i like them enough to buy, i havent gotten around to it, or i cant figure out where to buy them from. some foreign songs i have no choice but to pirate because i cant navigate the foreign music-buying-sites. i do look around before resorting to piracy.)
The only monthly fee I have with my phone is the carrier... that's it, I don't pay for anything else... maybe a new phone or phone battery every 2-3 years...
I think I have been a little lucky with where I was born. I'm in a country where we value going out in the woods and bragging about how low tech it was. So I get to have an excuse for going off the grid. Though we still have some of the issues you have in the US, where you kinda need to have a phone to get things done. It's beginning to feel that everyone is expecting you to have some app.
For example, the busses here require an app now to have a ticket that lasts more than just one trip, but a few years ago you could have a card thing you just had to bring with you. And I actually ran into some issues related to my SIM card not working properly, so I sometimes lost internet access, and I was unable to show the ticket I had paid for, because the app required a constant internet connection.
Through luck I have been able to avoid a lot of the addictions and pitfalls of technology, but I am not perfect, there are still things I would like to be less dependent on.
Oh my god i am so glad we still have the bus cards here, i wouldn't think some places already don't 😮
These days my screentime is 4 hours a day, 20-30 of which is spend on phone calls.
I use a smartphone for things like 2fa, but I live day to day life as if I don't even have a phone. For the most part it stays on a desk even if I'm going out unless I'm expecting the need to use it
I love the idea of rolling around with a dumbphone but as someone with ADHD I do get some great uses out of smartphones and smart watches like reminders and my watch vibrating when a timer goes off so I don't leave the pot of water boiling on the stove or the pizza in the oven burning to a crisp. I wonder if you could make reminders and calendar notices work by running a Mac Mini.
I have calendars on my iPod! It has an alarm beep and everything! It's very cool, I have been surprised with how helpful that has actually been
@@rejectconvenience I have some iPod touches in my rotation so those could help. They're synced with my account so they could receive calendar updates when I'm at home, and the timer app on the watch is self contained. Great that iPods can do calendars, I love using these things.
Music bought via iTunes will not ensure ownership since apple can lose the rights to those albums.
If you do iTunes Match, you can strip the DRM, making it not tied to an apple account at all!
@@rejectconvenience Ah ok, didn’t knew that, I’ll google that, cheers👍
@@dprofielenk1940 There might be a way to do it without iTunes Match also, I think if you right click "Make AAC version" should do the same thing (but I'm not sure if that only appears with the iTunes Match thing enabled)
I don’t even think that you need iTunes Match - if you buy the song you get the DRM free MP3