Doing away with the continual smart scroll

Some teens have quit their phones

By Angie Hund | Manor Ink

Town of Rockland, NY – Late last year, a group of Brooklyn teenagers gave up their smartphones for their mental health, productivity and overall well-being. Calling themselves the “Luddite Club,” this group of high schoolers aimed to promote a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology.

The idea originated when the group decided to put away their phones on a casual Sunday morning visit to Prospect Park. Instead of burying themselves in their devices, these teens decided to simply be teens. Bonding over decorating their new “flip” phones in glitter polish and stickers, the group began their social media-free journey. From then on, the club met every Sunday to collaborate on making art, writing or just to relax together. After a few meetings, members became significantly more interested in reading for pleasure, and began reading novels and developing their own philosophies.

Founder of the group, Logan Lane, named the club after the folkloric 18th-century English textile worker, Ned Ludd, whose legend inspired later workers to fight industrialization. Lane cultivated her technology-free philosophy over her time in COVID quarantine in 2020. “I became completely consumed, I couldn’t not post a good picture if I had one. I was definitely still watching everything,” she said when interviewed by The New York Times. The realization motivated her to seek interests other than the Internet. What she and many teens experience she described as social media “burnout,” an obsession with the endless scroll.

Going smartphone-free here?

Inspired by the Luddite Club, I decided to conduct a survey in Roscoe and Livingston Manor Central Schools to learn whether students would be interested in a similar technology-free lifestyle.

With help from Ink Editor-in-Chief Michelle Adams-Thomas, I began the survey with the simple question, “Do you own a smartphone?” Almost everyone did, so I next asked, “How many hours a day do you spend on it?” Half the teens said that their screen time added up to four hours or more daily. While on their phones for a significant portion of the day, I found they mostly used the social media apps Snapchat, Tik Tok and Instagram.

From there, I questioned the effect technology has on productivity, motivation and academics. Over half the teens denied that quitting smartphones would improve their grades, some saying, “Maybe limiting the usage of phones could be beneficial, but we must also let kids be kids,” or, “It could prove to be beneficial for students who spend too much time on their phones and get nothing done.”

I then asked, “How do you think quitting smartphone would affect the school day?” The top response asserted that without phones school would be more boring. That, however, was followed by students feeling that going phone-free would make them more productive.

Unsurprisingly, when I concluded the survey with, “Do you think teenagers quitting their smartphone is a good idea?’’ a good percentage of students disagreed. From the results, I concluded that both RCS and LMCS students are uncomfortable with the idea of giving up their smartphone. The Luddite Club’s reversion to flip phones being a newer concept, I can understand why most Rockland teens aren’t quite ready to go technology-free.

Social media – a necessary evil?

Since the beginning of 2023, the debate over whether social media and technology are actually beneficial for one’s mental health and overall productivity has been a recurring issue for me. I wrote an essay on the topic for my high school English class that was also published in the March issue of Manor Ink about the Internet’s effects on my technology-immersed generation’s thought patterns.

After this, I began questioning how my own motivation, creativity and attention have been affected by my extensive social media use. I reflected on how I grab my phone and scroll when I have free time, rather than picking up a novel to read. Or that I neglect quality time with family and friends just to check a celebrity’s feed. And how I feel the need to prove myself to strangers on the Internet rather than working on my relationships with people I know.

Regardless of the survey results, I believe that the Luddite Club experiment can be beneficial to one’s views on social media.