Earlier this year, Angelo Profera’s smartphone gave up the ghost. Like many 21-year-olds, he’d been using it a lot: messaging friends, scrolling social media and taking care of personal admin. But he’d also started feeling like the phone was more chore than convenience. “I felt a lot of pressure to be connected,” he says. “I didn’t like how much energy I was putting into answering voice messages and being available all the time.”
Browsing for a replacement phone, he had a brainwave. He left the shop with a phone that had no internet and could only receive calls and text messages: a dumb phone. It was a bold move for a smartphone native, and Profera, who lives in Switzerland, was initially worried his new device might cause some problems. Instead, he says, it has transformed the way he interacts with the world.
