It’s difficult to walk through the Exley Science Center, the Frank Center for Public Affairs, or even a social space like the Usdan University Center without seeing a sea of AirPods and bent necks glued to screens. University students clock upwards of six or seven hours a day on their smartphones (by my own observation). Every moment of pause is an immediate excuse to scroll through notifications.
Yet, a few students have chosen to ditch their smartphones altogether for flip phones, with positive results. Staying analog, however, has proven trickier.
Hank Schwabacher ’26 spent his first year at the University without a smartphone. As an avid gamer in middle and high school, he knew the extent to which technology can consume time and energy in the daily lives of young adults. The summer before college, Schwabacher worked at a camp in the woods and barely used his phone at all, but when he came back to campus, he noticed how quickly his habits returned. He wanted a change.
“It just felt like the right thing to do,” Schwabacher said. “I was spending too much time on my phone, and I realized that Wesleyan’s one of the few places where you can actually get away with not having one.”
Just as his classes were beginning, Schwabacher took an Uber to Best Buy, purchased an $18 flip phone, and officially disconnected from his smartphone. He had to adapt to campus life without the luxuries his peers had. Some challenges naturally arose: He couldn’t download the ReUser app, missed access to the Corq app required to check in during New Student Orientation, and was left to navigate Middletown without the help of digital maps.
“I was trying to go to the hardware store, and I was walking, and I remember getting very, very lost,” Schwabacher said. “I went to the library and I printed out directions and tried to follow them…. It did not really work. Eventually, I had to stop and ask someone…. They directed me back towards Wesleyan.”
Even so, Schwabacher says that being on a college campus made the experience of going analog much easier. He found that he made friends easily despite the pesky green text bubbles and broken group chats, and his analog challenge turned into a great conversation starter. At parties, friends began asking questions, and some even bought their own flip phones in solidarity.
Though he has since switched back to a smartphone for practical reasons, Schwabacher foresees himself returning to a flip phone in the future. He said he enjoyed the ability to break free from the addictive nature of smartphones and was glad that he managed to avoid brainless social media news.
“I used to think my phone wasn’t bad for me,” Schwabacher said. “But I realized I use it like a painkiller to shut off my brain. It works, but it keeps you numb. And sometimes your brain should be on a little more of the time.”
Maggie Leeming ’26, another student who turned away from the allure of smartphones, went analog the summer before her sophomore year. She didn’t like how dependent her phone made her feel, and felt curious about what life might look like without it.
“I just didn’t like feeling attached to something external [to] myself,” Leeming said. “I was using my phone for everything, including directions, googling every dumb or smart question I had, and I wanted to see if I could wean myself off that dependency.”
Leeming relied on only a flip phone and her Mac (for homework) for nine months, breaking away from the constant technological connection that her fellow students were part of. Her friends complained about green text bubbles and how difficult it was to reach her, but Leeming interpreted it as a small price to pay for the ability to disconnect.
“Once I left my house, I was basically unplugged from everything,” Leeming said. “And that was kind of freeing. It’s a feeling that not many people know about.”
That summer, Leeming found herself driving back and forth between eastern and western Massachusetts; these trips were long, two-hour drives that required a lot of analog improvisation. When she inevitably got lost, being GPS- and map-less, she had to pull over and call her dad on her flip phone to determine her location and the best way to get to her destination.
“My dad would ask me to read off whatever signs I could see,” Leeming said. “Then he’d look me up on Google Maps and direct me over the phone. It was like having my own mission control.”
While Leeming loved the months she spent off the grid, she eventually needed to prioritize convenience. When she went abroad, she chose to switch back to a smartphone, better suited for navigating a new country. However, she still keeps the flip phone in a drawer, just in case she wants to embark on the journey again.
Cole Corper ’29 made the switch in his sophomore year of high school after his parents confiscated his phone. At first, he refused to ask for it back out of spite, but he soon realized he didn’t actually need it. Although Corper briefly used an iPhone for a few months after senior year, he returned to his smartphone-free lifestyle before starting at the University.
Corper especially appreciates what disconnecting does for his ability to truly connect.
“Having a flip phone doesn’t mean you want to live off the grid or something,” Corper wrote in an email to The Argus. “All it does is let you be a little more present in very specific moments, like when you’re out and about with friends, or even when you’re riding the bus or sitting in the park or something. Rather than being on my phone, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable just sitting and people watching or being alone with my thoughts.”
As a self-described texting hater, Corper also appreciated that his friends must now call to reach him, and he now enjoys the right to refuse to respond to long texts. This does, however, come at the expense of Spotify; to mediate this, he has gladly transitioned to cassette and vinyl, which he recommends everyone use, smartphone user or not. One issue he does acknowledge is the perceived performative nature of flip phone use.
“I also think people have this weird thing of thinking anyone with a flip phone is just being performative,” Corper wrote. “Even if some people are [doing] it to perform, what does it even matter? Those ‘performative’ people are getting off their screens for a bit and trying something out, and that’s something I think everyone can agree is pretty cool.”
Schwabacher, Leeming, and Corper all acknowledge that the switch is not for everyone. Going analog has been a personal journey for them rather than a political one, and largely an experiment in willpower and technological freedom. Without a smartphone, they found the time to be more physically present and the opportunity to think critically, as the answers of the internet were no longer right at their fingertips.
“I really just wanted to have a question about something, wonder about it, and be okay not having the answer,” Leeming said. “Our generation has become too dependent on smartphones. And now with AI, we’ve stopped wondering. We’re uncomfortable not knowing things. Going analog reminded me it’s okay not to know.”
Carolyn Neugarten can be reached at cneugarten@wesleyan.edu.
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