Pod Insights All In The Mind Brain Rot: Meet the people who ditched their smartphones About this episode We've all dreamt of lobbing our smartphone into the ocean and going off grid.
So what happens when you follow through with it?
For the final episode of Brain Rot, we speak to the people who decided they'd had enough.
From a French village, to Gen Z 'luddites' in New York City and a group of parents in regional Victoria, there are clubs, campaigns and even laws dedicated to a smartphone-free life.
But in 2025, how do you pull it off? And is it actually worth it?
This episode originally aired on Brain Rot https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sciencefriction/brain-rot/105534830, a series of the ABC podcast Science Friction https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sciencefriction. Sana will be back with all-new episodes of All in the Mind from Sunday 19 October.
Guests:
Stan Awtrey
Sportswriter, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Vincent Paul-Petit
Mayor, Seine-Port, France
Lisa Given
Professor of Information Sciences, RMIT University
Steph Challis
Founder, The Phone Pledge
Jameson Butler
Co-Founder, The Luddite Club
Credits:
Presenter: Ange LavoipierreProducer: Fiona PepperSenior Producer: James BullenSound Engineer: Ross RichardsonThanks to Sam Goerling for the assistance with French translation.
This story was made on the lands of the Gadigal and Menang Noongar peoples.
More Information:
The Luddite Club https://www.theludditeclub.org/Parents unite to ban teens from smartphones amid social media minimum age review https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/social-media-smartphone-pledge-teenage-ban/104332624You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you'd like to access the transcript for this episode, head to its original webpage https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sciencefriction/brain-rot-science-friction-internet-free-dumb-phones/105376634.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:08 Speaker 01 Let's be honest, we have all dreamt of lobbing our smartphone into the ocean and going off grid at some point. So what happens when you follow through with it? On All in the Mind from ABC Radio National, it's the final episode of Brain Rot, a special series about your relationship with tech. And we're hearing from people who've decided they've had enough. From an idyllic French village, to Gen Z Luddites in New York City, and a group of parents in regional Victoria. There are clubs, campaigns and even laws dedicated to smartphone-free life. But how do you actually pull it off? And is it worth it?
0:49 Speaker 01 On All in the Mind from ABC Radio National, this is Brain Rot, a special series about your relationship with tech. And this week, the communities of people trying to ditch their smartphones.
1:04 Speaker 00 Where's the last place you went that your phone couldn't come?
1:08 Speaker 02 They tell people, leave your mobile phones in your car, don't bring them on the property. Because what will happen is if they find you with one, whether you're using it or if it's in your pocket, they will escort you from the premises, take away your badge. I mean, it is that strict.
1:29 Speaker 00 It's not a maximum security prison.
1:31 Speaker 02 And I've had friends and colleagues make a mistake of walking out with a cellphone and getting caught.
1:39 Speaker 00 And it's not the White House Situation Room.
1:42 Speaker 02 One guy was banned for two years because of what he did.
1:47 Speaker 00 Or a meditation retreat. But we're getting warmer.
1:50 Speaker 02 Some people have described going to the Masters as almost a spiritual experience. And I think that's true for the most part.
2:04 Speaker 02 It's interesting to be in a large crowd of people and no one has their cell phones. Because the people are actually watching the golf and they're staying in the moment. And that's very rare and unusual these days.
2:21 Speaker 00 It takes dedication to be a spectator at the US Golf Masters in Augusta, Georgia. Every April, thousands of golf enthusiasts make the trade. Your phone for uninterrupted golf.
2:33 Speaker 02 You can just kind of be quiet, pay attention and watch. Keep the memories, make the memories and keep them in your brain for a change.
2:41 Speaker 00 That tournament has had a no phones policy in place since before smartphones were invented. It just goes to show that sometimes if you stand still long enough, the zeitgeist comes to you. Because in 2025, more and more people seem to be fantasizing about a life off the grid.
2:59 Speaker 03 I can definitely live without internet.
3:02 Speaker 04 I want to so bad. I've like tried to a lot and then I'll get all my friends' numbers and like text them instead. But you just like, you fall out socially so quickly.
3:13 Speaker 00 Today, we meet the people who aren't just fantasizing about it, they're going through with it.
3:18 Speaker 05 Having a flip phone in 2025 definitely does make my life harder in some aspects. But honestly, since I've gotten rid of my smartphone, I'm more on top of everything. I've become a lot less scatterbrained.
3:33 Speaker 00 I'm Ange Lavoie-Pierre, the ABC's National Technology Reporter. And this is Brain Rot, a series from Science Friction about how tech is changing our brains. And in our final episode, you'll hear from the people and entire communities who are so keen to avoid those changes that they've noped out of smartphones altogether. Maybe for good.
3:54 Speaker 05 We realized that the hardest part about making that transition is the feelings of isolation that come with it and a lack of community. So we decided that we wanted to create a community of like-minded people.
4:10 Speaker 00 So what is it like to make the switch? Can governments make the switch for us? And at the end of the day, is it worth it?
4:21 Speaker 00 If you drive about 45 minutes south from central Paris, past the fringes of the city, you'll find a 12th-century village nestled on the banks of the Seine River.
4:33 Speaker 06 Je m'appelle Vincent, c'est mon prénom, Paul Petit. So my name is Vincent, that's my first name, Paul Petit, and that's my last name. And I am the mayor of the commune, of a commune in France, a commune of 2,000 inhabitants in Saint-Paul. Saint-Paul?
4:52 Speaker 00 If you're picturing the village from the movie Chocolat, you're not far off. And if you're not picturing it, maybe this canonically French production music will get you there. Saint-Paul is full of old stone buildings and churches. There's a horse-riding school, a meditation centre, a fishing club, and a crepeery.
5:10 Speaker 06 Une petite ville. It's a life of... it's a village life. I see my job as mayor as managing the city, of course, but also taking new initiatives to transform social life, to improve social life, so that there develops a solidarity.
5:28 Speaker 00 But no matter how picturesque the location, there's no escaping smartphones. And Vincent Paul Petit is not a fan.
5:37 Speaker 06 In front of schools, it's terrible. Parents don't talk to each other anymore. They're all glued to their screens. There are some who walk down the street to watch their favourite series. And then in gathering places, it's still sad to see that natural, spontaneous exchange no longer exists or is damaged at the very least.
5:56 Speaker 00 So a few years ago, he came up with a somewhat radical proposal.
6:00 Speaker 06 I announced it in June 2023 at the school fair. Since I still saw many, many children staring at their smartphones in the street or everywhere, I announced that we were going to ban screens, the use of smartphones in public spaces in the town. It was a form of provocation to help everyone wake up to this social issue, which is a huge issue, a huge social difficulty.
6:23 Speaker 00 It was decided the town should vote on it. And at the beginning of 2024, after some debate, Saint-Paul's smartphone ban was passed, with 54% of people voting in favour. That meant no scrolling outside the school gates, in parks, on footpaths, and certainly not in the crepeery.
6:43 Speaker 04 The shopkeepers are very happy with the progress we've felt in the town. They've all put a sticker inside their stores, a big sticker saying “screen-free spaces, smartphone-free spaces”. So, the impact has been quite clear. They appreciate being able to interact with their customers. People laugh at the mayor who arrives and says “hide your phone, the mayor is coming”. That's the side of it... well, it's really rather amusing.
7:09 Speaker 00 There's one problem though. It turns out the ban wasn't strictly legal.
7:14 Speaker 04 Well, officially it's not completely official or that because, well, from a legal point of view, it's quite weak because the mayor doesn't have the power to prohibit the use of a telephone, a smartphone in the street in your town. I know that.
7:30 Speaker 00 So the ban was wound back slightly. It's now referred to as a guideline or a charter. Because 54% might be a majority, but it's only a slim one.
7:41 Speaker 04 There are people who also didn't agree with this measure. You know, I've heard that I'm against freedoms. So it's a criticism, which I understand, but which is obviously paradoxical. Yes, banning the use of a device in public spaces or for young people is reducing their freedom. You could say that. We can also say that spending eight or 10 hours a day behind a screen is against freedoms.
8:05 Speaker 00 Despite the fact that his ban turned out to be less of a ban-ban and more of a ban-vibe, he is convinced it's made a real difference.
8:12 Speaker 04 What matters is that people have adopted this charter and they themselves believe that we need to stop. Objectively, people talk to each other more. In front of schools, at the school gates, I don't see smartphones anymore. You know, I'm from a community of 2,000 inhabitants who wanted to live better together. I've had, I think, roughly 350 to 400 interviews around the world. Half in France, half in the rest of the world. So we're touching on something that's absolutely central to our lives.
8:46 Speaker 00 Vincent Paul Petit isn't the first political leader who's tried prying people away from their screens using the legal instruments of government. The bigger question is whether laws and statutes are the best way to go about it. And Australia is about to find out.
9:03 Speaker 03 On today's programme, the Parliament passes legislation banning under 16s from using social media.
9:09 Speaker 00 From December this year, Australians younger than 16 will, at least in theory, be banned from most of the world's major social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Social media is doing harm to our kids, and I'm calling time on it. And I want Australian parents and families to know that the government has your back. The ban passed Parliament late last year on a wave of public enthusiasm. But the policy has always had its skeptics.
9:39 Speaker 05 It had bipartisan support, and certainly the percentage of parents and other adults were saying, we want this legislation, mainly because Australians are struggling with inappropriate content online. My worry is that most Australians likely did not read the fine print or understand exactly what the limitations of the legislation were when we were having those discussions.
10:01 Speaker 00 Lisa Given is a professor of information sciences at RMIT University and one of many experts who oppose the policy.
10:08 Speaker 05 We certainly at the time saw about 140 experts sign an open letter saying that the social media ban was not the solution. Many people are expecting that this will keep kids safe. At the end of the day, the only way to do that is really to address inappropriate content at source. This legislation does not deal with the content. It does not hold tech companies to account in that way.
10:32 Speaker 00 She, like a lot of experts, has a long list of doubts about this policy. They're worried about whether the right tech to pull this off even exists yet, what asking 20 something million Australians to prove their age could mean for their privacy, and how well it'll actually work.
10:47 Speaker 05 There are flaws on either side, and so we are going to see kind of a messy situation emerging immediately where people will have what they call false positives, false negatives. And if we now introduce another layer of inappropriate guessing of people's ages and potentially locking out older teens when they should have access, as well as the introduction of workarounds, VPNs, and even just getting access through older siblings or friends or other ways that people have often found their way into material that was not age appropriate. At the end of the day, it's not going to achieve what the government had hoped it would achieve.
11:32 Speaker 00 Even if the ban works perfectly, it's built on a largely unproven assumption. Because there is ongoing debate in the scientific community about how much harm smartphones and social media are actually responsible for. There's plenty of evidence linking excessive phone use to worse outcomes, to do with attention, mood disorders, social isolation, just to name a few. But the proof that it's actually causing those problems is harder to come by. Still, on some level, people do seem to want to get away from their tech.
12:02 Speaker 04 To be able to log off and live without any other simulation is almost a privilege, I suppose. Maybe like go on a camping trip or something like that, but apart from that, I don't think you could probably do it forever. It's almost like you don't have the option to delete the app, which is a bit annoying, actually, because I would like to just delete it because I don't really find any value in it.
12:26 Speaker 00 In fact, a recent survey in the UK found almost half of the 16 to 21-year-olds they asked would rather live their lives without the internet, full stop. Australia's ban is really just the government's effort to address that public mood. But policy takes years, and even then, there's no guarantee it'll actually work. So in the meantime, people have started looking for their own solutions.
12:54 Speaker 00 As soon as my eldest child was born around eight years ago, I was worried about screens. Steph Challis is a high school teacher in Aduka in regional Victoria, and a parent to two primary school-aged kids. I was really conscious to not have my screen out, have my phone out around my children. And it was this gut feel that it wasn't the right thing to do, but I could never quite put that into words, or I didn't have any evidence to back that feeling up. Then she read The Anxious Generation. It's a hugely popular book from last year, written by a social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. I all of a sudden had the evidence in front of me about why screens, and particularly smartphones and social media, were not appropriate for kids. And that's really...
13:38 Speaker 00 What galvanized me to try and do something about it. It's worth noting that along with a tonne of praise, Haight's book has copped a fair bit of criticism too, mostly for skipping over that ambiguity in the science so far about whether phone use is actually causing all the problems he's worried about. But it spoke to Steph so powerfully that she decided to take action. I created a survey, just asking a few short questions about how worried people were about what they thought they would do with smartphones and social media in terms of their children. And I just sent it ironically through social media platforms to all the parents that I knew around my district. The 60 or so parents who responded to Steph's survey seemed just as worried as she was.
14:23 Speaker 00 And that gave me some confidence to move forward. So we called ourselves the Phone Pledge. The Phone Pledge is parents agreeing to delay the moment they give their kids a smartphone. We would encourage parents to wait until 16 at least. Personally, I'm not giving my children a smartphone ever. They can get one themselves when they're adults. That's not saying we won't give them a Nokia or another sort of retro phone that they can call and text on. I have no qualms about that at all. There's no set age they have in mind. The point is really just to put it off. Delaying as long as possible is what we're advocating for. If we reach parents that were probably going to give their children a smartphone and a TikTok account in grade five
15:07 Speaker 00 and they decide to wait until year seven and year eight, that's still progress and that's still something to be celebrated. And while reading Jonathan Haight's book might have galvanized her into action, Steph's feelings on the matter first formed in the classroom. I work at a K to 12 school, so our grade five teachers and our grade six teachers are reporting that that's really when the issues are starting to play out. Students are just tired all the time and they openly admit that a lot of that is because of their electronic devices. Even if children are not intending to stay up quite so late, they're finding that they're staying up later than they intend to
15:50 Speaker 00 due to the fact that they're just losing track of time on their phones, which we all do. We know how easy that is to do.
16:04 Speaker 00 So it's really important to take a community approach to this issue. It could be a community of friends, it could be your school community. But it is a collective action problem and it's not something that a parent can do on their own. The other message that we're trying to put out there is that, I mean, me saying that I'm not giving my kids a smartphone until 18, it does sound alarming to a lot of people now because it's seen as a social norm. But we're just trying to get the message across that giving your child a smartphone is not an inevitability. No one says we have to do this and we've only been doing it for 10 or 15 years.
16:47 Speaker 00 The data is showing us that this is not working. And so we really want to drive that message home, that it's not something you have to do. Similar movements have emerged around the world and some are massive. In the US, an organisation called Wait Until 8th asks parents to hold off on buying their kids a smartphone until 8th grade at least. Then there's Unplugged Canada and a group called Take The Pledge in the UK. But in the same way governments struggle to make bans work, there's only so much parents can do if their kids are still determined to go online.
17:28 Speaker 05 I think that experience of being young and knowing what it's like to have someone telling you how bad screens are and trying to take away your screens, that experience really informed the mission of the Luddite Club.
17:45 Speaker 00 This is Jameson Butler. She's one of the co-founders of the Luddite Club, a group of young New Yorkers rejecting smartphones and social media.
17:53 Speaker 05 Nobody's taking away your phone, you're giving up your phone. And I think that perspective switch is so, so important, especially for young people and if you want to get young people to do anything.
18:06 Speaker 00 Jamison's 18 now, but she was Ten when she got her first smartphone.
18:10 Speaker 05 Around 12 is when I started becoming really engrossed in my phone. And it started to take up a much larger chunk of my life. Despite all the times my parents tried to warn me and try to limit my screen time. It wasn't until I reached the conclusion that my phone had been harming me and my wellbeing, that I really decided to do something about it.
18:40 Speaker 00 The turning point was Covid, when her screen time reached eight hours a day.
18:47 Speaker 05 You know, something clicked and I was like, oh my god, I am wasting my life. You know, I'm kind of just sitting in my bed wasting away. You know, I'm 14 years old and the world is so big. And I've decided to just spend my whole day on the phone. I need to do something about this.
19:04 Speaker 00 Jamison got off social media and bought a flip phone, which is in theory at least, one of the more isolating things you can do as a teenager in the 2020s. But a couple of months later, she met someone else her age who had done the same thing.
19:17 Speaker 05 One day I was at a show of a local band in the park, the local park. And I met this girl named Logan, who was two years older than me. And at that point, she had no phone at all. And I just remember being totally amazed and also incredibly inspired. This was the first time I had ever heard, let alone met someone, another young person, who was interested in this idea of unplugging. So there was an instant connection that she felt too. I don't think she had met any other like-minded young people.
19:59 Speaker 05 So we decided that we wanted to create a community that was dedicated to being offline, living in the moment and helping other people unplug from the digital world.
20:15 Speaker 00 They had the idea, but they still needed a name.
20:18 Speaker 05 I think it might have been Logan's mom pitched the idea of Luddite. And I remember having no idea what that word meant in ninth grade and looking it up in the dictionary. And it is basically a derogatory term for somebody who is skeptical of technology and rejects technology. And I was like, oh, my God, this is perfect.
20:43 Speaker 00 Then they started holding meetings.
20:45 Speaker 05 We asked that everybody put their devices away for the duration of club because we've noticed that there's immediately meaningful conversations spawning, there's meaningful connections, there's the use of, you know, imagination, creativity, all these things that are just inherently human totally come back and reanimate people when you take away their phones.
21:13 Speaker 00 Not owning a smartphone is the stuff of fantasies for lots of people, but every time I've felt the urge to lob mine into the ocean, it's not a love of technology that holds me back, it's the necessity of it. So what happens when you do?
21:27 Speaker 05 Having a flip phone in 2025 definitely does make my life harder in some aspects, especially as we now see QR codes everywhere, links to websites everywhere, all my, a lot of my schoolwork is online. But I don't know if it's necessarily bad to put a little bit more effort in. For example, a lot of people are always like, oh, my God, but GPS, how are you navigating around, you know, such a huge metropolitan city without a GPS? But the truth is, is people have been navigating New York City without a GPS for so many years.
22:10 Speaker 05 I know it sounds stupid, but it's really empowering to know how to get places and take myself there and super consciously navigate these situations rather than just having some device tell me exactly where to go.
22:26 Speaker 00 The LUDArt Club has grown beyond New York. There are chapters forming in Florida. And Philadelphia, but she's had blowback too.
22:33 Speaker 05 We definitely, like anything that, you know, gets publicity, have had some negative responses. I think one that was more, more popular was that the lead eye club is classist, classist or pretentious.
22:55 Speaker 00 And while calling it classist might sound far fetched, it's basically the idea that if the world is now, for better or worse, optimised for smartphone users, not having one can make life harder in a lot of ways, some of which Jamison mentioned, but there are more. Access to healthcare, transport, even doing your job. Like she says, most, if not all of those barriers can be overcome. But if you're on minimum wage and just generally up against it, you may not have the time or energy for those battles.
23:29 Speaker 00 Jamison has been smartphone free for about four years now. And plenty of people doubted she would make it this far, including her parents.
23:37 Speaker 05 Just because they knew me when I was so chronically online. I think it was really surprising for them to see me throw all of that away and completely veer in this new direction. I don't think they thought it was going to last. But I think as it did, they're definitely happy with it. Honestly, since I've gotten rid of my, my smartphone, I definitely spend more quality time with my family. I do my schoolwork faster, I have better grades. I'm more on top of everything. I've become a lot less scatterbrained. And I've just become a lot more driven and ambitious. And yeah, I think my parents are really proud of me.
24:23 Speaker 05 I mean, I know they are. But I, I will say though, sometimes my parents. Are a little worried for my safety, especially because there's this new phenomenon of parents tracking their kids. And they can't track me now. They get worried and I kind of have to tell them, you know, were you tracked when you were younger? Were your parents tracked when they were younger? Were your parents' parents like? You know, there have been so many generations of kids. I, I don't know if it's completely necessary. I think it's just, if anything, it's making parents more anxious.
25:08 Speaker 05 I know I've inspired them. Um, I know my mom, she put her phone into black and white mode. So, you know, there's no more extra stimulating color. And because it's in black and white, she finds that she's a lot less compelled to go on it. You know, I've inspired them both, I think, to read a little bit more. And sometimes we'll, we'll all just get together and read. So, yeah, I think it's been really, it's been really nice. And it's also kind of funny that now I'm the one who's like at family dinner, Mom, get off of Facebook. Because it used to be, Janison, get off of Instagram.
25:54 Speaker 00 Screen addiction is not an official diagnosis at this stage, but something useful that anyone who's fought addiction will tell you is that you have to want to quit. Government bans and pledges from parents are one thing, but back in Ochukwu, Steph Chalice says not all the kids are convinced just yet. I guess there's a variety of responses depending on their age. My children are quite young. They're five and eight. And so I don't have any pushback from them yet because they're not interested in these devices yet. I think it's really key that we, we start this conversation with our kids as early as possible. Because by the time they get to the point where they want smartphones and social media, then, I mean, they'll, we'll have more pushback. I'm sure they'll still be annoyed at us at some points.
26:38 Speaker 00 But this message will be so embedded in them that I'm hoping that they've sort of resigned themselves to the fact that this is how it's going to be. As a preview of what she might be in for there, the year sevens and eights she teaches don't really. I talk to them a little bit about the social media minimum age bill. And they think it's stupid. They love TikTok. They love Snapchat. It's their life. But older students see it differently. When I talk to year 11 and 12s, they have a completely different point of view. They've matured a little. They can look back. They can see how these devices affected them throughout their adolescence. And the vast majority of them, even the ones who I know are addicted to their devices, have said to me that they think it's a really good
27:23 Speaker 00 thing that we're doing, and that they don't think younger kids should be on social media.
27:27 Speaker 05 You know, being told by so many adults in your life, in your parents, this is bad for you, this is bad for you, this is bad for you. And obviously, you know, not listening, I think, and finding out for yourself, that experience is so universal. Our goal is to empower young people and give them the tools they need to help themselves. Because time and time again, we see that kids are really not going to always listen to their parents and want to listen to adults. And it's really, it's not the most constructive
28:10 Speaker 05 way of creating change.
28:15 Speaker 01 That was our last episode in the Brain Rot series. The show's producer is Fiona Pepper, the senior producer is James Bullen, and the sound engineer is Ross Richardson. The series originally aired on our sister show, Science Friction. From ABC Radio National, I'm Sana Qadar. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week for all new episodes of All in the Mind. I'm so excited for what we have coming up. I hope you are too. Catch you then.
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