She tried living without a smartphone: “There was a bit of a feeling of panic”

Generation Z and Millenials are turning their backs on digital development in a trend known as the “dumbphone”. You could say the opposite of a smartphone, simply an unconnected phone.

There was a bit of a feeling of panic, says Ellen Ekstav, who has tried living without a smartphone.

They are called “dumbphones” or dumtelefons in Swedish but are short and gone a normal phone as it was designed before smartphones came on the market. With limited functions, hard buttons, and no apps. And interest in them is growing stronger and stronger. One of those who snuck in is the 22-year-old student Ellen Ekstav.

I’ve been thinking about it since high school. Then I wrote my candidate this spring and felt that the phone took too much attention. It was always in my head, says Ellen Ekstav.

Counter movement

In Sweden, the average screen time is between three and four hours a day, and on average we take the phone out of our pocket every ten minutes. How screen time affects us and its negative effects are more or less well established, but what seems to be trending now can be described as a counter-movement and for Ellen Ekstav, who got hooked, it wasn’t entirely easy at the beginning.

I couldn’t turn off the fact that I had the phone. It wasn’t always that I brought it up but just the fact that it was in my head. That it was over there in the kitchen. It stole my attention, she says.

Ellen had between three and four hours of screen time a day when she came up with the only reasonable solution to the problem, to dump the phone. She got a dumb phone last spring and the period of prevention could begin.

I changed the SIM card immediately so the other iPhone was out of order. But I found myself picking it up all the time and watching anyway. It wasn’t that I voluntarily thought that now I’m picking up my phone, it just happened. There was a bit of a feeling of panic, but then it went away, says Ellen Ekstav.

Changed back

After two weeks without a smartphone it went away and Ellen instead got a lot of extra time she needed to fill as she had previously been scrolling on the phone. She started crocheting, learned to change strings on her guitar and then play it. But now after the summer she has a smartphone again.

I started school again and it’s quite nice to be able to quickly check if a lesson has been moved forward or cancelled. Then the social, you have many chat groups and groups of friends that you want to be in contact with. But I have become better at handling it and simply more disciplined, says Ellen Ekstav.