What The Hell America!

It’s hard to imagine going a day without the reassuring weight of a phone in our pockets. A Harvard Business Review study on phone addiction found we’re interrupted by our phones about every 13 minutes of our time awake.

Research has found that even a short break from smartphones can significantly boost your mood. As more people hope to take back control of their time and attention, digital detox clubs – groups of people meeting up without phones to reconnect with nature, practice hobbies or just talk – are meeting across the world, from New York City to Seoul.

Some people are choosing to go still further and give up smartphones altogether. They’re downgrading to ‘dumbphones’ – although there’s some debate on what makes a phone a ‘dumbphone’. Some offer only basic calling and texting, while others still have internet access and a few pre-installed apps, such as Google Maps.

Still, the basic principle that most people in the dumbphone community agree on is that owning a smartphone should be a conscious choice rather than a necessity.

August Lamm, a writer, artist and former art influencer, is helping spread the message. She hasn’t owned a smartphone since 2022, and has written an illustrated guide for others who may be considering dropping theirs off a cliff.

Her own journey began shortly after graduating from college, when she started posting pictures of her art online. Her Instagram grew to hundreds of thousands of followers and Lamm found herself an accidental influencer.

“Everything that I shared online – about my love life or or my vacations or my house – all these pictures and captions were feeding into my business so they would result in sales,” Lamm said. Ultimately, she said, the pressure to keep that up became too much, and she reached a breaking point.

The switch to a dumbphone wasn’t instantaneous

Lamm says if you asked her how to get rid of your smartphone today, she would suggest taking it to their nearest Best Buy and trading it for a dumbphone. But that’s not how it went for her.

At first, Lamm put her phone in a drawer and didn’t look at it for a month, which she said “was very inconvenient to everyone in my life.” Then she went back and forth between a dumbphone and a smartphone. It took her about a year to sell her smartphone and fully commit to the dumbphone lifestyle.

Lamm says she had to figure out what her actual necessities were: “I had lapses where I would feel like I really needed to use it for this one day, because I needed to listen to this audiobook on the train, or I needed the directions, and I would get sucked right back into it.”

“There are a lot of things that people feel like they really wouldn’t know what to do,” she said. “And then once you’re deprived of that option, you figure it out.”

Lamm’s journalism kit includes a dictaphone she uses to conduct interviews and record music demos, her dumbphone, and a notebook that she says she would be lost without.

August Lamm

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August Lamm

When in doubt, just ask

Still, there are certain things that may feel impossible to navigate without a smartphone – sign-ins that require two-factor authentication, parking meters, laundry and more.

“You figure out these solutions by asking,” Lamm said. “You ask the parking company if they can give you another option, and a lot of the time they will. I personally believe that ethically and legally they have to, but that’s hotly contested right now.”

Sometimes, Lamm says, the need to ask for help can be a good excuse to get a conversation started.

“I draw my little maps on paper, and sometimes I can’t read my own handwriting and stop to ask people,” she said. “It’s so sad that we’ve lost these serendipitous interactions, which I have all the time now.”

“It felt like I was in solitary confinement in my own mind”

Lamm found workarounds for the initial logistical challenges, like not having access to a GPS or two-factor authentication, but says that wasn’t ultimately the biggest barrier. The real struggle was getting reacquainted with being bored.

“At that point my thoughts were not very stimulating because I wasn’t used to having them. A lot of people go their whole day without ever having a moment to just think, whether you’re listening to music or podcasts or audiobooks, hanging out with friends, or watching TV. So then when you actually give yourself space to think, you’re not used to it, and your thoughts are pretty quiet and dull. Or alternatively they’re frightening, because you haven’t thought them for so long you haven’t dealt with any of your emotions.”

Being in her own mind took practice and patience, but now Lamm says, “I’ll happily walk around for hours without headphones and just think.”

But what about the group chats?

Lamm lives in New York, but spent the past five years in London. She argues that keeping in touch with friends and family is not impossible to do without internet access – a dumbphone still lets you make calls and text, and she’ll wait until she has Wi-Fi to send emails to keep in touch with friends overseas.

Lamm says not having a smartphone actually has made her relationships stronger.

“When I’m actually spending time with these people in person, I’m fully present and I’m not distracted,” she said. “I’m not waiting for the interaction to end so I can check my email again. If I were to be in constant contact with them, it would just make it so I was never really there or elsewhere. I would always be in this in-between space.”

Lamm on her way to an exhibition of her paintings in Brooklyn, June 2024.

Magdalene Kennedy

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Magdalene Kennedy

Being an artist in the age of social media

When it comes to her career, Lamm says there are opportunities that she’s lost out on since giving up her smartphone and by extension, becoming less active on social media.

“Sometimes a friend will say that a celebrity follows me, and I’ll check and see that sure enough, I’ve got a fan in Hollywood, or at a major magazine or wherever,” she said. “Had I continued to post, these people might have eventually reached out to me, whether to buy a piece or suggest a collaboration. But because I don’t post anymore, they will undoubtedly forget about me and direct those opportunities toward others.”

Still, Lamm says she earns more money now than she ever did as an influencer.

“That’s because I used to spend hours and hours crafting posts, on top of the actual work,” she said. “Now I only do the work. I don’t spend time packaging it, or posting about my life to stay relevant.”

Today, Lamm doesn’t earn any money off of her social media presence. Her income comes from articles, illustrations and book advances. But that transition wasn’t easy.

“I was often tempted to go back to selling on social media because it was so much more immediate than these other avenues,” she said. “I could earn money within hours, and sometimes, when I was extremely broke, I did exactly that – advertising prints or commissions via Instagram stories.”

Lamm continues to have over 150,000 followers on Instagram, and one can argue it’s that very audience that has allowed her to diversify her sources of income to now be less reliant on social media. But she says, it’s still possible to make a name for yourself and your art the old-school way.

“When I stopped posting I sought out income sources that predated social media: agencies, magazines, galleries, publishers,” she said. “This meant building up a new network and reputation in worlds previously unknown to me.”

“If I hadn’t spent thousands of hours trying to build a following, I could have spent that time going to galleries, taking classes, meeting people, forging connections, organizing events, submitting to exhibitions and otherwise making a name for myself in the real world. I could have improved more quickly, had I not prioritized online visibility over creative development.”

Her advice to artists just starting out: “Don’t even bother with social media. Be creative. Go outside. Meet people. Get involved.”

Next, Lamm wants to give up her laptop. She acknowledges that this is an extreme step and not an option for most people, but it’s a challenge she embraces.

“If I go all the way and prove that you can lead a rich and social life where you’re making money and you’re staying a part of the world without even a computer in my own house, I think that could be inspiring to people,” she said.