What about them?
As the year has started. Iāve had made evaluations on the idea of a dumb phone myself because I am ultimately finding the idea of doomscrolling and infinite feeds cringe but decided against it because Iām not willing to compromise on security. iMessage, Signal and RCS when done ideally are all encrypted and thats non-negotiable falling back to only SMS means I just wouldnāt respond to anyone because of both security and usability. Same thing with 2FA I already hate that many banks basically only take SMS 2FA Im not about to revert back to that for everything. Apple Pay is such a god send as Iām prone to losing stuff all the time and losing your physical wallet can be dangerous and none of the utilitarian stuff of a smartphone is inheritly bad and you are likely are not going to doom scroll those. However we understand we hate the social media ruining community with sensationalism alongside stripping of nuance, the infinite nature of the web browser by default, constant screaming of our attention with unnecessary notifications and now AI slowly creeping in every corner of our life without our consent is the problematic part of our tech.
Basically what I got from Techloreās video is your dependency to your phone is because of capitalism. When society chooses profits over people obviously wellbeing suffers and people are trying to reclaim a piece of that.
People wouldnāt need Uber as much if their city was walkable and had good public transit. Lonely people wouldnāt feel as much of a need to hop online looking for surface level intellectually dishonest levels of ego glazing clout if they felt like they had a community that supported their lifestyle choices. (I could go on but I think you get the point)
While I do understand the sentiment behind this movement I am always skeptical of the type of marketing that is the universal solution such as what weāre seeing with minimal phones and dumbphones. Depending on how addicted you are you may just cling to another device instead. Obviously harm reduction is important for any addiction but radical changes donāt tend to stick long term. Small habits that add up over time do. This is why I will always encourage enterprise level controls for educated consumers. A supervised iPhone with Apple Configurator restrictions that cant just be disabled on the device on the fly is much better approach in my experience
Luddism is back on the menu.
Going off this, Iāve long argued in my circles (tech-tired twenty yos) that a dumbphone is not a solution for most people. I think itās romantasized because it reminds us of āsimpler timesā or more offline times.
Things like TOTP, photos, personal and item location sharing, maps, voice recorder, camera, notes, shared calendarsā¦. Thereās a lot of good that comes with a smartphone.
But thereās also powerful organizations with billions of dollars and the latest understanding of human osychology at work to hijack our attention, and I think spreading awareness of this is more important than dumbphone conversion. Smartphones are a tool, and a far better tool than dumbphones. It just takes more awareness and intentionality to not let the phone use us than any comparable temptation with a hammer, car, or calculator.
Spiel over, sorry haha. Iāve thought about jumping on the dumbphone train the past year or so, but thereās so many little inconveniences that it would take. So Iāve focused on the rest of my lifeāreading and exercising more, quality time with friends, focused tv time (aka no tv and phones)āand my relationship with my phone naturally got better as the rest of my life got more interesting. As few apps as possible, grayscale homescreen, and a screen time widget have helped 
Anywaysā¦