Why I Switched from a Smartphone to The Light Phone
When we told people we were ditching our smartphones, the assumption was that we were about to throw all our devices—TVs, laptops, everything—off a cliff. But that wasn’t the case. We simply realized that we no longer needed a smartphone to stay connected to the world. Removing it from our lives was part of a broader effort to practice digital minimalism, a topic I'll address in a different post. Let me tell you, when the distraction isn’t sitting in your pocket, it’s a lot easier to start removing more of your digital life than you’d think. For more details on the Light Phone, you can visit their site, but essentially, it’s a phone stripped back to what it originally was—a simple device for calls and texts.
Why We Decided to Switch
Throwing out the smartphone wasn’t an impulsive decision; it had been simmering in my mind for more than a few days or even months. Over the years, I’d already begun distancing myself from major social platforms. I left Facebook in 2017, then Snapchat in 2018, and finally Instagram and LinkedIn in 2023. This was the first time in over a decade that I found myself without any social media platforms. For the record, I never had TikTok, and after tweeting once in 2014, I quickly realized it wasn’t for me. But as I let go of each platform, I felt a sense of ease and calm that I didn’t even realize I was missing.
Yet, even without social media, the phone itself remained a problem. The supercomputer in my pocket was like an extra limb weighing me down daily. With endless internet access, incessant notifications from apps I’d forgotten I downloaded, and the constant urge to check emails, texts, or even the time, I was still tethered to the device. Something had to change, and that’s when the decision to say goodbye to the smartphone truly began.
Dumbing Down Our Smartphones
The first step we took was to make our phones less appealing. My wife joined me on this journey, and together we changed our phone settings to display only in black and white. This alone made a huge difference; apps and notifications no longer grabbed our attention, which completely changed our relationship with our phones. You’d be surprised how much control color has over your daily decision-making on every webpage or app you interact with. As someone who works in marketing and design, I’m aware of how these colors are engineered to capture attention—something I’m ironically now trying to escape from.
Once we’d adjusted to our monochrome screens, we started deleting unnecessary apps, knowing the Light Phone wouldn’t have any of them. This “dumbing down” process made us realize that most things we relied on our phones for were just as accessible on our laptops—emails, flights, reservations, movie tickets, and so on. It was eye-opening to see how dependent we’d become on our phones, despite knowing that they could fail at any moment.
After we’d stripped our smartphones of their apps and colors, the final step was transferring important data to hard drives or cloud storage. Once our photos and contacts were saved elsewhere, it was time to make the switch. Our Light Phones arrived, and honestly, we haven’t looked back since. But before I wrap this up, I want to share a few more reasons why this switch was so important to us.
Setting an Example
Growing up in the digital era has its benefits, and I’m not ungrateful for the technological advances we’ve made. But we have to realize that these advancements have taken something fundamental from us: our attention. It’s not just our time that’s valuable; it’s our true, undivided attention. How often do we look down at our phones to avoid a conversation or a stranger’s smile? It’s all too common, and if you say you haven’t done it, you’re lying—I’m still breaking the habit myself. My wife and I decided to spend device-free time together because we want to set an example that it’s possible. It’s disheartening to see couples on dates staring at their phones instead of talking to each other.
More importantly, we want to set this example for our future children. We don’t want them to grow up thinking they need to be glued to a screen to get by. While we don’t have kids yet, we know that the last thing we want them to see is Mom and Dad ignoring each other because of something as trivial as a smartphone. Life happens fast, and we don’t want to miss it.
Your Phone Isn’t That Private
As privacy laws continue to evolve, my wife and I chose to move our lives off smartphones and onto hard drives. Let’s be real: no one reads those fine print terms and agreements, so we don’t know what we’ve freely given to tech giants. I bet you don’t either. We didn’t want to risk that anymore, so the Light Phone was a wise choice for us. It doesn’t store all our photos and videos or track our location. These are big things we’ve given up so freely without even considering the consequences. For now, we’ve chosen to relinquish that part of our digital lives by getting rid of the smartphone and switching to the Light Phone.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our reasons for switching to the Light Phone. We’re not living in the Stone Age—we can still text and call, which is what the phone should have stayed at, in my opinion. Low-key, let’s go back to the year 2000. I understand this is a personal choice, but it’s one I felt coming for years due to the overwhelming pressure to stay connected. In reality, I was just feeling less connected and more pressured to be something and be on something I didn’t want to be in the first place. These are just a few thoughts, but I’m happy to share more as they come up, especially in conversations around digital minimalism. Reclaiming our attention for what truly matters is worth far more than any notification on your phone.
