The Rise of the Anti-Smartphone Movement

The anti-smartphone movement aims to make smartphones uncool, similar to how smoking lost its appeal.

### The Rise of the Anti-Smartphone Movement: A Cultural Shift Towards Minimalism
* 📱 The perception of smartphones has shifted from being "**amazingly cool**" to a source of "**guilt and dissatisfaction**" for many users.
* 🌀 The increase in sales of dumb phones and the resurgence of older technology, like digital cameras, indicate a **growing anti-smartphone movement**.
* 📊 Research shows a direct correlation between the rise of smartphones and **increased anxiety levels among teenagers**, particularly around 2012, highlighting a **significant cultural shift**.
* 🔄 The addictive nature of media, driven by the **optimization loop used by tech companies**, has contributed to the **negative feelings associated with smartphone usage**.
* 💔 Chamas Pipia, a former Facebook employee, acknowledges the **guilt associated with creating products that keep users engaged**, reflecting a broader awareness of this issue.
* 🚀 In 2020, global dumb phone sales reached **1 billion units**, while smartphone sales declined, suggesting a **desire for less screen time** and a **return to simpler devices**.
* 🌍 The movement is gaining traction, with celebrities distancing themselves from social media and a cultural shift towards **making smartphones uncool**, reminiscent of the **decline in smoking's popularity**.
* 📅 This cultural change may lead to new tech innovations that prioritize **digital minimalism and reduce addiction**, as society seeks to **reclaim time lost to excessive smartphone use**.

[Music] How did our smartphones go from something amazingly cool to something that everyone hates? The feeling that I get sometimes when I use my phone excessively, and the only way I can describe this feeling is a feeling of guilt. This is what my minimalistic phone setup looks like. This is the dumb phone. Dumb phone sales are up. My parents' 2006 digital camera is now peak coolness. The anti-smartphone movement is just getting started, and this movement is going to change technology probably even more than AI, because it all starts from one simple idea. What will happen when using a smartphone becomes uncool, just like smoking? And we're going to see exactly what happens. But as I started to dive deeper into this, I realized that this whole movement is based on an entirely wrong idea, because smartphones aren't really the problem. Social media also isn't really the problem. This thing is the problem. But to understand it, we have to start here. That's me in 1998, and I know my outfit was fire. And together

with hundreds of millions of people, I was getting my first taste of the internet. I grew up downloading music from email, chatting with friends on MSN. I bought Minecraft Alpha in 2009. I signed up to Facebook 'cause believe it or not, it was the cool thing to do at the time. Technology was cool, being on social media was cool, and when smartphones arrived, they were even cooler. My first smartphone was an HTC Sensation. Look at that sweet animation, it's so nice. But in 2012, something happened. These are the charts that show anxiety levels and feelings of not having meaning in life in teenagers, and it's clear something went wrong. And guess what was skyrocketing to the mainstream in 2012? Yeah, timelines match perfectly. I spend 3 hours a day on my phone, I feel addicted. That's it, smartphones are evil. Except they're not, because something else was discovered in 2012, something much more hidden but also much more d-dous. Think about it, when you feel bad for wasting hours on your phone, what are you doing?

probably scrolling TikTok, which is media, or Instagram, which is social media, or playing the latest dark pattern playing to win game like Monopoly Go, which in the end is media. This guy's a game because all you're doing in this game is pressing one button, so probably vacuum cleaner simulator is a better game than this. But still, and surely you don't hate your smartphone when it's guiding you through a new city with Google Maps, or when it's taking pictures of good memories with your friends, or when you're drunk and you need to call an Uber. We're addicted to media. Smartphones just serve it best right now. But the invasive and addictive media of today has one key difference with TV or Myspace or even the Facebook I was using in 2010, and it's this: the loop. This loop is how tech products are built, basically all software products are built with this, from Big Tech to TikTok to a two-person startup in a moldy basement, and this is the key. So get ready for a crash course.

on how digital products are actually built in 40 seconds. So, you have your app, you have designers and engineers, but what should your team work on? We could build a dark mode, improve the algorithm, add a new AI chatbot. We have an endless list of ideas, but how do you decide what to build? What we need is called a North Star, an objective that's measurable, a number. If we are, say, Google Maps, we can put here the number of kilometers traveled on maps, and this is what we want to grow. So, we take our ideas and we start building the ones that we think will increase this number the most. So, for example, let's build a new dark mode so you don't get blinded by your phone when you're driving at night. Then we can immediately test it with millions of people around the world and see whether it actually improves the North Star. If it does, we release it to everyone and on to the next one. Now, this is a big simplification, but this is how tech works. This is what I do in my job as a

product manager and around 2012 social media and media companies in general, including Netflix, YouTube, Spotify. Well, they have realized that here the best metric they can put was time and engagement. They discovered that if they optimize for time, they can basically print money with ads or subscriptions. They found a direct correlation between increasing time and increasing the revenue, and so the rise for optimizing for your time was on, and all the other apps followed suit. Now, this Loop is not inherently evil; it's just a really, really, really effective way to build Tech products, and all it does is build things that optimize for the Northstar. But with the Northstar trying to take over all of your users' time, well, that's where this whole mess starts. This is Chamas Pipia. He worked directly with Markus Zuckerberg at Facebook during those years, and he basically pioneered this time-sucking Loop. And this is what he has to say about it. I feel tremendous guilt. I think in the back deep, deep recesses of our minds, we kind of

knew something bad could happen, and I probably shouldn't mention it, but even this very video is optimized for keeping you here. I'm using music, text, and images, and hopefully an interesting story, so that you will watch it until the end. Why? Well, not because I like it, but because YouTube is also playing this time game, and if I want to tell this story, I need to create something that people want to watch until the end. So, in reality, the best way to support your favorite Creator is not actually liking their video or subscribing to their channel; it's actually to watch the video until the end. But after 15 years of this Loop, building products that take more and more of your time, people are starting to have enough, especially younger people that have been exposed much more to the effects of this, are saying, You know what? This is too much. I want my time back. And even though it is not a real problem, there's only one thing that people could do: declare war on the smartphone. Dum phone sales are up, flip phones are cool again, and no, I'm

not talking about these flip phones. I'm talking about these flip phones. In 2020, global dumb phone sales reached 1 billion units and were growing, while smartphone sales were 1.4 billion units but down 12% from the year before. Interest for the keyword dumb phone has only been growing on Google. There's a new market. Market for less. Lone is a company that makes premium minimalist smartphones with e-ink displays, and they've been growing year after year. While tech companies were racing for more megapixels, more cameras on the back, more AI, more revolutionary features like a new button, people were starting to crave for less. And it's not just the devices. We are seeing an explosion in apps and gadgets that help reduce screen time and phone usage. Apps that block other apps all the way to phone cages where you put your phone in and you can't take it out until the timer is over. Even Apple and Google couldn't ignore this trend, and they ended up building digital well-being and screen time reduction apps built

directly into Android, iOS, and it's not just phones. In the age of computational photography, 100x zooms, and AI image processing, old digital point-and-shoot cameras from the 2000s are back. Old iPod sales are up. Young people are buying typewriters to escape from having to use their computers and iPads. This is a rebellion. But what really matters here is not this small bunch of people that get an Nokia over this iPhone 15 Pro Max. What really matters is that this movement can disrupt tech completely by putting forward a very simple idea: why is smartphones become uncool? This is the Marlboro Man, the stereotype of the cool guy smoking his cigarette with his cowboy hat. Look at his coolness. A Marlboro man was created by the company with one purpose only: to make smoking seem cool. And well, it worked. You've seen countless movies where the cool, edgy character smokes. It was the cool thing to do until it wasn't. It took decades, but people realized the danger of smoking.

and culture made smoking uncool. And while yes, higher taxes on cigarettes and more awareness of the dangers helped, a key factor in deciding whether a 14-year-old will start smoking or not is just, well, how cool smoking is. If everyone around him thinks smoking is lame, then he is way less likely to start. Coolness is everything. If culture decides something is cool, that thing grows like crazy. If culture decides something is uncool, like cigarettes, then it dies. In the US, we went from 42% of people smoking in 1965 to 14% in 2019. But then there's another side. Companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars every single year just to make their thing cool. This is what keeps fashion alive, where baggy jeans are cool, then they are uncool, then they're cool again, and so on. And while we cannot make it a direct comparison, there are studies that show how smartphones and cigarettes are two completely different types of addiction. The same thing is what has been going on with smartphones, that companies launched cooler and newer phones every

year and made sure that having the latest smartphone is cool. It's a status symbol, and this has been the trend for the last 15 years. But now, something is changing. This time, optimizing Loop that media companies have been taken to the extreme, caused culture to fight back, and even though it's not the cause, the smartphone is the victim because this new movement is all about making smartphones uncool. A few years ago, if I went to my friends and I said, I'm in a dopamine detox, they would have looked at me like a weirdo. But today, they would reply, Oh, I should do that too. A few years ago, taking a break from social media was weird. Why? Why would you do that? Now, when you hear someone coming back from a trip in some remote place, one of the first things they say is, Oh, it was so cool. I was able to unplug from everything. A few years ago, it was crazy to even think about getting a dumb phone. Today, it's happening more and more, and this new movement has also brought up

the big guns celebrities. There's a reason why companies use celebrities to sell you perfume in these cringy black and white commercials. Because celebrities have the power to change culture. In the 2010s, celebrities moved to social media in droves, gathering hundreds of millions of followers. But in the 2020s, we are starting to see celebrities go in the opposite direction, distancing from social media, distancing from their smartphone, taking a break. I decided to delete my Instagram because I just felt like I was so addicted to this kind of false version of my life that it was just taking over. And this simple idea is going to be much more powerful in changing tech than AI or any other fancy technology. Just like the ban on cigarettes, we might start to see phone-free zones, bars, restaurants, clubs starting to ban phones because that would make them cooler. Berghain in Berlin is probably the most secretive and hard-to-get-into club in the world, and for years, no phones are allowed inside. And this makes it only cooler. If a few years

ago, the Stu symbol was having the latest iPhone. A few years from now, the flex could be being able to live on an old Nokia flip phone. 15 years ago, you weren't part of the cool kids if you weren't on Facebook. In the future, watching TikTok might be seen as lame. I know these things might seem silly now, but don't underestimate the power of changing culture. But also, don't think that tech companies are just going to sit and wait. They're going to do everything in their power to ride this trend, and it's already happening. The whole idea of this new wave of AI devices like the Rabbit R1 or the Humane AI pin is that you don't need your smartphone and all the addiction it carries with it, but you can still get all its benefits thanks to AI. That's the idea at least. The execution has been what's the traffic to the Empire State Building from here. Finding directions. Use the voice command feature of AI pin to ask for traffic information to the Empire State Building.

and it will provide you with the details you need. I did, and I'm willing to bet that in two or three years, the big smartphone guys like Samsung, Google, or Apple will start to build products around this as well, like phones with physical switches and locks to use them less, or even devices that replace some of the things your smartphone does, like music. So, yeah, probably going to go back to iPods once this idea of digital minimalism and taking control of time becomes mainstream in culture. Apps and media may start to break free from this loop of maximizing time because, just like today, saving that some food is organic makes it more appealing. In the future, a social media site that's explicitly built to not have time addiction is going to be more appealing, and this changing culture is also going to massively influence the next generation of devices. To the majority of people, this is already cringe, and Apple and any other company can spend billions to make their Vision Pro or whatever VR headset the highest resolution with the best tracking, but if

wearing it is seen as cringe or uncool, then it's already bound to lose. And if you ask me, yeah, even as a tech enthusiast, this is pretty cringe. But this is also the perfect storm to make augmented reality classes the next big thing because people do want the benefits of having a smartphone capturing moves, navigating the world. What they don't want is being sucked into Doom scrolling into a rectangle. And with VR being an overlay on the real world with way more limitations on what you can display, you're not going to see a TikTok feed projected over your fridge. And so this is what goes on behind the scenes of every single video I make, and it took me years to learn all this stuff. Now you can go literally behind the scenes of my most successful videos, the ones that got millions of views, and learn exactly how they were made with story behind. There's no theory, no bullet points, no secret formula for success in Lamborghinis. This is not a YouTube course. Each story behind is a practical

Hands-On behind the scenes of each one of my most successful videos and how they were actually made. The storytelling structure, the little tricks, the packaging, the editing, and the why behind every single decision. If you're a Creator or you want to become a Creator, well, this is an inside look at exactly how a successful video is made. So, you can check out story behind at the link below, and there's also a discount code valid for the first 20 people to purchase story behind at the lowest price it will ever be. Oh, and if after this video you still want to keep your smartphone, do you even know all the secrets that hide behind it? Well, you can learn all about them in this video right here.

What Happens Now That We All HATE Using Our Phone?

Design, Engineering, Psychology And Stories Behind Tech

Learn how I make my videos: https://www.enricotartarotti.com/storybehind?utm_source=channel_link

🖖 Hey! I'm Enrico and on this channel I go behind the scenes of tech. I'm a tech Product Manager, builder of digital stuff, YouTube aficionado and also a rare Italian who doesn’t know how to cook.

Business inquiries: enricotartarottibusiness@gmail.com

The keyword corner for the SEO and crawler overlords: software, tech, technology, business, finance, documentaries, lifestyle, saas, programming, development


Enrico Tartarotti

Smartphone usage has led to feelings of guilt and is now associated with an anti-smartphone movement.

The rise in dumb phone sales and the popularity of older technology, like digital cameras, reflect this shift.

The real issue lies in the addictive nature of media, which smartphones serve, rather than the devices themselves.

Digital product teams often struggle to decide what to build from an endless list of ideas.

A measurable objective, or North Star, helps prioritize tasks that will have the most impact.

The optimization for user engagement and time has become a common strategy for tech companies, but it has also led to a backlash from users seeking to reclaim their time.

Global dumb phone sales reached 1 billion units in 2020, while smartphone sales declined by 12%.

There is a rising interest in minimalist smartphones and apps that reduce screen time.

This movement towards "less" is challenging the tech industry's focus on constant innovation and may disrupt the dominance of smartphones.

The trend of smartphones being a status symbol is changing, with a growing movement to make them uncool.

Taking breaks from social media and using dumb phones are becoming more common, with celebrities leading the way in distancing themselves from technology.

This cultural shift may lead to the emergence of phone-free zones in public spaces, making them more desirable and exclusive.

The Changing Landscape of Technology and Culture

The perception of coolness and technology is constantly evolving, with future trends potentially reversing today's norms.

AI devices are emerging to provide smartphone benefits without the associated addiction, and major tech companies are likely to follow this trend.

The shift towards digital minimalism and time control may lead to a new generation of devices and social media platforms that prioritize user well-being over time addiction.

Wearing augmented reality devices is currently seen as uncool, but they offer benefits like capturing movements and navigating the world.

The limitations of VR will prevent it from displaying distracting feeds, making AR classes a potential success.

The creator offers a behind-the-scenes look at their most successful videos, providing practical insights for aspiring creators.