Can Using a Dumber Phone Cure ‘Brain Rot’? Can Using a Dumber Phone Cure ‘Brain Rot’?
The New York Times
Minimalist gadgets like the new Light Phone III, a smartphone that barely does anything, promise to help us focus. The trade-offs are big.
Dear readers, I have a confession: I am suffering from an ailment that the younger ones call “brain rot,” the inability to think deeply after too much scrolling on my phone. These days, it’s tough to even finish a book.
Plenty of people have this problem. So many, it has birthed a category of minimalist tech products striving to rid us of distractions, from the Ai Pin, the now defunct artificially intelligent lapel pin that took notes, to phones with only basic features.
The latest example, the $600 Light Phone III, from a Brooklyn start-up, is a stripped-down phone that does barely anything. The newest version, which began shipping in March and is set for a broader release in July, can place calls, send texts, take photos, show map directions, play music and podcasts and not do much else.
There is no web browser. There is also no app store, meaning there’s no Uber to hail a ride, no Slack and no social media. There isn’t even email.
“You use it when you need to, and when you put it back it disappears in your life,” said Kaiwei Tang, the chief executive of Light, the start-up that has developed multiple iterations of the Light Phone over the last nine years. “We get a lot of customers telling us they feel less stressed out, they become more productive, they become creative.”
I was curious to see if the Light Phone could cure me of brain rot, so I used it as my primary phone for a week. There were moments I enjoyed it. While waiting for a train, resting at the gym or eating alone, I was not tempted to stare at the phone screen, and I felt more mindful of my surroundings. Phone calls sounded nice and clear. The maps app did a fine job navigating me around town.
