For the past few months, an obscure company called Dumb and Co. has been convincing people in Washington, DC, to give up their smartphones for a month. It’s part of a project called Month Offline, where participants receive a flip phone and access to a support group to talk about algorithms, doomscrolling, and why smartphones make us feel so alone.
This is not just another digital detox retreat. To me, it sounds more like a trendy social club. Home base is a bar called Hush Harbor, the first phoneless bar in DC, and from the beginning, the joining experience involved calling a 1-800 number and leaving a voicemail request.
The local movement is becoming national. There is now a website and an option to join a cohort from anywhere in the United States. For $100, you get the Dumb Phone 1, which is really just a TCL flip phone; a new phone number with area code 404; and a lesson plan of sorts to guide you through the month. There are also weekly radio shows that replace in-person meetings. The first in-person group outside of DC is also accepting applications: Offline Month in Brooklyn begins in January 2026.
It all smacks of the same nostalgia that led to the resurgence of CDs and the return of compact digital cameras. The idea of a piece of technology that does one thing and doesn’t take over our entire attention span is appealing.
“The telephone certainly amplifies some of our avoidant tendencies,” said Grant Besner, one of the co-founders of Month Offline. “Just replacing it even for a moment and having to sit with your own thoughts to get bored can be a really positive, transformative experience in someone’s life.”
Month Offline is part of a new generation of solutions for your smartphone-filled existence. These include thoughtfully designed smartphone alternatives, such as the Light Phone 3. There’s also the Brick, an NFC-enabled magnet that blocks access to certain apps when you touch the phone to it. You can also find many apps, such as Freedom, One Sec or Forest, that will achieve similar purposes. The general concept is that hiding from your phone for a weekend won’t do much to change your habits in the long term. You need to learn to be more intentional in using your phone.
“This is AA for smartphones“
I first learned about Month Offline from Brittany Shammas, a Washington Post reporter who participated in one of the DC-based cohorts and wrote an article about the experience. One thing that stood out in their coverage was the extent to which people didn’t quickly reach for a phone. They wanted community and connection.
“It definitely had elements that made it feel like a support group,” Shammas told me. “People in the group would sometimes say, ‘This is AA for smartphones.'”
After speaking with several other people who participated in the Month Offline program, it became clear that some wanted to use a flip phone, while others just needed a break from their iPhone. One of them, Lydia Peabody, said she stopped using her smartphone for a month because she was struggling with her mental health and “scrolling.” [her] life away.” Then he switched to a flip phone and everything changed.
“I didn’t know life could be like that,” said Peabody, who now works for Month Offline. “I didn’t even know it could exist this way.”
For those who don’t want to do the entire month-long challenge, Month Offline organizers will sell you a Dumb Phone 1, with the new phone number and cell service, for $25 a month. They also make an app, Dumb Down, that makes it easy to sync calls and texts between an iPhone and a flip phone. Even without the support group component, switching to a flip phone can deepen your existing friendships and improve your attention span.
For as long as smartphones have existed, there have been programs designed to help us stop using them. More than a decade ago, you could spend hundreds of dollars to go to Camp Grounded, an adult summer camp in California where all digital devices were banned. The organization that sponsored it, Digital Detox, inspired groups around the world to help people unplug. The Offline Club, for example, organizes phone-free events and retreats throughout Europe. There is even a special festival held annually on the first weekend of March called World Unplugging Day. Verizon is a corporate sponsor.
But what was once a wellness trend is quickly becoming a full-fledged social movement. After Jean Twenge asked, “Have smartphones destroyed a generation?” In The Atlantic in 2017, the idea that technology use had created a youth mental health crisis became widespread. It didn’t help when, a few years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram knew its product was harmful to teenagers, citing internal documents. That was around the same time that the Wait Until 8th pledge emerged to keep smartphones out of children’s hands until they were about 13, and some families even hired consultants to help them ditch their smartphone-using habits. Then came the pandemic, when everyone’s lives became even more mediated by screens.
Now, banning phones in schools is a major legislative priority. Florida became the first to remove phones from classrooms in 2024, and there are now 35 states with laws or rules that restrict or completely ban phones in schools. We don’t know all the ways this will transform education, but in at least one Kentucky school district, the state’s phone ban was correlated with an increase in the number of books checked out from the library.
One might wonder what a ban on school phones for adults would look like. About half of American adults are worried about being addicted to their smartphones, according to a 2024 Harris Poll, but it seems unlikely that everyone will want to throw them into the sea. Spending a weekend on a digital detox retreat can be relaxing, and research even suggests that these types of interventions can help reduce the time people spend on their phones after the program ends. Staying off social media definitely seems to be good for mental health.
“Overall, there is now emerging evidence that digital detox can and does work,” said Kostadin Kushlev, a Georgetown psychology professor who directs the Digital Health and Happiness Lab. But much of the research focuses on abandoning a single function, such as social media, Kushlev added.
Let me confess: I haven’t done Offline Month. I didn’t last a week using just a Light Phone 3. A big reason is that it’s not a good time to reorganize my digital life. Although Offline Month organizers have made it easier, switching to a flip phone is difficult.
But I got a brick. Whenever I want to avoid reflexively scrolling through Reddit at night, I simply tap my phone on a small gray square and the app stops working. To get it working again, I have to get up, walk across my apartment, and touch it again. It sounds simple, just a little friction to snap me out of my stupor. And that’s all I need right now to feel more present.
Update, November 6 at 9:25 a.m. ET: This story was originally published on November 6 and has been updated with news about the launch of Month Offline Brooklyn.
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