I didn't like the way I was behaving with my social media accounts and smartphone: basically just consuming like crazy. So back in 2011 I deleted the facebook a

I didn't like the way I was behaving with my social media accounts and smartphone: basically just consuming like crazy. So back in 2011 I deleted the facebook account and got a dumb phone. As facebook was just taking off when I finished high school, I had never really lived my adult life without it. Just trying to give you some background to frame the rest of my response, I never started using facebook again. Nothing against the company, I know many people with use cases where having an account is valuable, and I have often thought of going back. Just hasn't been worth it to me yet. Introducing some challenge is a good way to figure out what is really important to you. If you are willing to charge through obstacles to have something, then it probably does actually off value to your life (barring addiction, etc). Then later, take the obstacles out of the way of the good, and stop doing the bad. Learning there actually are a bunch of people living without smartphones (or leaving them in their pockets) was interesting to see. I didn't really notice there were as many people connecting with each other when I was looking at my screen. Breaking completely from smartphone use for an extended period was necessary for me to start experiencing the value of looking around instead of taking every moment of free time to find some "interesting" new piece of information. However, having the dumb phone was really annoying when it came to texting (T9!), managing contacts, saving messages, viewing voicemail, and obviously no apps. There is a reason basically anyone who has the means wants a smartphone. From my experience, the only benefit of a dumb phone is more time to do what is important to you. I live in the bay area and work in tech, so it is definitely possible. Now I have a smartphone again, but like other posters, I barely have any apps compared to standard user, and turn almost all notifications off. At the time, I got a "feature" phone for $20 and a $6 per month no contract plan. It is a very cheap experiment to run if you want to try! Just leave your smartphone at home for a week...