I’ll be honest: I love the idea of going back to older tech in place of phones that do almost everything. There were a few videos that I have saved that talk about “dumbed down” phones that can run some apps - as in flip phones that can run something like Discord or various music streaming services for example. I had considered that several times over, but I also realized that maybe I just need to cut down on my time wasted on the smart phone doom surfing the web. 
What I’ve done so far is this:
- I’ve dedicated the web browsers I have for specific tasks at the moment. Waterfox for YouTube for now since it still blocks ads and it works well. Vivaldi is my main but I have tried keeping tabs open for specific tasks since I’ve learned I could do so.
- PDFs that are not drawing books I’ve ended up moving to my dedicated reader device. Ever since I learned that I might of trashed my tablet somehow, I went back to my Kindle Fire. Not the best device but it works and I tend to be okay with it now. I’m still trying to figure out a good PDF reader for the device, but I might consider looking into finding one off the Amazon App Store because it’s very barren as to what options I have. Although I’ve slowly become receptive to moving drawing books to the Kindle because it sports a bigger screen to read on.
- Games that are heavy on in-app purchases I avoid or trash off my phone. The only exception is Pokemon Go because I don’t mind using the free credits I earn to get more coins there. Otherwise, I have two games that are free but play ads that are fairly tame.
What’s currently stopping me from going smart phone free completely?
- Music is super easy to get on my phone compared to finding a music player that can take it. I admit to having a good 10 GBs of music on my phone and the last one I had in my possession in memory - probably couldn’t hold that much or even a quarter of it…
- I have access to a personal computer, but I also have my phone on me. I have begun to restrain myself from using my phone while out and about, but it’s worse when at home. I tend to scroll through apps and web pages, some I’ve been trying to cut access/usage from.
I’ve came to learn that maybe going back to a dumb phone might not be for me yet because a lot of the older tech I had is gone, or sold off and hard to access because it requires money which I don’t have… I’ve started to push the idea of having a notebook on me as well as something like a GameBoy Advance SP to replace doomscrolling. Music is played through my phone, but I’m controlling myself from picking it up unless it’s to change songs. I considered looking into the older cameras - digital or the polaroid ones (even if more expensive).
Going into this though, I just want to make sure I slowly get into the waters over diving in face first. As the title mentioned, I’m a complete newbie to the idea of cutting off usage of a smart phone and lowering the amount of hi-tech used. I also want to consider prices and be a little considerate with how much I spend because it’s already tough in this day and age but I wouldn’t mind a little bit of splurging if it’s worth that extra bit.
I want to try and keep away from Amazon if possible and support businesses directly - or in my case see if I can find the product in stores and get it that way. I’m not sure if this is enough to consider a starting point or if more information is needed before advice and suggestions can be given for this situation.
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i think it’s helpful to consider what need/desire your smart phone useage is fulfilling for you, to get a sense of how to cut back! if the scrolling is a fidget type behavior then you can explore other things to do with your hands; if it’s a seeking-novelty type behavior you could try things like mindfulness exercises to help find novelty by observing your surroundings more closely; if it’s a compulsively-checking-the-news type of thing, giving yourself a certain day of the week that’s your “news day” might help (i did that! friday is my news day)… et cetera!
if it’s mostly habit/compulsive then adding more barriers might help - adding a really long/complicated lock screen password, for example, or website-blocking browser extensions. adding steps and making it harder for yourself gives you more opportunities to be like “wait, do i want to be doing this actually…?”
i think it’s also helpful to consider the positive framing as well as the negative - like, rather than just “i want to be on my phone less often,” think of other things you want to do more often!
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Personally, I feel like a lot of the current digital minimalism movement is just another form of consumerism. If you are buying a new dumb phone and a new dumb mp3 player then you haven’t really “cut down” on anything right?
I think the more important bit is in being intentional about what you are doing when, and asking yourself if you are using your time how you want to.
In terms of more specific advice, a few very smart people suggest that the important bit it to have something to do with your hands. That seems to be the important bit in phone replacement therapy. I have heard knitting or crochet is good for this but I don’t have any experience lol
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True, but as these items are readily and cheaply available 2nd hand that’d be the way I’d go.
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Even as an old phone user I am not avoiding my smartphone completely, however almost all old phones since 2003 have at minimum MP3 capabilities. You can always look for a model that has a headphone jack and an SD card slot so you can use it as both a phone and a music player! Watch out for phones that don’t support more than 2GB though.
My friend also developed Discord J2ME , which is a discord client ported to Java that works on most old phones that support it! It’s continuously being developed for and supports a lot of things!
Using a dumbphone will really make you want to spend time on your PC instead of scrolling through apps on mobile.
Unfortunately if you’re in america this might not be doable as 2G and 3G have shut down there, although some modern dumbphones still have music capabilities and such.
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yeah!! i’m terrible at knitting but it is very good for this i think. i’m trying to pick up my (terrible) knitting more when i’m watching stuff and feel the urge to pull out my phone. it doesn’t pull focus as much as reading or playing a little game on my phone, but it’s enough to keep my hands busy and satisfy that fidgety multitask urge
First of all, I feel you 
Weirdly enough when I first got a smartphone in like 2012/2013 as a teen I was not very addicted to it, maybe it’s because algos were more primitive and it was easier to just log off. But ever since uni and especially during the pandemic I really started to spend way too much time on my phone…also a lot of doomscrolling stuff I don’t care about at all… my weakness still is YouTube, I waste way too many hours there…(and this year I’ve also just been on Reddit way too much)
I’ve both had a dumb phone and have dumbed down my smartphone, and here’s how both went:
The dumb phone
So I bought nokia 8110 near the town of Nokia in Finland in about 2018 (this was funny to me). It had pretty much nothing on it stock: Google maps, Whatsapp were pretty much the only “new” apps that I needed and this phone had them. It was my main phone for a few years with some breaks as moving with a dumbphone is borderline impossible. But yeah, for at least 2 years I was completely smart-phone free. It was kind of a mess, so if you hate being inconvenienced I do not recommended it. But if you can accept that, it was actually pretty sweet. Back when I was checking out the dumbphone spaces online I always saw people asking about dumbphones with Spotify, or Discord, or YouTube and to me that totally defeats the purpose. If you’re going full dumbphone-mode do not buy an expensive dumbphone with all these features, I wouldnt recommend the 8110 exactly as KaiOS is no longer updated but if you ever do decide on a dumbphone go for something super basic and affordable.
Dumbed-down smartphone
However, in about 2022 I had to make a sudden move to a different country and I needed my smartphone for pretty much everything so I was back on it. Soon enough my screentime was crazy again so I put in some barriers for myself. Of course the way you dumb down your smartphone will have a lot to do with what exactly is most relevant to you. For me it was scrolling tumblr and such and maybe some games. Here are some things that may work, it’s just my opinion and may not work for you but I think is worth considering:
- Log out of all social media. It’s impossible to browse most social media on phone if youre not logged in or not on the app so it’s pretty easy to avoid if you arent logged in. I would actually recommend just not using big social media at all but if you need it then limit your use to PC only. I don’t even have the YT app on my phone (which is basically the only big website I use). Both my browser on PC and phone is Firefox and I have blockers for everything so I can only watch vids I explicitly search for.
- If you watch too much YT get something like Unhook (Firefox). No recommendations, no shorts, none of that! Only your subscribed channels and vids you search for.
- If you can, don’t stream music and listen to it locally (I totally understand if it’s not an option for you though as I know a lot of people don’t really have any other ways to listen to music but streaming). I think 10GB of music is perfectly doable on your phone or an MP3 player. I got a Snow Sky Fiio for myself as it can hold an SD card of 256GB (I have 60GB of music on my phone and 200GB+ of music on my PC so for me personally it works). However if your collection is only 10GB you can do a lot with an iPod! There is quite a lot of custom firmware that makes putting music on an old iPod super easy. However if you like listening to music via your phone, just keep at it.
- I know a lot of people think that having an MP3 player may be unnecessary (and that can be totally true!) but like your Kindle, I find having a dedicated device with just one purpose (read books, play music, etc.) to be an excellent way to actually do that one thing and not get sucked into doomscrolling.
- And like many others have mentioned, have other things to do when youve got a moment. Just daydreaming is better for you than doomscrolling. I think a notebook is a good idea, just make sure it’s one that’s actually comfy to pull out and use when you need it.
In conclusion, I think if you need to use certain apps in your daily life that only work properly on smartphones, look into dumbing down your smartphone as most “dumbphones” with way too many smartphone capabilities are kind of a scam or simply defeat the purpose of having a dumbphone and therefore are a waste of money. If you’re ever in a spot to truly go full dumbphone, don’t bother with anything expensive: so long as it can make calls, it’s doing it’s job.
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There are quite a few decent ways on cutting back phone usage.
If UPI apps and banking apps are not a concern, you can try flashing a GApps Free ROM to your device. XDA forums has excellent resources on this. Remember to be wary of shady roms however.this is good for a few number of reasons-no push notifications (you need GMS for it) more privacy, and you can run apps as root(you will be able to set a app to restrict opening reddit for say 12H) and as it is running as root there will be a no go back button. This is if you cannot hold true to your goals and give up. (Note that it has a chance of causing instability in your system) also note if you disable important apps then the phone may even refuse to work properly.
Secondly if you are in a school or in a housing community, they may have a option to sign up for clubs dealing with things like cooking, cricket, basketball, badminton, etc.
You could try meeting irl friends more often. After school, after work, etc.
Dont just merely cut back phone time. It will be hard and you will have free tine where you will be bored and do nothing. A empty mind houses the devil of wasting time. Your mind will wander off to seemingly random things and nothing will come out of it. You will feel a impressive resistance and once you give up, you will go back to phone. Instead do new things so that you can permanently reallocate time. And do things you like, not just things you do for sake of spending time
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I would caution against investing in the (increasingly expensive) retrotech side of digital minimalism until you’ve tried dumbing your phone down for at least a few months. When I wasted time on my phone in the past, I was mainly using social media and my internet browser – I was never messing around with my camera app, or my music app, or my note-taking app, or any of the other apps that so many people in the digital minimalism community replace with refurbished old tech or expensive new “dumb” tech solutions that opportunistic types are increasingly pushing out there to capitalize on the anti-smartphone movement. There are, for instance, “dumb” e-ink typewriters out there that retail for $1000+, which is just insane to me…
Some things you can try to dumb down your phone:
- Use your phone in greyscale or with desaturated, muted colours (an accessibility feature), which makes the phone look and feel a little less like a flashy casino you hold in your hand. I prefer muted colours over greyscale. I actually can’t use my phone’s default colour saturation settings anymore, because they look way too garish and unpleasant to me after a year of using muted colours.
- Disable non-essential notifications. I only get notified for family text messages, calls, work emails, and alarms. Nothing else gets the opportunity to bug me.
- Use your phone’s native screen time settings to limit problem app use (no need to buy third-party screen time apps, unless your phone’s native app doesn’t work for you for whatever reason). I asked my husband to set a password for my screen time settings, so I couldn’t override or modify them back when my social media addiction was at its worst.
I used to average about seven hours per day on my phone on days when I wasn’t at work. Now it’s down to an hour a half or less. I still use my phone to take calls, send text messages, take notes, listen to music, take photos, make debit/CC payments, and occasionally play mobile games. For me at least, doing that on my smartphone beats carrying around a dumbphone, a notebook, an MP3 player/Discman/Walkman, a standalone camera with all sorts of different lenses for different use cases, a wallet, and a handheld gaming device. For me, the problem was never the jack-of-all-trades nature of my phone; it was always algorithmic social media and controversial news websites with lively comments sections.
Which brings me to my final point … it’s well worth your time getting to the root of why you use your phone so much (beyond the addictive nature of the phone itself), and start working to address that. If you don’t address the root causes of your smartphone overuse, the risk of slipping back into bad habits remains high. For me, it was a combo of boredom, social isolation, and being too complacent to chill at home with my husband instead of going out. I’ve mostly tackled the boredom side of things by returning to old hobbies I’d been neglecting. Still working on the social isolation and complacency bit.
Good luck with it!
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Treat it like smoking - pick a day, use your phone all you want up to that day - then go cold turkey.
Set an alarm to two or three times a day - check in on what matters - then put it down.
Start by going 15 minutes without your phone. Then 30, an hour, two, four … it’s an addiction and you can beat it using addiction recovery tips. I believe in you.