Source: The New York Times
How long do you spend each day staring at your phone's screen? If one actually calculates the answer, the result can surprise them because the number of hours will probably be higher than they anticipated.
"How long do I spend on my phone each day? For as long as I'm awake," many people might respond... without exaggeration.
We increasingly rely on our mobile phones for an "endless" variety of daily duties in the technologically advanced world of today. In fact, weaning ourselves off of these technologies seems to be nearly difficult at this point.
Nevertheless, there are certain people who are not afraid to cut off this addiction.
Logan Lane, who is now 17 years old, was raised in Brooklyn, New York. As a youngster, she developed a phone addiction and spent many hours each day in front of the screen, mostly concentrating on her social media presence on Instagram and TikTok.
However, about two years ago Lane started to question whether a life of continual connectivity was benefiting her, and at that point, as the New York Times noted in their article, she decided to completely give up her smartphone.
But the young American girl didn't stop there; she also started a "Luddite Club" to meet other youngsters who disagree with how technology has completely changed how we live our lives in the West today.
"Logan Lane renounced her smartphone. The NY Times profiles "the youngster spearheading the smartphone emancipation movement, and how it changed her life ".
When Logan Lane was 11 years old, she received her first smartphone, which she used nonstop after that. According to her interview with the New York Times, "I would fall asleep with my phone next to me," while she recalls times before she started high school when she would go days or even weeks without her phone without feeling uncomfortable.
Then the epidemic happened, a time when Logan Lane believed—as she now claims—that it was acceptable for her to spend all of her time in front of a screen. The young American would have her first doubts during this period because the pandemic did not end fast but instead persisted for a long time.
"I would see other people reading or knitting, devoting the extra time they had to some artistic activity. And I felt like I was the type of person who should be doing that but wasn't. I was wasting time on TikTok or Instagram. I felt that in order to be productive, I had to take a step back by distancing myself from the cell phone," she says, speaking to the New York Times.
Logan put her cell phone in a drawer in her parents' room and left it there. Her father laughed at first, claiming that she would go get it back after a few days. She, however, wanted to contradict him. "I wanted to be different from the others," she said. Her next move was to deactivate her social media accounts. She feared at the time that she might lose many of her friends. At the same time, however, she told herself that those who don't stick around might not be worth calling friends. A mobile phone she would continue to have, not a smartphone but an old-style flip phone.
She wasn't alone either. Through a mutual friend, she met another young woman who also didn't have a smartphone but a flip phone in Brooklyn in 2021 while she was attending a concert there.
Together, the two developed a friendship and decided to form the "Luddite Club." They were initially ignorant of the history of the Luddites. They discovered it during a talk they had with Logan's mother, and it was from there that they got the idea for the name of their club, which would meet every Sunday and has now lived a full year. How many attendees attend these meetings? According to Logan, a 17-year-old, up to 15. Although there aren't many, the "campaign for freedom from smartphones" is increasingly beginning to gain publicity.
