I am chronically, shamelessly, online. I reference memes and Instagram influencers the way people refer to movies and TV shows. My screen time is eye-watering. No amount of health and wellness babble about the effects on a person’s attention span is going to change that. You’d have to rip my phone out of my cold, dead hands.
Last year, I realised something had to change. People were getting angry at me for not replying to their messages on WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, iMessage, Facebook, emails or texts, while I was (very evidently) online (“Oi Ghosty McGhosterson!” read one recent message).
At the time of writing, I have 30 archived chats, 223 unread ones and about 2,200 unread messages on WhatsApp, 425 unread conversations on iMessage and 671 friend requests on Instagram, where I have both a personal and a professional account.
I’m also a foreign news reporter. When I started getting phone calls from the Israeli military in the evening while trying to watch Love Island, I decided something had to give.
It may seem counterintuitive, but I decided the solution to all of this would be to have two phones. One “dumb phone” for daily life and emergencies (so family and very close friends could get through to me) where my notifications are severely limited, and the other phone for everything else, including work, acquaintances, that person you randomly met at a coffee shop or on the Megabus years ago, social media and so on.
Essentially I’ve turned my smartphone into a “dumb phone” – a term used to describe a phone with very basic features akin to the old Nokia bricks. I use it to pay for things. It’s my “official” phone, through which people like my mum and the GP can get through to me.
The other one is off most of the time and I check it during work hours before switching it off overnight. But it isn’t a work phone – I got a specific work device earlier this year when separating work and personal life with my dumb phone didn’t exactly work. I now have a work number to give to the Israeli military or the Home Office when I need a comment – I’m not counting that one here – a second phone for social media and people I don’t need to speak to daily, and then my dumb phone for priority people.
When I’m rifling through my bag trying to figure out which one is ringing, I regularly get asked: “Are you a drug dealer?”
Recent studies show that I’m not alone in this and more people are switching to multiple phones. Vorhaus Advisors, a media research company cited in The New York Times, says the number of people owning two smartphones increased to 18 per cent last year, up from 15 per cent in 2024.
Likewise, a Statista survey conducted in 2024 found that 28 per cent of Gen Z said they would be interested in getting a dumb phone, making them the generation most interested in this technique, says Yaron Litwin, a digital wellness expert and CMO of the Canopy app that allows parents to control their children’s access to the internet.
“A growing number of consumers are turning to a two-phone lifestyle so they can promote a healthier balance between work and their personal lives,” he says.
“For instance, their work phone can be turned off over the weekend while they maintain contact with friends and family via their personal phone.”
A quick search for flip phones reveals that some businesses are already savvy to this demand and have started marketing old phones like the Nokia or Motorola Razr flip phones as “perfect for a digital detox”. Even Commodore, the company behind the 1980s video game console, have released one. Some dumb phones are more advanced and come loaded with Google Maps and Spotify, so you can use all the usual modern-day amenities without the endless doomscrolling.
Hana Ben-Shabat, a generational researcher and author of Gen Z Planet 360 says that there are four main reasons for this. The first is for work/life balance. In fact, a 2021 Google study found that 70 per cent of people want a separation between their personal life and work on their phones.
“The trend became more prevalent after the pandemic as more people moved to working from home and having a single phone meant being connected to work constantly,” she says.
Privacy is another factor, as Ben-Shabat explains that “people are increasingly concerned about corporate monitoring or security restrictions that come with a company phone and they choose to separate the two”.
With both millennials and Gen Z often subscribing to non-traditional working patterns, the presence of a side hustle means that a second device can also help “separate identities and audiences,” she says.
Young people can often pick up a second phone to “reduce distractions and protect their mental health”, Ben-Shabat continues.
“The goal is to create boundaries, regain control and be more intentional.”
Personally, I’ve felt less harangued and more relaxed since I implemented a two-phone policy for my personal life. With my dumb smartphone, I know I’ll only be contacted by people I’m comfortable with and my close friends and family can get in touch with me if there’s an emergency. Anything else can be safely picked up when I’m ready and when I want.
I also have all my notifications off on social media, which again means I’m in control and less distracted. It means that I often have chunks of time where I’m bored and find myself pottering about my room or on a walk somewhere, feeling less hemmed in by the timeliness of it all. It’s helped me slow down.
But it’s not all plain sailing and comes with complications. Umaima, a commercial lawyer in her thirties, first got a second phone while working on a high-stakes deal in the oil industry.
“I was literally being reached out to at all times. Before work, after work, on weekends, all the time. So I got another phone that no-one from work – not even my closest work besties – had,” she says.
“At that intense phase in my life, it was good because I would shut off the other phone and only use the personal one, so it was a real boundary. I was literally unreachable. So when I went on leave or finished for the weekend, I’d completely shut it off.”
But after changing roles, she says the boundaries between the phones blurred. “Now, it’s gotten weird and messy because if the battery runs out on one, I just use the other. But I’m still strict that no one from work can have my personal number.”
It’s got confusing for me too. My brother and best friend have set up group chats with names like “maira (all)” so that they can send one message to all the numbers.
Last week I went to the Lake District for my birthday and was fumbling at the top of Loughrigg Fell trying to find the right one to take a picture on. I’ve forgotten a phone on a plane from Finland and paid £100 to have it shipped back. I’ve had at least one disagreement with a friend because she texted the wrong number to rearrange plans and she rightfully reminded me that she couldn’t be expected to keep track when I complained.
I didn’t get two personal phones out of a sense of being a morally superior Luddite but because I’m brainrotting and overstimulated. It was a last-ditch attempt to save my soul from tech. But the storage is already running out on one of them, which means I will have to rethink my strategy at some point.
A year on, despite the struggles, it’s kind of working and I’ll be carrying on as long as storage permits. My screentime has halved and I feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Especially when deciding who to give my real number to.
