Well, hello there, my friends, and welcome back. My name is Stephanie Safarian, and you're listening to Episode 587 of Sustainable Minimalists. This is a listener-supported show about intentional and eco-friendly minimalist living. And on today's show, we are discussing the rising trend of ditching the smartphone and moving back in time to a dumb phone.

We've all been there, right?

You pick up your smartphone just to do one little thing, maybe check the weather or check the train time.

And then 45 minutes later, you're deep in the social media rabbit hole, you're checking out sourdough recipes,

you're checking out day in the life video blogs, and you're wondering where all the time went.

Our smartphones have infiltrated all aspects of our life. They are eating up our moments of free time.

There is a small but growing movement happening in which

people who are tired of being tethered to that glowing rectangle, they're putting the phones away

and they're embracing a dumb phone. So my guest today, she turned off her smartphone for just

about a week and she embraced a $50 dumb phone.

She's here to tell us all about the experience, how it went, how difficult it was, what she gained from the experience, and how we can try it out, too.

If we're feeling the mental, emotional, social consequences of our perpetually online life,

my guest argues that dumb phones are available to all of us.

And even though they're dumb, quote unquote dumb, they can help us reclaim a lot of what the smartphone has taken away.

My guest today is Courtney Lindwall. She is a home and

tech reporter with Consumer Reports. Courtney, I'm so excited to talk to you. How are you?

I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming on. You probably don't know this,

but my listeners do. I have been on a journey. It's been really been a journey to cut down my smartphone use because on the one hand, this thing is making my life easier in an awful lot of ways. But it's also really, I've noticed in the past couple years, especially detracting from my quality of life, detracting from my

ability to be present in the moment. So I want to talk about all of that. And I want to talk about

your week-long experiment with a dumb phone. But before we do all that, I want to know about you.

Who are you? What do you do? Tell me everything. So I work for

Consumer Reports. I'm a writer. I cover a lot of tech products. I cover home products as well.

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