Flip phone users are like vegans and theatre kids. Don’t know if you’re talking to one? Don’t worry, they’ll make sure to self-identify within the first 10 minutes of your conversation.
For the past year, having a flip phone has been a core tenet of my personality. I’ve been the green text gremlin, carrying around a brick-sized device in my back pocket, cold calling everyone, and never once getting tired of the thwack sound my phone makes upon being shut. My fighter? The Cat S22 flip, first introduced to me by my friend and bandmate Leighton. I’ve seen a few of these phones out in the wild before, mostly cradled between the tiny hands of elementary school kids on the bus. I too was given a flip phone when I was small, in part, so that the world wouldn’t feel so big and scary. In my late 20s, I’ve returned to this familiar flavour of technology, and for pretty much the same reason. The universe—especially in this digital age—feels too vast, spacious, cold, and daunting. I don’t feel like I have any agency in my relationship with my screen(s). Sure, social media has unfurled the fibres of our social fabric, but it’s more than that. The ailment of today is that no one can put their fucking phone down. No internet? No problem! I’ll just sift through my hundreds of voice memos or re-watch that one video from 2018 again. Why—no matter how much I want to—can I not put my phone away? Why, after a long day of staring at my laptop, am I too tired to do anything but scroll?
Re: social media, human beings are not built to contain so much knowledge about other human beings and what they’re up to. I’m not saying anything especially revelatory here, but it feels pertinent in providing context as to the precariousness of my relationship with smartphones. When I was releasing my first record back in 2022, I really struggled with comparison. I was constantly looking to the musicians in my circle and using their “success” (I only put this word in quotations because it is, by nature, a subjective term) as a yardstick with which to measure how legit my own achievements were. What playlists were my homies on? How viral were they? Who were they opening for on tour? By virtue of being online, I was privy to evvvverrrything that evvverrryone was doing and then shame spiraling if I didn’t feel like I was keeping up. Thinking back to this time makes me sad; I didn’t know how to make and share my art while protecting my inner artist. I still don’t, but I like to think I’ve developed a few strategies and tools that help me know when it might be time to put my phone away, be it a Cat phone or an iPhone. I’m writing this piece because I think that we can all agree that our smartphones are making us really dumb and really lonely. Again, I’m not contributing anything new re: the generational conundrum that is technology and the way it’s been re-wiring us, but I’d still like to share a bit about my experience in trying to re-wire my brain in the thick of it all.
In the summer of 2023, my mental health wasn’t great. I was wrestling with residual feelings of shame and guilt from things that I experienced in high school, which never went away. Plus, my dose of testosterone was way too high, so I was pimply and angry and totally cut off from my emotions. Sure, I lowered my dose and started therapy, but it felt like something needed addressing on a more rudimentary level. I wanted to slow down and distance myself from anything that felt anxiety-inducing, which—obviously—included my iPhone. I released an EP that summer too, which meant that I needed (or, thought I needed) to be online all the time for promo purposes. I felt subject to that familiar spiral of not being able to stand my phone but not being able to stand being without it. Said spiral being enmeshed with the aforementioned self-worth issues that can sometimes arise when trying to commodify and promote ones art made things worse. I was tweaking, big time.
I was also noticing the ways in which my phone addiction was seeping into the ways I went about my day. My attention span was garbage, I wasn’t reading as much, and I was having a harder time maintaining eye contact in conversations.
There’s this line from the Netflix docu-drama The Social Dilemma that’s stuck with me over the last few years:
“There are only two industries that call their customers “users”: drugs and software.”
As a harm reduction worker myself1, I wanted to practice what I preach. Adopting and employing safe(r) strategies for activities that have the potential to be harmful—be it doom-scrolling or doing drugs—is better than acting in absolutes and thinking that abstinence is realistic. With this idea in mind, I tried all of the tricks I read about online: I set my iPhone to greyscale in the hopes that the experience of using it would be more boring, I wrapped an elastic band around it as a sort of visual reminder that I probably didn’t need to pick it up, and I deleted all of my social media apps. To be honest, nothing worked and I felt totally out of control. I was hooked.
Enter a 2009 Blackberry curve that I bought for $50 off of eBay. I only spent 2ish weeks with the phone before it crapped out on me, but it was enough to make me fall in love with being disconnected. Having a cute, browser-less device felt like the answer I’d been searching for re: how to permanently log out. Previously, whenever I deleted social media apps off of my iPhone, I would just download them a few hours (sometimes minutes) later via the browser. It felt soooo good to have a physical keyboard, an OG headphone jack, and no real way of checking my email or socials. I think that Blackberrys were just starting to roll out phones with Facebook and email on them in 2009 or 10, but compared to the tech we have now, these features were unusable on my Blackberry. I was happy to be back to the basics. When someone mentioned a movie whose lead actors no one could name, I just let myself sit in the “not knowing”. It turned out that every email could actually wait until I got home. I felt more connected to the people I was texting (even if I was sending fewer texts) thanks to the distraction-less, bare-bones software. I still carried around my old iPhone sans SIM card for music listening purposes/in case of emergencies. No, the Blackberry didn’t last long, but it propelled me forward and inspired me to begin the journey of finding a new phone. Ideally one, that would be a phone and only a phone.
My next dumbphone love affair was even shorter lived, but I think this phone is my favourite that I’ve ever had. I bought a Lightphone, which is essentially a credit card-sized, e-ink phone that can call and text and that’s about it. It was funny going from a phone made in 2009 that was trying to do as many things as possible (and did so kinda badly) to a simple yet thoughtful device made in the 2020s that was intentionally designed to do nothing. I fucking loved it. The only trouble was that it wasn’t compatible with any cellphone carriers in Canada, which meant most of my calls got dropped. I was so bummed. After two days of trial and error, I sent it back.2
Post-Lightphone, I went down an internet rabbit hole, determined to find the best dumbphone for my needs. I’d been without my iPhone long enough to notice a difference in the way I interacted with myself, my world, and the people around me. My writers block had even dissipated (I’m a pretty slow writer in that I’m lucky if I write 4 songs a year, but I wrote 2 songs in the span of a month)! Ideally, I’d find a device that was easy enough to text on, didn’t have a browser, and had a built-in radio. Somewhere in-between the Blackberry and the Lightphone, I bought an old Walkman from a hip, young Quebecer on Facebook Marketplace, but that, too, broke after a laughably short amount of time. I’ll wait until I have my own car to play CDs, I figured, and in the meantime, I’ll listen to the CBC on my perfect little dumbphone while I’m commuting.
After countless hours reading “best of” lists from bloggers and rifling through hundreds of posts on the r/dumbphones Subreddit, I decided to try out the Nokia 2660 Flip, one of Nokia’s new phones that’s designed to look like their retro models. The phone was cheap and could send emojis, so I gave it a whirl. Sadly, it was a massive pain in the ass to text on and came pre-loaded with photos of a random old lady. I had bought the phone on Amazon, so I guess that’s my bad. I sent that one back too.
From November 2023 to March of 2024, I went back to my iPhone and tried to use it as mindfully as possible. My previous “less-is-more” approach with my iPhone hadn’t really worked, but I didn’t see a real alternative. I turned iMessage off (I was every group chat’s worst nightmare) and bought an app called Freedom to help limit my social media use. These solutions weren’t perfect, but they—the app in particular—did the job for a while. Downloading Freedom has been one of the best things I’ve done for my mental health in the last few years, no question. I think the paid version is like $150, but it’s been worth every penny. I lock myself out of Instagram and TikTok for most of the day, which has done wonders re: curbing my self-destructive tendencies with comparison.
I’m unsure if I’d say that using an iPhone/laptop with Freedom on it subscribes to a harm reduction approach of being online or whether it’s a red flag that I’ve paid money to physically restrict myself from certain apps. The jury’s still out on that one.
Finally, late last March, I bought an unlocked, unboxed Cat S22 Flip for $80 off eBay. My experience with this phone has felt a bit like watching a romcom where the protagonist falls in love with the loser best friend. It’s a slow burn, but ultimately really beautiful and rewarding.
My favourite things about the Cat S22 Flip:
There’s an orange button on the side of the phone that you can program to be a (powerful!) flashlight
The Cat S22 Flip is an Android phone, so you can use all of the apps that you’d use on a Samsung Galaxy or whatever. I have Uber, The Weather Network, and Google Maps downloaded, and I’ve disabled Chrome and Gmail (which come pre-loaded). The apps are not particularly reliable and crash often, but hey, we’re all a work in progress! I have a friend who had Hinge on his Cat phone if you can believe it
It has a touch screen! You can choose between T9 texting or touch screen texting
The battery lasts for 2ish days
You know how you see the Apple logo when the iPhone is in the process of turning on? Well, the Cat S22 Flip version of this is a hilarious 4-second slideshow of people performing blue collar jobs (ie picking apples and operating forklifts). Hardcore phone = for hardcore people only
You can send and receive emojis and photos. That said, the camera quality is very bad. Whenever I send my friends pictures from the phone, I usually get a text back asking where I am and if I’m okay
The phone can act as a hotspot, which has come in handy on many occasions
There’s a built-in radio
Like all of my previous dumbphones, the Cat phone has its problems too. But, I think my dumbphone journey has proved that “the perfect dumbphone” is a bit of an oxymoron in and of itself. Dumbphones are meant to be awkward, clunky, gimmicky, and annoying. That’s the charm!
Last May, I toured with Land of Talk across western Canada. I challenged myself to travel with the Cat phone as my main communication device. True, I wasn’t driving for this tour (I took buses and flew from city to city), but I was keen to see if it would be possible to travel to new places and embark upon unfamiliarity with my hunk of junk in tow. Again, I was still bringing around my iPhone with its SIM card removed so I could listen to music, show airline staff a boarding pass, and post on socials if need be. But most of the time, my iPhone was at the bottom of my bag. The memories I have from that tour are among my favourites from last year and I’m so happy and grateful that I was present and grounded enough—thanks to not being glued to a smartphone—to have taken it in. I decided to stick with the Cat phone for the rest of the year. I was online every now and then to post a Reel or whatever, but for the most part, I was disconnected from the internet and connected to my world. Sometimes I missed sending blue texts, efficient texting, and voice memos, but the new inner calm I was feeling made everything feel worth it. I wasn’t in the midst of a promo cycle (in fact, I was shopping around Blurring Time for the better part of 2024), so I didn’t really feel a pressure to be online.
Now… it’s 2025. My old iPhone is charging in another room and my Cat phone is in a desk drawer in another city (I’m in Toronto right now and the Cat is in Montreal). If using the Cat felt like dating an endearing nerd, using an iPhone again feels like going back to the toxic quarterback that cheated on you. Typing this out, I feel at a loss for how to justify why I went back to something that I know actively hurts me. I could go on and on about “being in the middle of a release cycle” this and “I need to be more easily reachable” that, but honestly? I think I’m just—still—addicted to looking at a screen. I officially made the switch at the end of December, right before my partner and I left for a two week vacation in Mexico. I wanted to be easily reachable and I didn’t know if that would be possible with the Cat phone. I remember feeling a rush of excitement and anxiety upon re-loading my SIM card into my old iPhone 11, but swearing that it wouldn’t be the same as last time. I would be in control and I would act in moderation. Hell, maybe I’d even go back to the Cat phone when I got home!
I haven’t gone back to the Cat and I honestly don’t know the next time I’ll realistically be able to use it in a consistent way again, which makes me really bummed. But touring in the States—especially as a trans person—is just not doable with a dumbphone right now. Neither is being a responsible, self-managed artist who responds to all of their emails in a timely manner. I’m trying to see this chapter as a dumbphone hiatus rather than an end to my journey. On screen-heavy days, I like to imagine myself 6 months from now, on the dock at my partner’s cabin, catching up with a friend on my Cat, the phone nestled between my ear and my shoulder. In this daydream, my iPhone is the device that’s in time-out mode, locked away in a drawer somewhere.
I feel shame about still being so glued to my phone after my many efforts to create distance between us. But I also try not to be too hard on myself, as the tech of this generation is quite literally designed for us to become dependent on and addicted to it. I don’t know what harm reduction-ing my way through this album release (and by extension, needing/feeling the need to be on my phone more) will look like. I guess writing this essay on a laptop with the night vision mode on and my phone in another room is a start.
Advice for someone wanting to disconnect/try out a dumbphone:
Do it.
xo BL
What I’m listening to —> Because It’s True by Laughing, the song “Junior” by Great Grandpa, s/t by Bon Iver, and Alligator Bites Never Heal by Doechii
What I’m watching —> I’ll say it, I’m loving Orange Is The New Black. Also the new season of Survivor just started and I’m excited for weekly watch parties with pals! And speaking of watch parties, I have plans to watch The Oscars with my best friends this weekend <33
What I’m reading —> The most adult thing I’ve done so far in 2025 is split a subscription to The New Yorker with my partner. When I was a kid, I used to skim through my dad’s old copies just for the comics, but now I actually read through them. I recently read articles about insomnia and Lorne Michaels that I liked
What I’m eating —> Tiramisu and Rio Mare tuna salad in a can (but not together, of course)
For the past 2.5 years, I’ve worked as an educator at a Montreal-based nonprofit. I lead trainings for intervention workers and at-risk groups about hep C, HIV, and other sexually transmitted blood-borne infections. I don’t talk much about my 9-5 on the internet because it feels too personal and unrelated to my music stuff (and I sometimes feel a stupid pressure to pretend that I don’t make a living in more ways than one), but I love my job. So there! I actually just gave in my notice since music is getting too busy. I’ll miss this line of work very much.
The Lightphone folks have just come out with a new phone that’s compatible in Canada, but it’s a bit too expensive and not really what I’m looking for anymore. Plus I think they did away with the e-ink technology, which was my main point of intrigue. Long live the Lightphone II.