Do you ever look at your phone and be really honest with yourself about how much time you spend scrolling on this thing? And full disclaimer, I am just as guilty. And more and more of us, it seems, are craving a way to beat the addiction.

Is it really hot back there during the summers?

Running a barbershop, Lizzie already had her hands pretty full.

I kept reaching for my phone, and I think a lot of friends even were like, I don't even know why I reach for it. It's like email, Instagram, text, and I think that's where it can get really overwhelming.

So she made a change, investing in an old-school Nokia flip phone.

It helped me recalibrate my own habits. I had way more quality time with my son. It's crazy when you think about it. A lot of us, the best of best of best parents, you still get distracted.

Now she says she's found a healthy balance, an iPhone for the business during the day, but switching it off after work and having the flip phone for calls and texts from close friends and family. What about when he starts asking for a phone? What do you think you'll do?

It doesn't feel like the best idea to go just straight to a smartphone. Just feel like, again, we're handing over while their brains are still developing this the world. Try to figure out how to navigate that.

The growing number of customers that want to scale back their screen time still have different requirements as to what low-tech device they're actually after. There's still quite a lot of choices out there. Daisy and Will from their home in Los Angeles have started up done wireless to sell low-tech devices and help people who want to revert back to a somewhat simpler existence.

We get all sorts of phone calls. We'll talk to anybody, but we also have a lot of parents looking to get their kid that first phone, and also people in their 20s and 30s that want to make a lifestyle change.

I'd say almost everyone comes in with a list of criteria, including apps that they desperately want to hold on to. And they're like, If I could only have a phone that has this, this, this. But that list is different for everyone. There is no Perfect dumb phone for everyone because there's just something that works best for different people.

Is it going to get more popular or do you think this will stay really niche?

Well, I think almost all the investment is still in smartphones, especially for the North American market. But 2025, it looks like there will be more competition and some more compelling options.

While Will still uses a smartphone for the business, Daisy has completely done away with hers and uses a dumb phone model which only does calls texts, podcasts, and has a map for directions.

I thought that I would miss more from my smartphone. I thought that I might even find myself switching back from time to time. I don't I can't really miss anything because I was so sick of it that I wanted to do something drastic, and I wanted to just put it behind me.

Just talking to these two, it makes me feel like I would love to do away with my addiction to this thing. But even as we're filming here, I'm getting breaking news alerts, things I need to know about. So as a journalist, I don't think I'm getting rid of this phone just yet.

This may look like a smartphone, but it's It's so much better.

A new phone being launched this summer will allow some functional third-party apps like Uber, but without ones that it believes feed unhealthy screen time. A pure and simple phone that has the tools I need, but a voice What is the distractions that I don't.

I turn it on and it has nine apps, and there's no app icons. It's just words, and it's very peaceful. It's very tranquil. We're asking this critical question, what's actually good for us? And that's what we're putting on our phone instead of just anything and everything that might be convenient for us, but it's actually sucking the life out of us.

Why aren't the big phone companies also jumping on this trend?

Simply said, they built themselves on the attention economy. The app store revenue for Apple is billions, billions of dollars. And Google, same thing, billions of dollars. If they were to come out with something like what we had, it would cannibalize their market. I don't think they love what they're doing to the world, but they have no choice. And so they're stuck in the attention economy. So it takes a new, bold company with a different vision, different incentives, and different investors to come along to change the model.

Back at Lizzie's Barbershop, it's clear phone usage is a common anxiety.

Outfitting the sprinter vans.

How addicted do you think you are?

I think I am addicted. I'm addicted, probably an eight out of 10, but I realize it. I know it, but I'm definitely addicted.

How many hours do you think you spend on your smartphone?

I get a little message periodically that says I'm at four and a half hours now, daily.

That's a big part of your day. It is, but I'm down from seven hours plus. So to me, I'm evolving in the right direction.

Probably six to eight hours a day, to be honest. I'm trying to cut it down. I just deleted some apps on my phone to try to cut that down. It's a good question right now. Interesting. But I got to a point where I realized it was more than it needed to be.

What did you delete?

I deleted Instagram and I deleted Facebook.

Our devices give us a connection to the world like never before. But a return to dumb phones shows that more and more of us are concluding that a smartphone's greatest strength has become our greatest weakness.