USA TODAY Reporter Trades iPhone 17 for 30 Days, Finding Balance Beyond 8-Hour Screen Time
Updated
Updated · USA TODAY · Jul 9
USA TODAY Reporter Trades iPhone 17 for 30 Days, Finding Balance Beyond 8-Hour Screen Time
2 articles · Updated · USA TODAY · Jul 9
Summary
Rachel Hale spent June using a Light Phone II instead of her iPhone 17 after her screen time sometimes topped eight hours a day.
The 30-day swap cut smartphone access but exposed practical limits: two-factor authentication, QR-code menus, digital tickets and reporting tasks still often required a smart device.
The experiment also brought repeated friction — missed texts, navigation mistakes and slower group planning — before Hale adapted with voice-to-text, handwritten directions and more phone calls.
That trade-off reflects a wider Gen Z analog shift: Dumbphone Finder traffic rose 12-fold from 2022 to 2025, while dumb.co says its flip phone user averages 24.
Hale concluded the lesson was not to abandon smartphones entirely, but to use them more intentionally after finding calmer attention and better reading focus offline.