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Updated · KQED · Apr 25UC Berkeley students organize phone-free party with games and live music at Memorial Glade
3 articles · Updated · KQED · Apr 25
- Students gathered on a sunny Friday afternoon, setting up volleyball nets, cornhole, picnic blankets, and a plywood stage for the event.
- Handwritten signs encouraged attendees to disconnect from their devices, with slogans like “Favorite app? Delete it” and “Take back your mind.”
- The event aimed to foster in-person connections and mindfulness by creating a technology-free space at the heart of the UC Berkeley campus.
Are phone-free social events a healthy new trend or a new form of social exclusion? Beyond better grades, how do classroom phone bans reshape the social dynamic of learning? Can tech be redesigned for well-being, or is its business model fundamentally manipulative? What actually happens to our brains when we finally put our phones away? Why is the most digitally native generation now leading the charge to log off? "Brain rot" was 2024's word of the year; are we facing a real cognitive crisis?