When Jenna decided to ditch her smartphone last summer, she wasn’t expecting it to make her feel more beautiful. Like many, she was simply fed up with the mindless scrolling that left her with the lingering feeling that she was missing out on her real life. So, she purchased a ‘dumbphone’ with no social media apps and limited functionality; a phone that could make calls and send texts, but does little else. Six months on, the choice has transformed how she feels about her appearance. Now, when Jenna looks within the mirror she seems like she looks younger and more attractive than she did this time last 12 months. Meanwhile, she has stopped wearing make-up almost entirely.
Everyone knows by now that social media can wreak havoc on our self-esteem. A 2024 report by Dove’s Self-Esteem Project found that 90 per cent of ladies aged 10-17 follow at the least one social media account that makes them feel less beautiful. Meanwhile, a 2023 study found that a shocking one in seven 16-24-year-olds had considered ending their lives in consequence of comparing themselves with others on social media platforms. While the same old advice is to set social media deadlines or unfollow accounts that make you’re feeling bad, a growing movement of digital minimalists is selecting a path many consider more extreme. They’re eliminating their smartphones altogether.
The term ‘dumbphone’ was coined within the Eighties, but Google searches for the word have sharply increased since 2022, reaching peak popularity in June 2024, across the time that Jenna made the switch. In 2024, a consumer report found that 28 per cent of Gen Z and 26 per cent of millennials were inquisitive about acquiring a dumbphone. Eliminating your smartphone is a strategy to claim back the time you’ll otherwise spend scrolling, but one other positive side effect has emerged. Many report feeling higher and more confident concerning the way they give the impression of being after distancing themselves from social media and smartphones. In brief, quitting your smartphone could make you’re feeling more beautiful even in case your physical appearance stays the identical.
Many report feeling higher and more confident concerning the way they give the impression of being after distancing themselves from social media and smartphones
Beauty trends have long been defined and accelerated by social media. Filters revolutionised the way in which we present ourselves and see others online, influencing cosmetic surgery trends and promoting unrealistically exaggerated features. Micro-aesthetics and sweetness hauls have sped up overconsumption, often increasing feelings of inadequacy, ugliness and low self-esteem in the method. Since Apple introduced the primary smartphone selfie camera in 2010, the potential for checking your appearance or snapping a fast selfie hums in our pockets in any respect times. Phone cameras have increased the potential for constant surveillance and self-criticism, creating pressure to be always perfecting your appearance, something we’re told requires an investment in make-up, skincare and cosmetic procedures. In case your smartphone makes you’re feeling ugly, you’re not alone.
“Social media made it feel like I needed to be perfect and attractive on a regular basis, or else I used to be faking it,” says Ashley, 20, who has been using a dumbphone since last autumn. “Once I had a smartphone, every spare moment was spent tucked into it, especially in latest or awkward situations,” she continues. “Now that I’m now not capable of tuck myself into the comfort of social media, a whole lot of people-watching goes on. The variability of attractiveness I see in real life means I even have a greater idea of the actual ‘conventional’ attractiveness of the typical population slightly than ‘the elite’ people on my phone – you don’t often get popular on social media unless you’re at the least somewhat bit attractive.”
Psychologist Jola Jovani points to the Social Comparison Theory to elucidate this. “The speculation suggests that individuals measure their very own price through the remark of others,” she notes. “Through using social media, you’ll often encounter people’s best version of themselves with angles, lighting, make-up, clothing and editing that’s good. In self-monitoring by switching to older devices, individuals are reducing the constant barrage and frequency of exposure to standards that will not be representative of the typical person, body or lifestyle.”
While people in real life can provide a more balanced and realistic view of beauty, Elle, 19, has found that quitting her smartphone made her care less about external beauty altogether. “I even have more time to learn who I’m,” she says. “I even have more hobbies; crocheting, knitting, journaling, reading, baking and finding four-leaf clovers. When I believe of myself, I can point to those things and so they make me feel more beautiful, although they haven’t got anything to do with my appearance. I even have a bigger sense of self.”
Our constant access to social media, our own faces and people of others, has promoted a latest level of unattainable beauty that could make us feel more insecure than ever.
On a person level, it’s clear that quitting your smartphone could make you’re feeling more beautiful by reducing the variety of opportunities for self-comparison and self-criticism while allowing more time for activities that de-prioritise physical beauty. On a wider scale, the dumbphone trend is reflective of a broader dissatisfaction and burnout from mainstream social media platforms. Following Donald Trump’s inauguration, it has turn out to be clearer than ever before that tech billionaires will not be acting in our greatest interests. Tens of millions of users have been deleting their social media accounts or, on the very least, expressing a desire to.
Dr Lisa Strohman suggests that this wider social media exodus could prompt a general shift in beauty trends even when the dumbphone revolution never fully arrives. “The plastic surgeons that I even have interviewed said they love social media filters,” she explains, “since it’s much easier to take your core structure as an individual with a filter and make that realistic, versus showing up and saying, I would like to appear like Kim Kardashian. If more individuals are opting out of social media and filters, I believe cosmetic surgery trends and subsequently beauty standards could shift.”
In fact, beauty standards existed long before smartphones and they’ll persevere even when all of us quit our phones tomorrow. Yet it’s undeniable that our constant access to social media, our own faces and those of others, has promoted a latest level of unattainable beauty that could make us feel more insecure than ever. Dumbphone users is perhaps on to something. Even though it’s prone to remain a fringe movement when our smartphones are so enmeshed in our lives, it’s hopeful to know that the choice exists. Wherever you lie on the spectrum of digital minimalism, the advantages of reducing the time spent glued to our smartphones are clear. So, the following time you’re feeling ugly after scrolling on TikTok all night, remember to take a step back. It’s not you. It truly is that rattling phone.
