I’ve been reading a lot of pieces lately on the virtue of unplugging. Of downgrading our devices and getting offline. A recent Washington Post article detailed a group of would-be neo-luddites experimenting with a Month Offline which included an oath, a makeshift lock box for your smartphone, and a TCL flip phone with a replacement phone number and T9 texting instructions. The irony wasn’t lost on me that I’d purchased the same phone last month in my own attempt to reshape my relationship with modern technology. The article in turn led me to August Lamm, an “anti-tech activist” who has almost 200,000 followers across Twitter, Instagram, and Substack. One of her most recent viral articles is about selling her laptop and committing to only using a computer at the public library.

These are all wonderful ideas. But they are also privileged and exclusionary.

In the early 2000s, only about half of U.S. adults were online. Today that number is more than 96% due in no small part to smartphones and the ability to carry the internet around in your pocket. While nearly all U.S. households have access to the internet, only about 80% have a desktop or laptop computer at home, and this division is drawn clearly along racial and socioeconomic lines:

“Over 99% of households earning $150,000 or more annually had some sort of computing device, compared to 85% of households making less than $25,000…

Households with a Black householder were the least likely to own a computer of any type or to have a broadband subscription…

Smartphone-only households (which accessed the internet only through mobile broadband) were more likely to make $25,000 or less annually, be headed by someone 65 years and over or to have a Black or Hispanic householder.”
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2024)

Having reliable access to the internet, especially at home, is a privilege. Smartphones have exceeded desktop computers and laptops as the primary computing device since 2017, and there are many people whose only option is to use the internet on a smartphone or in a public space like the library. For some people, opting out isn’t a choice or an aesthetic.

None of this is to criticize anti-tech activists and dumbphone acolytes. Their efforts are admirable. They’re just not necessarily practicable for most people, and the cynic in me thinks that’s kind of the point. These projects are exclusive by nature. The Month Offline literally includes a secret password.

Anything that challenges the status quo is going to be exclusionary and any kind of abstention from the norm is going to be inconvenient. It’s a privilege to afford inconvenience. This is the case for all kinds of things like abstaining from eating meat or only buying books from independent booksellers. The tech oligarchs know this. They know that when we are inundated with the responsibilities of life and barely scraping by, the last thing we’re going to do is introduce more inconvenience into our lives. It isn’t wrong to take the path of least resistance. What’s wrong is exploiting it and judging it.

Physical Media and an Analog Life

I’ve carved out a niche community on the internet as a collector and preserver of physical media, and here’s my confession: There’s a reason physical media became obsolete. There’s a reason we stopped using iPods and signed up for Spotify. There’s a reason we stopped going to Blockbuster and signed up for Netflix. There’s a reason we stopped using single use devices and consolidated everything into a tiny computer we can carry in our pockets. And that reason is it’s inconvenient. It is inconvenient to go to the video store (which probably no longer exists) to rent a movie or to visit the public library to check out a DVD only to find that it’s already been checked out. It’s inconvenient (and costly) to purchase and store hundreds of CDs, then to figure out a way to copy them to your computer in order to transfer them to your MP3 player. It’s inconvenient to carry multiple devices to communicate, listen to music, read the news, take photographs, or navigate the world. This is by design. Corporations know that we will take the path of least resistance, especially if we’re faced with multiple obstacles along the way. They sell us convenience, but it comes at the price of our autonomy over things.

I was interviewed recently by Rolling Stone about my thoughts on why we’re seeing a resurgence of physical media, and one of the things I spoke about was this unwritten expectation that everything is available online. I’m not so concerned about older media that existed in physical form – most of that isn’t truly lost. I’m concerned about the “born digital” content that has only ever existed electronically and can disappear at the click of a button. Willow on Disney+ is my go-to example for this. There is no way to legally access that show. Not only is everything not available online, but what is available is rapidly declining in quality and reliability.

AI is an Ouroboros

With the infiltration of AI into every aspect of our lives, I think we’re going to see a resurgence of analog tech, offline experiences, and calls for uniquely human creative outputs for the exact same reasons these digital tools became ubiquitous in the first place. I can’t google something without getting an AI-generated summary that is often as inaccurate as it is authoritative. I can’t scroll through Instagram and TikTok without seeing an AI-generated video of an opossum being scared by an animatronic witch or a housecat defending a child against a black bear. I can’t look up recommendations for books without running the risk that they may not exist. AI is rapidly making the internet inconvenient. Will AI eventually become convenient and seamlessly integrated into our online experiences? Probably, but Altman et al. have jumped the shark by flooding our feeds with obstacles that are quickly making these tools unusable. It’s time to start thinking about what comes next.

My argument mirrors the anti-tech activists and dumbphone acolytes, and, for what it’s worth, I’m currently conducting my own experiment of downgrading my phone and living a more analog life. We have to get comfortable with being a little bit uncomfortable for the things that matter to us. But we also have to acknowledge that being able to do that is a tremendous privilege many cannot afford. Moral judgements about the virtues of being offline or off social media won’t inspire any kind of lasting change. Opting out is a privilege reminiscent of the 1st class passengers fleeing the Titanic in droves while the majority of 3rd class passengers perished (62% of 1st class passengers survived while only 25% of 3rd class passengers made it). Like Molly Brown, I am determined to turn the lifeboats around to save more people, and I think the only way we can do that is by changing the status quo to make opting out more convenient, equitable, and accessible.

What are your thoughts on the push for offline experiences and downgraded tech? Please feel free to leave a comment.