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Want to quit your smartphone? Join this club.

On HALO

2 weeks ago

For the past few months, a shadowy company called Dumb and Co. has been convincing people in Washington, DC, to ditch their smartphones for a month. It’s part of a project called Month Offline, where participants get a flip phone and access to a support group to talk about algorithms, doomscrolling, and why smartphones make us feel so lonely. This isn’t just another digital detox retreat. To me, it sounds more like a hip social club. The home base is a bar called Hush Harbor, the first phone-free bar in DC, and early on, the experience of joining involved calling a 1-800 number and...