NEW YORK (AP) — Over a dozen young adults met in a Brooklyn brownstone, depositing their smartphones into a metal bowl before spending two hours engaged in reading, sketching, and face-to-face discussions — deliberately avoiding any screen time.
A comparable gathering occurred nearby in a converted early 1900s cardboard manufacturing facility that now serves as upscale office space. About 20 participants in their thirties gazed at their mobile devices briefly, then set them aside to examine their empty hands and those of fellow attendees.
This activity aimed to emphasize the value of focusing on actual experiences rather than the bright digital displays that dominate modern existence.
Twenty years following Steve Jobs’ introduction of the iPhone, a modest yet dedicated movement — with branches in multiple nations — is pushing back against ubiquitous screens.
“The products have become more insidious and more extractive, exploitative,” said Dan Fox, 38, who hosted the house gathering. Members of the nascent movement “want to start a revolution,” he said.
However, can this “attention activism” campaign led by millennials and Generation Z challenge the world’s biggest corporations? Statistics suggest otherwise. Yet cultural shifts begin modestly, and opposition is mounting against what many term “human fracking.”
Apple and other major technology companies claim they’ve implemented measures to help users limit device usage, including tracking tools and a less appealing grayscale display option.
Campaign organizers argue these efforts fall short.
“They want to take down Big Tech,” says Fox, a stand-up comedian who works in marketing for Brooklyn-based Light Phone, one of several “dumb phones” with only basic functionality.
Contrary to typical modern devices, the company highlights what its phones don’t include, such as “social media, clickbait news, email, an internet browser, or any other anxiety-inducing infinite feed.”
Fox became motivated to join the cause after attending a 2015 Tame Impala performance at Radio City Music Hall. He observed that virtually every audience member was recording the show on their devices rather than experiencing the music directly.
“I realized the phones are literally getting in the way of the things I love,” Fox said.
Wireless internet connectivity has become so integrated into daily life that among the rare places without ready access is wartime Iran, where officials disabled internet service during widespread demonstrations in January.
D. Graham Burnett serves as a science historian at Princeton University and co-authored “Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement,” establishing him as a key figure in the expanding resistance to corporate exploitation of human focus.
Combined with MSNBC host Chris Hayes’ popular book “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” his research contributes to increasing scholarship encouraging people to step away from screens and engage with reality.
Burnett describes the “attention liberation movement” as breaking free from time-consuming applications. Individuals “need to rewild their attention. Their attention is the fullness of their relationship to the world.”
Participants in Fox’s apartment began the session with personal introductions, resembling a recovery meeting.
“I don’t feel good about my relationship with my phone. I feel like an addict,” said Riley Soloner, who teaches theatrical clowning and works as an usher at Carnegie Hall. He arrived with a backpack full of books — the paper kind.
Overseas in the Netherlands, attendees gathered in a neo-Gothic cathedral recently for an Offline Club session.
“We create our events and gatherings with different themes. One of them is connecting with yourself through creative activities or reading or writing or puzzling,” said co-founder Ilya Kneppelhout. “Really something that makes you slow down and reflect, go inward.”
Dozens of “attention activism” organizations exist throughout the United States and Canada, with the movement also emerging in Spain, Italy, Croatia, France and England. Burnett anticipates further expansion.
Students at Oberlin College’s Harkness Housing and Dining Co-op chose to operate their organization without digital communication and spreadsheets in January, extending to prohibit technology in common areas of the 1950s brick structure.
“People expressed a feeling of relief about not needing to be checking their emails, or checking their texts or checking the news. That allowed us to spend a lot of time just talking to each other,” said junior Ozzie Frazier, 21.
Throughout the month-long cooperative experiment, Frazier noted that residents began borrowing CDs from the library and participating in craft evenings, live performances and the word game Bananagrams.
“A lot of people felt very connected to each other. Not having the devices gave them some kind of mental space,” Frazier said.
Wilhelm Tupy discovered “Attensity” while browsing a Vienna bookstore and visited the School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn’s DUMBO area during a recent trip.
He believed he had found something connecting his athletic background as a judo champion — requiring concentrated “flow” — with his current role as a business advisor.
“Discipline is not enough nowadays,” he said. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep the attention and to keep the focus on goals and whatever you want to achieve and want to do.”
