Recently, Mr. Vadukul caught up with them again. In “Now in College, Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes,” Mr. Vadukul writes about where the teens are today:
Two years later, I’m still asked about them. People want to know: Did they stay on the Luddite path? Or were they dragged back into the tech abyss?
I put those questions to three of the original members — Ms. Watling, Jameson Butler and Logan Lane, the club’s founder — when they took some time from their winter school breaks to gather at one of their old hangouts, Central Library in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.
They said they still had disdain for social media platforms and the way they ensnare young people, pushing them to create picture-perfect online identities that have little do with their authentic selves.
They said they still relied on flip phones and laptops, rather than smartphones, as their main concessions to an increasingly digital world. And they reported that their movement was growing, with offshoots at high schools and colleges in Seattle, West Palm Beach, Fla., Richmond, Va., South Bend, Ind., and Washington, D.C.
The Luddite Club is better organized these days, they said, with an uncluttered website to help spread the word. Ms. Lane, 19, is in the last stages of turning it into a registered nonprofit organization.
“We’ve even got a mission statement now,” said Ms. Lane, who is studying Russian literature at Oberlin College. “We like to say we’re a team of former screenagers connecting young people to the communities and knowledge to conquer big tech’s addictive agendas.”
Despite growing interest in the Luddite Club, some of its original members reported having conceded to smartphones because of changes to their lives brought on by college:
Unlike her fellow students, who do their banking on their smartphones, Ms. Watling uses A.T.M.s like a baby boomer. She said her biggest challenge was navigating dating and nightlife.
“Raves are big in Philly, and it’s a big part of student life at Temple,” she said. “You can end up in the middle of nowhere in some abandoned building for the rave everyone’s going to. I can’t go if I don’t know I’ll get home safely.”
She slowly pulled something from her satchel — a second phone, an Android.
“I own this now with a sense of inner torture,” Ms. Watling said, “but I have to look out for my well-being as a young woman. It’s too risky for me to put my life in the hands of a flip phone.”
She stressed that the smartphone was not part of her everyday life: “I use it only when I need to, mostly for Uber,” she said. “I’ve tried Hinge, too, but always delete it.”
And others have completely rejoined the digital world, including Lola Shub, who said she “started using a smartphone again pretty much the day I started college”:
“It’s constant access again,” Ms. Shub said. “It’s the relief of knowing I can do things easier. I got Instagram, too, and it’s been nice reconnecting with people on it.
“But then you get used to it all, is the problem,” she continued. “I feel like I’m not trying as hard anymore. When I had the flip phone, I had to put in effort to get to places, to talk to people. Everything was a task. Now it’s easy to do things. I guess I still don’t like needing the crutch of a smartphone, though I couldn’t figure out how to go on without one.”
Students, read the entire article and, if you like, the original article about the Luddite Club. Then tell us:
What is your reaction to the Luddite Club? Had you heard of the movement before reading the article? Is there a chapter at your own school? Would you want there to be one?
If you own a smartphone, could you see yourself giving it up like these teens did, whether for an hour at a time or more permanently? Why or why not?
If you don’t have a smartphone, is that a choice you made or one your parents made for you? Are you happy about it? What benefits, if any, have you seen from being unplugged?
Some of the original Luddite Club members felt that going to college made it harder for them to get by with their flip phones. Do you think there is an age or time in life when it’s easier to live with less technology? Are you that age now? If not, when did it become impossible to live without a smartphone? What tasks made it necessary to have technology at your fingertips?
Do you think people should be concerned about their reliance on technology? Or is it just a part of life today?
Logan Lane, the founder of the Luddite Club, in a talk she gave on technology’s effects on society, said: “For the youth of today, the developmental experience has been polluted; it’s been cheapened. ‘Who am I?’ becomes ‘How do I appear?’” Does that statement ring true for you and your friends? Do you ever wonder what life would be like if social media had never been invented? Do you ever wonder what you would be like without it?
