Gen Z's new anti-tech rebellion: making eye contact and listening to each other

Jameson Butler hated how much time she spent on her smartphone, so over the pandemic, she ditched it for a flip phone.

It was meant to be a temporary “social media cleanse.” Years later, the 19-year-old still hasn’t gone back. “Immediately, the quality of my life increased so dramatically,” she said during a meetup of like-minded tech skeptics in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park on Sunday. “I was like, oh my God, we’ve all been sold this lie that we have to have phones.” Butler cofounded the Luddite Club in 2021, a group whose members meet weekly in the city to discuss literature, life, and the pitfalls of technology.

For its members, each meeting is a rare couple of hours where they can experience social connection that isn’t set up by an Instagram DM or a text blast.

In some meetings, the group goes on walks or does scavenger hunts around the city.

In others, they smash iPads into the concrete and wear pointy paper hats.

In every meeting, the group hopes to show people that life offline is fulfilling, organic, and fun. “We found the phone and the social media and the constant communication technology so invasive to our lives,” said cofounder Logan Lane, a 21-year-old student at Oberlin College.

There were about 20 Luddites who showed up at the park.

They sat in the grass and talked about literature and their apartments, a time-honored conversation topic in New York City.

The raucous din of a nearby street hockey game occasionally interrupted conversations about “Animal Farm” and other classics.

It was Eddie Friedland’s first meeting.

A 22-year-old art teacher, he said he decided to join because he felt he was spending too much time on Instagram Reels. “I’m thinking about giving up on the phone,” Friedland said. “I’m up all night on Reels.” Barrett Shepard, a 20-year-old Brooklyn resident and longtime Luddite, listened as Friedland laid out his problem. “You just coming here and finding out about this makes that almost a shifting in the way you’re thinking,” Shepard told him. “That’s what I think is really cool.” The club, which takes its name from the mythical leader of a group of British artisans who protested the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s by destroying textile machinery, has grown in prominence at a time when Gen Z is responding with growing scorn to artificial intelligence and social media, innovations they say cheapen their lives and detract from human-to-human connection.

In a Gallup poll released in April, 31% of Gen Z respondents (those born between 1997 and 2012) reported feeling “anger” toward AI, up from 22% a year before.

In a Pew Research study released Tuesday, 55% of Americans under 30 reported feeling more concerned than excited about AI.

Anti-tech reactionaries have put garbage bags over AI-powered Flock cameras, which read license plates to aid law enforcement.

Online content creators who advertise or use AI are facing backlash from their audiences.

And Americans are rallying across the country to protest AI data centers.

The members of the Luddite club differ in how they put their anti-tech values into practice.

Not everyone has a flip phone, for example, and Lane said the group isn’t dogmatically against technology. “Historical Luddites are constantly misinterpreted as totally anti-technology, and we’re not totally anti-technology,” she said. “We’re anti-technology that is not helpful to our lives.” Lane, Butler, and a few others comprise a group of more hardcore Luddite members who have done away with smartphones altogether.

Some members of this group prefer a model of flip phone with no app store and only the barest abilities. “Just call, text, photos, and there’s a notes app,” Butler said.

Some, like Ryan Bailey, have more radical concerns about a future surveillance state powered by artificial intelligence. “I’ve hated modern technology for a long time,” the 40-year-old Manhattan resident said. “More people are catching onto that now.” Not everyone at the gathering said they were ready to give up their smartphones.

Miquel Enrigue, a 30-year-old freelance filmmaker who lives in Brooklyn, said social media is the only reliable way for him to find gigs. “What I would really like is to be able to survive without it,” he said of platforms like Instagram. “But it’s just increasingly more difficult.” Even Bailey said he keeps an Instagram page to find events and shows in the city.

Lane said that being part of the club involves “constant experimenting” to find what level of tech works best for each member.

Shepard uses a flip phone when possible, but also uses a laptop at college to complete assignments. “I don’t think Luddism is having a flip phone,” Shepard said. “The flip phone is a cool thing to pull out, but it doesn’t change any habits.” Shepard uses the phone solely to organize meetings with friends.

Shepard recalled, with admiration, the stories passed down by parents about their teenage years, when they met friends by chance on the street. “You live in a city with public space and places to meet,” Shepard said. “You don’t need technology.” Mayla Burnstein, a 20-year-old Kindergarten teacher in Manhattan, said the Luddite meetings help people “relearn” basic skills they lost growing up with their noses in screens, like how to look others in the eye and be fully present in a conversation. “Big tech has made us feel very inward-facing, and that becomes very self-isolating,” she said. “Those moments where we manage to turn outward, and to observe, engage, and interact – that’s where that shows up.”