08-07-2025
The teen 'Luddites' rethinking how they use tech ahead of Australia's under-16s social media ban
Like many young New Yorkers, Jameson Butler was 10 years old when she received her first mobile in 2017.
It was a smartphone with access to a plethora of distracting social media apps.
By 12, she was so "engrossed" in her small screen that it began to trouble her parents and, though she didn't admit it at the time, herself.
"My screen time [then] was around five to six hours, which is a pretty decent chunk of my day, especially considering the fact that I was in school for eight hours," she tells ABC Radio National's Science Friction.
So at 14, Ms Butler did something few others her age would even contemplate; she stopped scrolling, deleted her social media accounts, and gave up her smartphone.
What she discovered was that life had much more to offer her outside of a hand-held device; Ms Butler could finally pay attention to the world instead of living life vicariously through strangers on the internet.
To make sure she was still contactable in emergencies, Ms Butler bought a "dumbphone" without any apps.
"The flip phone just made so much sense," she adds.
She thought she was the only one who felt this way until she met Logan Lane, a high school student two years her senior with similar beliefs. Together they formed the Luddite Club, a group that promotes the "conscious consumption of technology" among teens and young adults.
The name is inspired by the original Luddites, textile workers in England who formed a rebellion during the Industrial Revolution, raiding factories at night to destroy the machines threatening their livelihoods.
But Ms Butler and her fellow Luddite Club members don't think of themselves as revolutionaries; their goal is simply to "empower young people and give them the tools they need to help themselves".
The idea of building safe offline spaces, especially for children, is catching on in other parts of the world.
A town in France introduced a ban on the public use of phones last year, and parents are forming community groups to prevent their children from accessing phones until they are older.
Here in Australia, a ban on under-16s accessing some social media platforms will become law in December 2025.
But who is best placed to impose these restrictions? Should it be up to governments, organisations or individuals?
Ms Butler is now 18 and isn't planning to get a smartphone for as long as possible, even if "having a flip phone in 2025 definitely make[s] … life harder in some aspects".
"Especially as we now see QR codes, links to websites everywhere. A lot of my schoolwork is online," she acknowledges.
Her dedication has surprised her parents, who didn't think her smartphone-free status was going to last.
"I definitely spend more quality time with my family. I'm more present at family dinners, I do my schoolwork faster, I have better grades, I'm more organised, I'm more on top of everything, I've become a lot less scatterbrained," she says.
The idea to unite like-minded New Yorkers in forming the Luddite Club was fuelled, in part, by Ms Butler's and Ms Lane's own experiences navigating a less tech-dependent lifestyle.
"We realised the hardest part about making that transition [is] the feelings of isolation that come with it and a lack of community," she says.
However, finding teens and young adults who share their views is difficult, with many not convinced that giving up their phones is the ticket to a better life.
Critics argue the Luddite Club is classist and that living without a phone is a privilege, given many people use it to be included in society.
"[The perception is that] … we have all these rules for Luddite Club and requirements to join, when in reality, that's not true," Ms Butler explains.
Those who do take part are only required to follow one rule at their regular Luddite Club meetings: put any devices away for the duration of the gathering.
"Other than that, the Luddite Club is very free-range and spontaneous," Ms Butler says.
"We like to keep the Luddite Club very loosely structured because we've noticed that when you take these devices and these distractions away from people, they don't need prompting, immediately meaningful conversations [are spawned]."
The Luddite Club has now expanded beyond New York to states like Florida and Philadelphia.
But the bigger issue may be spreading their message to adults.
"Now I'm the one at family dinner like, 'Mum, get off of Facebook'," the teenager says.
More than half of Australian children aged 10 to 13 own a mobile phone. And much of the debate about social media and devices recently has focused on those aged 16 and under.
High school teacher and mum Steph Challis lives in regional Victoria and is founder of The Phone Pledge program, a group of mums trying to keep their children off screens until at least 16 years of age.
She understands why some people see hypocrisy in parents and teachers telling kids not to use their phones when the adults around them are also using the devices.
But Ms Challis claims we should be setting an age limit on when to access phones because they pose a greater risk to a child's development.
"[Social media is] harming their brain; it's changing the way their brains develop, much more so than it would be for someone who's 25 and above," she says.
Part of what has prompted her to found the program is her own teaching experiences with tired students who "openly admit a lot of that [tiredness] is because of their electronic devices".
She was also inspired by Jonathan Haidt's hugely popular yet controversial book, The Anxious Generation, and a survey she did that found many parents in her district were similarly worried about their children's phone use.
"If we reach parents that were probably going to give their children a smartphone and a TikTok account in grade five [age 10], and they decide to wait until year seven and year eight, that's still progress and that's still something to be celebrated," she says.
Anna Lembke is a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and describes the compulsive overconsumption of digital media as a "collective problem" that requires "collective solutions".
"It's not enough to just moderate the content or try to limit our time, we need actual physical spaces and times when we all come together with no internet connection," she says.
She notes that it's amazing that in "this day and age you can have a spiritual experience just by not carrying your phone with you".
"Comedy clubs, music events, all kinds of people are really recognising that what makes for a meaningful gathering of humans is the extent to which they are psychologically investing in the moment."
A small French town 50 kilometres south of Paris is going one step further by imposing a local smartphone ban on everyone, regardless of age.
Seine Port is home to 2,000 people. Its mayor, Vincent Paul-Petit from the right-wing party Les Républicains, introduced the scheme, which passed a referendum with a slim margin of 54 per cent in favour last year.
Individuals are discouraged from scrolling outside the school gates, in shops, cafes, restaurants, parks and even footpaths.
"[The ban] was a form of provocation to help everyone wake up to this social issue, which is a huge issue, a huge social difficulty," the mayor says.
It has been welcomed by some.
"The shopkeepers are very happy with the progress we've felt in the town. They've all put a sticker inside their stores, a big sticker, saying 'screen-free spaces, smartphone-free spaces'," Mr Paul-Petit says.
"They appreciate being able to interact with their customers."
But not long after the success of the referendum, Mr Paul-Petit discovered he didn't have the power to prohibit smartphone use, so the "ban" has been replaced by a voluntary charter.
And he admits there are some who don't want to follow it.
"[People] say: 'Hide your phone, the mayor is coming.' … It's rather amusing," he says.
Time will tell whether other places follow Mr Paul-Petit's lead. But the debate remains as to whose role it is to limit smartphone and social media use.
For example, when legislation was passed in 2024 banning under-16s from accessing some social media, media reports claimed it set "Australia up as a test case for a growing number of governments which have legislated, or have said they plan to legislate, an age restriction on social media". The ban will not take effect until the end of the year.
But critics — including Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X — claim the move is a "backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians".
Professor Lembke has praised the Australian government's approach and says when she talked about banning smartphones from schools 15 years ago, "people looked at me like it was absolutely crazy".
"Now it's happening, so I'm super hopeful. Humans are adaptable," she says.
Others are more sceptical about whether social media age restrictions will be followed by young people. A few teens impacted by the ban say they will find a "secret" way to continue to use social media platforms.
Jameson Butler says these decisions should be left to individuals.
The choice to consume less technology should be "consensual and empowering", she adds, and not the result of a ban.
"I remember honestly being very annoyed every time my parents would try to tell me how bad the smartphone was because it was just … so entertaining," she says.
"I didn't want to put it down … And despite all the times my parents tried to warn me and tried to limit my screen time, it wasn't until I reached the conclusion that my phone had been harming me … that I really decided to do something about it."
She says that's part of the reason why she and her friends formed the Luddite Club.
"What sets us apart from other, offline organisations and foundations … [is] a lot of them centre around parents and parenting," she says.
"[But] we see that kids are really not going to always listen to their parents."
