This Is How You Log Off

As the summer comes to an end, we’re thinking about what unplugging—the ultimate luxury—looks like in 2025. With a growing slate of apps aiming to reduce our screen time and some tech leaders trying to reinvent the internet as it was, where are we heading? WIRED’s features editor Jason Kehe joins us to discuss how as users we are now best positioned to take the power back.

Mentioned in this episode:
Going Dumb: My Year With a Flip Phone by Jason Kehe
Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet by Kate Knibbs
Alexis Ohanian’s Next Social Platform Has One Rule: Don’t Act Like an Asshole by Katie Drummond

Join us live in San Francisco on September 9. Get your tickets here.

You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight and Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode. Write to us at [email protected].

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Michael Calore: Hey, this is Mike. Before we start, I want to share some exciting news with you. We're doing a live show in San Francisco on September 9th in partnership with the local station, KQED. Lauren and I will sit down with our editor in chief, Katie Drummond, and we'll have a special guest joining us for a conversation that you will not want to miss. You can use the link in the show notes to grab your ticket and invite a friend. We cannot wait to see you there. Lauren, how you doing?

Lauren Goode: I am great. I made a little late-night purchase last night when I was browsing on the internet.

Michael Calore: You made a late-night purchase?

Lauren Goode: Mm-hmm. Do you want to know what it is?

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: It's not what Reese talked about before on this show.

Michael Calore: What is it?

Lauren Goode: I bought a Brick.

Michael Calore: You bought a brick?

Lauren Goode: Do you know what a Brick is?

Michael Calore: It's a thing that they use many of to build buildings.

Lauren Goode: Not that. It's a little silicone device that you attach to your fridge or some other surface in your home that's away from your bedroom, and then you tap your phone to it at night, and it automatically disables certain apps that you've preset it to. Then when you get into bed, you're not doomscrolling on your phone because you literally cannot access those apps. It's a physical block.

Michael Calore: It bricks your phone.

Lauren Goode: Bricks your phone.

Michael Calore: Well, that's cool.

Lauren Goode: I heard our colleague, Adrienne, talking about it a bunch, and I was like, “You know what? I'm going to do it.”

Michael Calore: What happens if there's an emergency?

Lauren Goode: You die. But you know what? You're not scrolling Instagram Reels when you do it.

Michael Calore: You wouldn't know because your phone ... It doesn't like that-

Lauren Goode: It's just bliss from ... Yes. You go to phone heaven.

Michael Calore: Well, that sounds very much on topic for today's show.

Lauren Goode: It is. I really think we should talk about this, because our phone addictions and our internet addictions are getting worse, and we've got to figure out the future.

Michael Calore: We do. Let's get started. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today, we are talking about the future of unplugging. Going off the grid, being offline, whatever you want to call it, it remains an aspirational goal for many of us. Apps like Opal and even physical devices like Lauren's Brick, which temporarily block distracting apps from your phone, are becoming increasingly popular. Here's the thing with these products, though. They still put a lot of the onus on us, the users, when, in fact, we're deeply locked into a much larger system that is designed to keep us completely attached to our technology. Technology is inescapable now, and we often read stories or report on them ourselves here at WIRED about people going back to flip phones or landlines or the entrepreneurs who are determined to revive some early-2000s era of the internet, which we'll get into. But our question for this episode is, who really in the future gets to unplug? Does unplugging just become the ultimate luxury? And how do the rest of us do it? I'm Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture.

Lauren Goode: I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior correspondent.

Jason Kehe: And I'm Jason Kehe, features editor and all-around Übermensch.

Michael Calore: Thank you for being here, Jason.

Lauren Goode: Jason is in the middle of closing the print issue of our magazine, which just means the next two weeks are very hectic, and we really had to twist his arm to come into studio today. We are super appreciative of this.

Jason Kehe: And surely our beloved listeners have been clamoring for my return to the podcast.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: They have. Emails every-

Jason Kehe: And for them, at least, I'm happy to be here.

Michael Calore: And thank you for unplugging and coming into the room with us. I want to start off by putting our cards on the table. What is everybody's daily average phone screen time, to the best of your knowledge?

Jason Kehe: I actually checked this recently, and I'm so pleased to report mine is under an hour a day.

Michael Calore: Wow.

Jason Kehe: I was in the company of, I think, three other people. One was at three hours, one at five, and another at nine. I, of course, won that-

Lauren Goode: Wait. Do you mean less than an hour on social media?

Jason Kehe: I checked the digital wellness setting or whatever it is, and it said average 59 minutes for everything, and it showed me 20 minutes on email, seven minutes on text, or whatever it was. Yes, that is my daily average.

Michael Calore: How does that compare to yours, Lauren?

Lauren Goode: I'm stunned. I don't even know what to say. Well, I originally was going to say I refuse to answer this question, Mike, not because I don't love you both, but I just feel no one really cares about my screen time. Mostly, it's because I feel what matters more is how crappy I feel after I have spent too much time scrolling Instagram and other social media sites. It's a qualitative analysis, not quantitative.

Jason Kehe: But what is the quantitative number?

Lauren Goode: I don't know. Hours. Hours holistically, not just social media, of course, because I'm constantly reading online, and I'm constantly texting, and I'm constantly texting with sources. Not just friends and my mom, but actual sources on multiple messaging apps. It's a lot. What about you, Mike? How much time are you online?

Michael Calore: A little over two hours a day.

Lauren Goode: I am going to look it up. Oh, my God.

Jason Kehe: What is it? What is it?

Lauren Goode: Oh, my God.

Jason Kehe: On-air reveal.

Lauren Goode: Eight hours and 43 minutes.

Jason Kehe: Incredible.

Michael Calore: What? Daily average? That is a lot of time.

Lauren Goode: It's mostly Safari, Slack, and messages, which tracks.

Jason Kehe: But back to the conversation I was having with friends recently about our screen time, the one who was at nine hours, the closest to you, was weirdly the most at peace with her phone use. I just recently subscribed to the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle so that I don't have to look at news on my phone. I'm really in an unbundling. I think we should disaggregate our technological lives. The phone wants to be everything, but what if you just re-atomize your life into dedicated experiences and devices? Buy an alarm clock. Buy a GPS for your car. Subscribe to a newspaper.

Michael Calore: These are things that a lot of people are actually doing as solutions to the problem of spending too much time on their phone, when, in fact, they were just what we did before we had phones. My screen time used to be a lot worse. I took active measures to curb it, and then I have this new thing now where, whenever I'm eating a meal or watching a television show or something, I just turn my phone upside down, and it automatically silences notifications, puts it to sleep, and basically puts it into Do Not Disturb mode. And then when I want to, I can pick it up.

Lauren Goode: You are also one of the few people I know, Mike, who actually abides by those time limits that you set on Instagram. Sometimes I'll send you a meme, and you'll say, "I'll check it later because I hit my limit."

Michael Calore: I use the digital well-being settings on the Android phone to give myself 15 minutes of Instagram a day.

Lauren Goode: But I agree with what Jason's saying, because what you're describing, Mike, that is a very early 2020 solution. And we are WIRED. And what is the future of unplugging? Is it this disaggregation, as you put it? Because it's acknowledging we're not actually going to unplug. We're each going to have our own sort of approach to it. How do we actually build a life then that feels meaningful in all of the different compartments of the ways we use the internet?

Michael Calore: I have an answer. You buy a piece of technology to get you off of your technology.

Lauren Goode: Like Brick.

Michael Calore: Jason-

Lauren Goode: Jazz hands.

Michael Calore: ... you had a flip phone for an experiment for a number of months.

Jason Kehe: Yes. This was way back in 2018, I want to say.

Michael Calore: This was before the pandemic-

Jason Kehe: It was a full year, but yes.

Michael Calore: And, Lauren, you went out and bought the Brick?

Lauren Goode: I did. Hasn't arrived yet, but I'm so excited.

Michael Calore: There's also the Light phone, and there's other products like it. I think Punkt made one for a while, but basically it's a phone that works as a phone and looks like a smartphone, but it has very limited features. You can do things that you need a phone for, but very little else. I'm just curious about the Brick and about other apps that you've tried. I know there's an app called Opal that a lot of people have been using. Lauren, what is your experience with these things?

Lauren Goode: I haven't used Opal.

Jason Kehe: Nor have I. In fact, I think I kind of philosophically oppose the entire idea of using apps to get off apps or using technology to get off technology.

Michael Calore: I have to say that the apps to get you off of your apps have been very successful for me. I have used a couple of these things like the digital well-being timers on Android. Clearspace is another one that helps you get all the clutter off of your phone and keep it away from you, and it's been helpful for me.

Jason Kehe: But I guess my bigger problem is that I do think modernity has sort of conspired against the human will to perpetuate these conversations about the addictiveness of phones is to totally remove the fact that we are human beings capable of making decisions from the equation. And I don't think it's as hard as people want to believe in as the tech press, to a large degree, has contributed to. I resist these conversations, because I think, whether or not you're saying phones are addictive, the mere fact of you saying it adds to their power and their grip and their hold over our lives, and we think our connection to them is inevitable and unbreakable.

Lauren Goode: I'm so glad we brought you on today. No, I'm genuinely glad, though. Here's my thing, is that I think we've become beta testers. There's this promise right now from the purveyors of technology that agentic AI is going to start doing some of these tasks for us. I won't spend an hour shopping because I'm going to put in a prompt what I need, and then it's going to order it for me. In the meantime, that requires so much babysitting and so much hand holding and so much authentication and all these handshakes between apps and stuff. It's going to be that way for a while. It's still just sucking us in further with this promise that it's going to make our lives easier. In the meantime, we're mired in it.

Jason Kehe: AI will eventually kill the phone or at least our understanding of what a phone is right now.

Lauren Goode: Tell us about that, then. What does that future look like?

Jason Kehe: Well, if you look around at the ways people are engaging with AI now, I'm noticing that when I'm with friends, and someone wants to ask ChatGPT a question, for instance, they hit the side button on their iPhone, which is reprogrammed to launch Chat's voice, and then they talk to it directly. You kind of want to have a conversation that's faster than you can type it. I just think that's going to come for everything.

Michael Calore: That's an interesting observation, because what we're talking about is all of the companies that are trying to get us away from technology by introducing barriers between us and the technology. This thing you put on your fridge. These apps that shut down your apps after a certain period of time. These are all things that are barriers to the technology that's harming you. But what you're talking about, Jason, is a complete erosion of the barrier. Just take the phone out of the equation, and all of a sudden it just becomes you and the cloud.

Jason Kehe: Yes. It's amazing to me that people speak of phones as if they are permanent. They will come and go, as all technology does. The promise of tech, if it is a kind of seamlessness. The phone is all kinds of barriers. Maybe I'm kind of going back on my original position that friction benefits us in some ways because the phone, I do think, provides some degree of it.

Michael Calore: Well, we do need to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the internet. We're going to expand beyond just phones, and we're going to talk about how bad the internet is for us.

Jason Kehe: Fun.

Michael Calore: Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. Today, we're talking about brain rot. In the first half of the show, we talked about how terrible our phones are for us and why they're probably all going away very, very soon and being replaced by AI, as Jason outlined. In the second half, we're going to talk about the internet at large because parts of the internet are amazing, of course, but there is still just so much toxicity online, and fixing it feels like a tall order, but it has not stopped some tech leaders from trying. One of those tech leaders is Alexis Ohanian, the cofounder of Reddit. Earlier this year, he announced that he was partnering with his former competitor, Kevin Rose, to relaunch Digg. That's D-I-G-G with two Gs. It's a social media platform from the early 2000s that was very similar to Reddit. Our editor in chief, Katie Drummond, recently spoke with Ohanian for the first Big Interview episode of this Uncanny Valley podcast, which you should all listen to. It's in your feeds. Alexis shared that he wanted this new version of Digg to be way less toxic compared to the other social media platforms. Lauren, I know you have thoughts about this.

Lauren Goode: I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, I love Reddit. I do love those spaces in the internet that feel lightly or genuinely moderated and also provide some kind of niche value for the thing that you're looking for. Twitter has obviously changed so much in the past few years. I love the idea of some kind of revival of Digg and another healthy space in the internet. I just don't see how this gains a ton of traction.

Jason Kehe: Has something like this ever worked when someone's tried to bring back quote-unquote early-internet-glory-day site?

Michael Calore: Bluesky is a possible example, because Bluesky launched as the big open source, decentralized alternative social media network, and it got the influx of users after the 2024 presidential election when a bunch of people just didn't want to be associated with X or Elon Musk anymore. And it feels like blue state/red state vibes now, but it does feel like there's a toxicity that exists on X that does not exist on Bluesky.

Lauren Goode: Amendment.

Michael Calore: Yes?

Lauren Goode: When I published the story about vibe coding, which we talked about on last week's episode, there were just a lot of really strong opinions, capital O, on Bluesky. Most often, I think, from seasoned coders, developers, programmers who had a lot to say about the possibility of vibe coding leading to really low-quality code bases in the future and just creating a lot of bugs and breaches, even ... And they're not wrong. It was such a strong response. And then people who just kind of jumped to, "You are an AI booster," and really kind of angry skeets, tweets, whatever we're calling them.

Michael Calore: Wow.

Jason Kehe: And the early internet was, to use your guys' word, toxic too. I don't know where we're even going back to or what we think we're moving toward, but Bluesky seems to me just as yucky as anyplace else.

Lauren Goode: It just feels so insulated.

Michael Calore: It is. It's an echo chamber. It's a liberal-leaning echo chamber. But, of course, as we know, your experience, and I'm sure other people have had experiences that are similar, where you say the wrong thing, or you step out of line, or you express an opinion that is not close enough to the majority opinion, and you just get excoriated.

Lauren Goode: Totally.

Michael Calore: Jason, to your point, the early internet was toxic as well, yes. I think we all remember chat rooms or forums in the early internet where you could just get completely roasted. But, it's amplified to a level now, where every platform has that on it, and I think that it's just overwhelming to too many people. In addition to that, you can't really go back to the way that the internet used to be. You can't have a nice internet unless you form a new community, and you say, "The objective of this community is to be nice, and we have moderators, and we have block buttons, and we have all these mechanisms in place," and it will be very nice until it scales up and then it just inevitably turns toxic. So, I think there is an internet utopia community out there, and it's the first six months of any new cool app.

Lauren Goode: I disagree with the premise that it's going to happen in the way that the internet has scaled in the past. Like this idea that it scales and therefore becomes a cesspool. I actually think, at least I hope, the future of part of the internet is is that it's spaces with a lot of taste, for lack of a better word, and I do believe that that's how more and more people are curating their internet experience, but then there's this underlying cesspool of really low-quality, meme-ified, totally toxic information, and that part of the internet is actually very, very good at multiplying and sort of promulgating their ideas. That is also going to continue to exist.

Jason Kehe: Yes. I've started calling the thing you were formerly describing the prestige internet, and I would like to believe WIRED is part of that.

Lauren Goode: I think that a world exists in which someone can enjoy Emily Sundberg's “Feed Me” Substack as much as they enjoy Dylan Patel's “SemiAnalysis and the Semiconductor and AI Industry.” I read both, and what I like about them is that people are putting a lot of effort and thought and sort of doing mental gymnastics around what they want to say to their audience. I want to continue to see that internet thrive.

Michael Calore: I think that sounds lovely, and it's going to get a million pageviews. And then the guy who posts the video of "How many Big Macs can I fit in my mouth at once?" is going to get 80 million pageviews.

Jason Kehe: There will always be elevated media, to use Lauren's word, and then there's going to be everything else. But I do think, in a world of AI slop, there will be more effort on the part of most people to seek out some kind of quality experience.

Michael Calore: And, again, what you're talking about is putting the onus on the user. On the reader. On-

Jason Kehe: As it should be.

Michael Calore: ... the person to go out and find the things that are less toxic. And I think what these folks that we're talking about are trying to create is a platform where you don't have to do that extra work to find the happy place. The happy place is the platform itself. And maybe you have to find the work to get there, but then when you get there, you don't have to curate it for yourself. You don't have to join the right forums. You don't have to block the right people. You don't have to rely on moderators. It's just better all around because it's designed to be better.

Jason Kehe: But isn't the whole point of being a person in the world exactly that effort to find, seek out, discover? That's the pleasure of consumption, I think, finding something that you think is your own or is special in some way. I don't know if anyone actually wants to be fed some sort of externally curated list of quote-unquote high-quality content.

Michael Calore: I think a lot of people do.

Jason Kehe: When we were kids, didn't we take pride in finding stuff? We had to work our way toward it, and then we felt ownership of it. That still will always exist. Everyone has an impulse to be an individual, I think.

Michael Calore: I am in absolute agreement. I think that, once you have something like the internet at your fingertips, you're going to use it to find the things that you're interested in, and it's going to be there. There will be corners of the internet that we can hang out in that are happy places for us until the end of time.

Lauren Goode: I also think we may be making this bifurcation between what the kids are reading and what they're watching. I think it's a lot of watching in the future, and I don't think it's safe to say, just because the guy eating the hamburger video gets 80 million views, that the rest of the video consumption is ... There's also incredibly high-quality, curated, smart video stuff going on too.

Mike, you and I have had this conversation a few times about what it would look like if each of us felt like we'd kind of made it. We lived some life of leisure. And I joked that for me it was being able to have wallpaper in my home. Real wallpaper, not stick-and-peel. And you said, and I always think of this, that it's not having to carry your phone, wallet, or keys.

Michael Calore: Right. Nothing in your pockets.

Lauren Goode: Nothing in your pockets. And-

Michael Calore: Absolutely nothing.

Lauren Goode: ... that is because someone is carrying it for you, someone is managing that for you, because you don't need to even be on your phone.

Michael Calore: Right. You don't need a phone because you have a person for that. And you don't need a key because there's somebody waiting to let you into your home. The idea that you can just move around in the world with nothing in your pockets.

Jason Kehe: God, I love that.

Michael Calore: You never have to handle money. You never have to look at a bill to pay it, and you never have to text anybody back or set an appointment or do anything on a phone because somebody's doing that for you. That means that you have made it

Lauren Goode: These days, it just feels like paying rent and buying groceries in expensive cities means you've made it, but yes.

Jason Kehe: I leave my house without stuff in my pockets all the time. It's what I live to do, and it is as glorious as you say. How often do you guys leave the house without your phones?

Michael Calore: Never.

Lauren Goode: Oh, my gosh. Never.

Michael Calore: Never.

Jason Kehe: Try it.

Lauren Goode: I think what we're getting to is that the future of unplugging is actually the ultimate luxury. And Jason is saying ... Jason is doing the magazine article version of “Here’s how to steal some of that luxury for yourself.”

Jason Kehe: I don't think it's the preserve of the wealthy to be able to disconnect, though that is, again, what people want us to believe, that the less well-off will be the ones who have to be constantly online and that the rich will be blissfully on an island without any technology, but I don't know how much I buy that, either. I do not have much money. A lot of people I know do not have much money, and yet they every day can live a life of glorious disconnection.

Michael Calore: The control is with the user.

Jason Kehe: Yes, it is. We have the power.

Lauren Goode: Well, Jason, when we're cohabiting, I'll make sure we have a nice reading room for us.

Jason Kehe: That's dreamy. But I knew you would bring up your marriage proposal. To listeners who don't know, Lauren's been proposing to me on and off for the better part of, I don't know, 10 years.

Lauren Goode: It's probably been about seven. Well, I don't know. I didn't propose to you when I was actually engaged.

Jason Kehe: Or did you?

Michael Calore: We could cut the tension with a knife. Let's take another break.

Well, thank you both for this candid and wide-ranging conversation about phone addictions, the rot of the internet, and the power being with the user. Thank you for being here, Jason.

Jason Kehe: My … I hesitate to say pleasure, but I will: My pleasure, Mike. And Lauren.

Michael Calore: We're not letting you go just yet, because we still have to do our recommendations. Lauren, do you want to go first?

Lauren Goode: I recommend a book. It's called The Ministry of Time. It's a 2024 fiction novel by Kaliane Bradley. This book's got everything. It's a spy thriller. It's romance. It's comedy. It's sci-fi. It's time travel. I will admit I have not finished it yet, but I plan to. I absolutely will finish this book. And I'm loving it. It's making me laugh out loud. It's just a nice little treat.

Michael Calore: Jason, have you read it?

Jason Kehe: No, but I've heard of it.

Lauren Goode: I can loan it to you afterward, if you want. I'll put it in our nook-

Jason Kehe: But, remember, I loaned you a book, and you still have it.

Lauren Goode: I know.

Jason Kehe: Months and months have passed-

Lauren Goode: I'm sorry. This has happened twice-

Jason Kehe: Marriage proposals-

Lauren Goode: I know. If I finish the books and get them back to you in a timely fashion, will you reconsider?

Jason Kehe: It's time for my recommendation, isn't it?

Michael Calore: Yes, it is.

Lauren Goode: See how well he evaded that?

Jason Kehe: Since I'm not a regular on the podcast, I wasn't able to talk up a quirky little movie I saw on Netflix called K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Michael Calore: Oh, no.

Jason Kehe: Which, yes, has now, I think, rightly turned into a global phenomenon. It's basically about K-pop saving the world. There's a girl group, and then there's a boy band of rival demons that they sort of have to slay. And at a time when K-pop is sort of known by many but not necessarily listened to by everyone, this movie comes along to make the case that it is a truly global and world-saving phenomenon. It's just a work of complete genius. Utterly convincing. And now I want to go to a K-pop concert.

Michael Calore: Nice.

Lauren Goode: Mike, what's your recommendation?

Michael Calore: I am going to recommend a podcast. The podcast is called The War on Cars, and the episode is titled, “Should the Bus Be Free?” And it is about two weeks old. I just got around to listening to it, but it's pegged to the phenomenon of Zohran Mamdani, who is one of the candidates and the leading candidate to be mayor of New York City, who during his campaign said that, if he becomes mayor, he wants to make buses in New York fast and free. That leads to all kinds of questions: Like, can you make the bus free? How much does it cost to run the bus? When you do make the bus free, does it increase ridership? Who does it benefit? What are all of the knock-on effects of making that move in a big city?

The team on the podcast examines this from a research perspective, and they look at pilot programs and permanent programs that have run in other US cities and around the world, and they look at ridership numbers, and they talk through all the facts. It's really interesting to me to consider that, if there's something that you want in the world, and it feels impossible, like you want free health care, you want free college education, you want free transit in the city that you live in, and what does that look like? It's a really interesting thought experiment, and they do a great job on the show, so I want to recommend it. The War on Cars. Find it wherever you pod.

Jason Kehe: I don't pod. We should do another episode on why I consider podcasts the most dangerous medium today.

Michael Calore: Well, thank you for participating in this dangerous display of knowledge and opinion.

Jason Kehe: I'm telling you, it took a lot to get me here.

Michael Calore: All right. Well, thank you for sitting with us this week.

Lauren Goode: Thanks, Jason.

Michael Calore: Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to get in touch with us for any questions, comments, or show suggestions, you can write to us at [email protected]. Today's show is produced by Adriana Tapia and Mark Lyda. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Mark Lyda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Sam Spangler fact-checked this episode. Kate Osborn is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of global audio.