Here’s why a group of NYC teens is rejecting cellphones and social media

NEW YORK – A group of teenagers meets every Sunday in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, laughing, crafting and just talking.

It’s only unusual because there isn’t a single smartphone in sight, and that’s on purpose.

They’re part of a small but growing group of Brooklyn students who formed The Luddite Club, named after a 19th century movement opposing industrialization. 

This comes as New York City designated social media a public health hazard in 2024, and the Adams administration continues to consider banning cellphones in school.

“During COVID, I kind of looked at my screen time and I was like, ‘Wow, I’m spending more than half of my time awake on my phone. Something needs to change.’ And I got a flip phone,” recalls Jameson Butler, a student at Brooklyn Technical High School. 

The club was formed at Edward R. Murrow High School but has since expanded to other schools across the borough. 

Amanda Hanna-McLeer was a teacher at Murrow when she began to notice how many of her students were struggling with tech addiction. 

“I had been called a Luddite for years, probably since 2017, and it was not used in a positive way. It was very much derogatory. Luddites are often seen as anti-progress, backwards,” she says. A Luddite, she explains, is “someone who is against the abuse, not the use of technology.”

“We all benefit from some amount of technology in our lives. But what we’re seeing right now is an abuse of technology,” she told CBS News New York reporter Hannah Kliger.

One day, a film student named Ava De La Cruz showed her video of her weekly gatherings with Luddite friends. It was a group she joined after a nagging sense of anxiety after the pandemic. 

“Now I’m suddenly in high school and I’m about to be in college and my life, basically, I feel like it escaped me completely. And so it’s like I had to do something,” she says.

Teens in the group have different interests, attend different schools, but share their commitment to kicking their phone habit.

“The average American screen time is like almost eight hours. And so my days are eight hours longer,” says Butler.

McLeer was so inspired by their self-awareness that she quit her teaching job and jumped head-first into making a documentary about them, co-produced by De La Cruz. 

“When there’s no phones around at a Sunday meeting, they are drawing painting, singing, dancing, writing. They’re doing everything that kids should be doing,” McLeer says.

They hope to release the film next year, but also launched a scavenger hunt featuring landmark Brooklyn institutions as a way to get young people to put their phones down and spend some time together, if only for a little while. 

According to the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment, two thirds of American teens report being distracted by cellphones in class, and data suggests it may even affect academic performance. 

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Hannah Kliger

Hannah Kliger joined the CBS News New York team as a reporter in May 2022, focusing her coverage in Brooklyn. A native New Yorker, Hannah has received several awards for her investigative journalism about problems plaguing Brooklynites, from hate crimes to housing rental scams.