A move to distance themselves from smartphones and social media and reclaim offline relationships is emerging among some members of U.S. Gen Z. It is seen as an effort to control a digital environment that has overly penetrated daily life rather than reject technology itself.

According to the IT outlet Business Insider on Aug. 20 local time, New York’s Luddite Club has held weekly gatherings since it was founded in 2021. Members meet at places such as Tompkins Square Park to talk about literature, daily life and how technology affects life. They also take walks, go on scavenger hunts or stage performances such as throwing iPads onto the ground to break them.

Jameson Butler (제임슨 버틀러), a co-founder of the group, switched to a flip phone to cut smartphone use during the COVID-19 pandemic. The original goal was a temporary social media detox, but Butler, now 19, has not gone back to a smartphone for several years. "My quality of life improved quickly after switching to a flip phone," Butler said. "I started to reconsider the very idea that you must live with a mobile phone."

Another founder, Logan Lane (로건 레인), also pointed out that smartphones, social media and always-on communication technology have seeped too deeply into daily life. That does not mean the club rejects all technology. "It is opposing technology that does not help life," Lane explained. Some members use flip phones that can only handle calls, texts, photos and notes without an app store, while others use smartphones or laptops as well.

Reality also makes it hard to fully cut off from technology. Miquel Enrigue (미켈 엔리게), a freelance filmmaker in Brooklyn, said, "Social media is effectively the only stable way to find work." He added, "Even if you want to leave the platforms, it is not realistically easy." Longtime member Barrett Shepard (배럿 셰퍼드) also stressed, "The core of the Luddite lifestyle is not the flip phone itself but how you use technology."

The mood also overlaps with a trend of growing wariness of AI among younger people. According to a Gallup survey released in April, 31 percent of U.S. Gen Z respondents said they feel anger toward AI. That was up 9 percent from a year earlier, when the figure was 22 percent. The share using AI weekly was still 51 percent, but expectations and hope declined.

A latest Pew Research survey also found 55 percent of Americans under 30 said they are more worried than excited about the expansion of AI in daily life. That was sharply higher than in 2021, when the figure was 31 percent.

The Luddite Club’s movement is hard to view as a broader anti-technology trend across all of Gen Z. Instead, it is meaningful in that a push is emerging within the generation most familiar with smartphones and AI to rethink appropriate limits on technology use. Mayla Burnstein (메일라 번스타인), a kindergarten teacher in Manhattan, said, "Offline meetups help people relearn basic relationship skills like eye contact and conversation that were lost while growing up looking at screens."