Gen Z is turning to dumb phones and second smartphones to cut notifications, and Maira Butt’s own setup shows how the workaround works in practice. She described one phone as “One “dumb phone” for daily life and emergencies” while keeping a second device for work, acquaintances, social media and people she does not need to speak to every day.
Butt said she had 2,200 unread messages on WhatsApp, 425 unread conversations on iMessage and 671 friend requests on Instagram. She also said she had 30 archived chats and 223 unread chats on WhatsApp, which is a useful measure of how easily one device can become an overflow channel for work, family and social demands.
Vorhaus Advisors and Statista
Vorhaus Advisors said the number of people owning two smartphones rose to 18 per cent last year, up from 15 per cent in 2024. A Statista survey from 2024 found that 28 per cent of Gen Z said they would be interested in getting a dumb phone. Put together, those figures point to device separation becoming a deliberate habit rather than a novelty.
For many people, that means a basic phone handles calls and daily essentials while a smartphone stays off most of the time and is checked only during work hours. Butt said her smartphone became her official phone, through which her mum and the GP can get through to her, while the other device stays switched off overnight.
Robbie and the flip-phone
Robbie, 28 years old and a bar manager, took a different route after losing his phone at a music festival. He picked up a flip-phone for a fraction of the price of a new name-brand phone and still used his laptop for social media, saying, “How I was living my life was actively frustrating me.”
He said, “When you have a smartphone it feels like it’s attached to your hip, you always have it, it’s always in your pocket.” After the switch, he said, “Every spare second I would be pulling out my phone and going, reply, reply, reply, reply,” and later, “I loved it, it made life so much better.” He added, “I was just blissfully offline, my brain was way more centred, focussed and less anxious.”
The trade-off is obvious in his own account: the flip-phone eased constant checking, but his job still required access to apps such as WhatsApp to manage staff at his bar. Butt described a similar complication earlier this year, when separating work and personal life with her dumb phone did not exactly work and she got a specific work device.
That leaves the practical question hanging for readers who want a quieter phone life without giving up constant app access. For people whose jobs still depend on WhatsApp and other messages, the two-phone model may work as a boundary, but it also creates another device to carry, charge and monitor.
