Americans who prefer to communicate and access information using the methods that were around before the internet are becoming harder to find.
According to a 2024 Pew Research survey, 98 percent of U.S. adults own a cell phone and 91 percent own a smartphone.
A 2011 survey, by contrast, found that 83 percent of Americans owned a cell phone and 35 percent owned a smartphone.
Still, non-smartphone owners are out there. Even among smartphone owners, there are those who prefer to use other methods instead of reaching for their internet devices.
“I have a flip phone, and I never got an iPhone, and I didn’t feel I needed one,” Michael Antonini, retired dentist and former San Francisco planning commissioner, told The Epoch Times.
Antonini said he would rather pick up the phone and call someone if he needs to talk to them.
“I don’t think [texting is] necessary,” he said. “A voice message is fine, or a letter written and mailed to someone.”
Thomas Irwin, who lives near Eugene, Oregon, told The Epoch Times that he prefers not to email, text, or spend time on the internet because there is no security to it.
He said he prefers to communicate in person and that when we use email and text to communicate, we’re limiting ourselves.
“We communicate by the tone of our voice, with our eyes, with our body language, with our hands. The influx of our voice. There’s so many things that we use to communicate,” he said.
Irwin said by limiting his use of texting and email to communicate he feels closer to reality, closer to God.
Quentin Kopp, a retired former San Francisco supervisor, California state senator, and Superior Court judge, had a different take on why he doesn’t email, text, or spend time on the internet. He told The Epoch Times the reason is “mainly because the world has passed me by, I’m 96 years old, and I never learned to use a computer, even before I retired as a Superior Court judge in about 2010.”
He prefers to pick up the telephone and call because he prefers hearing someone’s voice; or sometimes he will send a letter.
A 2021 study found that interactions that included voice, whether a phone call, video chat, or voice chat, created stronger social bonds.
Antonini noted that a cell phone is beneficial in that he can call someone when he is not at home, but to rely on the phone to access information he is looking for is unnecessary.
“I have a library with probably, I don’t know how many books, a couple thousand books at home. … I’ve got world history books, U.S. history books,” he said. “There’s a lot more to learn if you learn it the traditional way.”
He said he can get the news by reading a physical newspaper and occasionally watching it on TV.
“So I don’t really have to go searching around on a computer to get the news,” he said.
Kopp also said he prefers reading newspapers to reading from a screen.
He is also active as a counsel of record by another lawyer. Instead of using email, he receives documents in the mail or by fax machine.
“I would say that my generation and those immediately before got along without technology, without a computer, without emails, and they did well, and I do well enough for such obligations professionally as I have,” said Kopp.
According to Pew Research in 2021, only seven percent of Americans said that they don’t use the internet.
“The one thing that I think is very informational, and I get them almost every year, is the ‘World Almanac,’” Antonini said. “So if you want to learn anything about a country or statistics or all those things, they’re probably in the Almanac. I just picked up a new one for 2025.”
He said it may take a little bit more effort to get the information one is looking for, but it can be done, and if you can’t find the information at home, libraries are full of material.
“So that’s how we used to do it, and there’s no reason you can’t do it now,” he said.
A 2018 meta-analysis found that paper-based reading yields better comprehension than digital-based reading.
Antonini said that cell phones can be a distraction and keep people from paying attention to what they’re doing, where they’re going, and their surroundings.
“They don’t appreciate the fresh air and the sunshine and the buildings they’re seeing,” he said. “A lot of people don’t even know how to read address signs and don’t know where they’re going without their phone. They’ve completely lost the ability to read maps.”
He thinks there are many benefits that people miss out on because they’re not using their brains and are relying on their phones.
“For example, I’m a retired dentist, and towards the end of my career we were hiring younger people, and a lot of them had trouble figuring out what day it was without their phone,” Antonini said. “They didn’t know how to read a calendar; they couldn’t spell very well; they had trouble with simple addition and just generally estimating things mathematically.”
According to the website The Decision Lab, the “Google effect,” also known as digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can be looked up on the internet. People often do not commit this information to memory because they know it is easy to access online.
The website states that the Google effect can be helpful in terms of our brains prioritizing which information to remember so we’re not overloaded with data, but it is not so useful if you need to remember a phone number or how to get somewhere and you don’t have your phone with you.
Antonini said that in 1972 he took a trip to Europe with his wife and sister. On the trip he bought his first car, a 1972 Volkswagen, and spent seven weeks driving all around Europe.
“We got around fine, we had maps of the various countries, we knew where the roads were, we followed the maps, we could tell directions by the sun and by the landmarks, and I don’t think we ever got lost once,” he said. “We didn’t have a problem getting places. Now everybody panics about how they can’t go anywhere if they don’t have a phone.”
He said it’s dangerous because a lot of people are driving and looking at their phones.
“That’s why I prefer to take cabs to Ubers, because those guys usually know where they’re going and don’t rely upon their screens,” he said.
