At Andover, smartphones are an ever-present part of life. Students use them to authenticate logins, chat with friends, keep in touch with their family, and read the news. To research the effects of a transition towards a phone-free life, Santiago Morgan, instructor in Mathematics, is leading the NOKIA Challenge, during which students will spend a full month with a simple Nokia flip phone instead of their smartphones.
Students who signed up for the challenge will replace their regular smartphone with a Nokia flip phone paid for by the Abbot Academy Fund; there are 30 phones available in all, and 27 students are participating in the first round. Morgan noted that smartphones in particular, though they have benefits and practicalities, often do more harm than good to teenagers’ mental and physical health. He discussed how he came up with the idea and how he plans to expand it in the future.
“How can we get the kids away from smartphones but still keep the important things that the phones give them, like texting friends or calling their parents?… The solution won’t come through a policy or through mandates, it will come through teenagers instead of choosing the problem, choosing the solution… My idea was to build the experience without the phone and do some research at the beginning and the end to see if their sleeping, well-being, and focus would improve. Because of legal issues, I won’t be able to do the data collection this year, but today I had a meeting with the school lawyer. We are working on a way to do the data collection. In the fall, I hope to run the experiment again. In the winter again and in the spring again,” said Morgan.
With this challenge, Morgan aims to show students that, in addition to having a positive influence on sleep, well-being, and focus, living without advanced smartphone capabilities is a feasible lifestyle. He also shared that he hopes to spark some cultural change at Andover.
“I expect to start a bottom-up cultural change, where students [undertake] the experience for three or four weeks of not having a smartphone and coming to the realization, ‘I can live without a smartphone.’ That has a contagious effect… If you do it as a group, it’s easier. That’s also why I’m doing 30 experiments simultaneously. I asked to buy 30 phones [so students will say], ‘You’re not the only one going full Nokia’… No policy, no mandates, just people choosing what’s good for them,” said Morgan.
Students learnt about the challenge largely independently or through Morgan himself. Ava Shu ’27 discussed how she heard about the flip phone challenge at Morgan’s fireside chat and why she signed up for it.
“I signed up for Santi’s fireside chat [during winter term]… Me and a couple of kids ended up spending a couple of hours at his house for the fireside chat and he started talking about this initiative he was preparing for. He went somewhere and brought us this sample flip phone he got for the challenge, passed it around, and let us look at it. We thought it was really cool,” said Shu.
Shu continued, “It may be just the aesthetic for me, having a flip phone would be cool. I also think we’ve all been annoyed at ourselves for being trapped in doom-scrolling and high phone usage. Honestly, the appeal of flip phones, their simplicity and practicality, is also what makes the program very appealing.”
Yui Takeuchi ’26 is undertaking the challenge to increase her productivity during a busy AP and finals season. Though the challenge may make her job managing the Open Varsity Ultimate team a little more inconvenient, Takeuchi is hopeful that she will ultimately benefit from the challenge.
“I have my three AP tests and my History 300 paper all in the same week, so May 12, here I come. I just need to lock in this term, so I was going to use this as a method of locking in… Once [Morgan] sends the schedule for quick individual meetings [to give our smartphones and receive the NOKIA flip-phones], I will be signing up straight away, because I need that forceful non-procrastination,” said Takeuchi.
Generally speaking, students who signed up for the challenge are optimistic despite being faced with the total removal of their smartphones. Erin Lee ’27 shared what long-term benefits she hoped to see from the challenge.
“I am hoping to go through enough of the withdrawal that I won’t be addicted anymore, and therefore restart my relationship with my phone so in the long run I’m not as attached to the thing,” said Lee.
