When Lydia Peabody saw her friend pull out a flip phone at a party last year, she laughed.

“I was like, ‘Girl, what are you doing with that thing? This has to be a joke!'” Peabody told TechCrunch. But it wasn’t just an accessory: Her friend was participating in Month Offline, a community challenge in which a small group of people trade in their smartphones for flip phones.

Peabody couldn’t imagine giving up her smartphone, but her friend inspired her. A year later, his life looks different. She left her career as a licensed therapist to become the founding CMO of Dumb Co, the foldable phone company that spun out of Month Offline. She is happier.

“I did Month Offline and I thought, ‘Wow, why am I suddenly not anxious anymore? Do I feel good?'” she said. “I didn’t even know this was what I needed and spending so much screen time after work made me feel really bad.”

Dumb Co sells foldable phones that sync with, rather than replace, your smartphone, forging a middle ground between the infinite connectivity of the iPhone and the unrealistic limitations of an early 2000s relic. Funded by friends and family, the company is run by a small team in their 20s and 30s. Like their peers, they are dissatisfied with the fast pace of a connected and frictionless life. They grew up with iPads and Instagram, but now they crave something simpler.

In the humble shell of a $20 TCL flip phone, Dumb Co loads its own software so users can access apps like WhatsApp, Spotify, Apple Music and Uber. You can even access iMessage through a third-party app (shh, don’t tell Apple). By packing familiar conveniences like music streaming, maps and blue bubble text into a flip phone, Dumb Co is creating something for people who want to reduce their screen time and be more present, but struggle to fully disconnect in a world built for the smartphone.

“We’re trying to create something where you can leave your smartphone at home and literally just live your life and interact with other people,” Afreka Ebanks, director of communications at Dumb Co, told TechCrunch. “And when you want to be on your smartphone and you come home, you can use it, because the call forwarding and text messaging feature can be turned off.”

I spent more than a month testing the device, which Dumb Co calls the Dumb Phone, buoyed by the knowledge that, in case of emergency, I always had my iPhone on hand. I didn’t use the Dumb Phone much at first, but as I carried it around to show my friends, I noticed that they weren’t confused by my flip phone, but rather envied.

“I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with people while I’m walking and someone sees me at the traffic light and asks, ‘What’s this thing you have?’” said Ebanks, who dazzled with his flip phone. “I think it’s a great conversation starter, and I think it’s amazing to see people, myself included, get over the awkwardness of socializing with others, because I’m no longer distracted by looking at my phone.”

The Dumb Phone is sometimes clumsy. It’s slower than I’m used to and I end up spending more time typing T9 texts than if I just used my iPhone (what I really want is a dumb Sidekick with a QWERTY keyboard). However, there’s something undeniably refreshing about knowing that if you want to open social media, take a photo you’ll never see again, or check your email, you can’t do it.

When I spoke with Peabody toward the end of my month of dual iPhone and flip phone ownership, he asked me if I’d ever left the house alone with my flip phone. I confessed no. I explained that sometimes I need to check public transportation schedules or keep up to date on Slack if I’m going to an appointment during the day.

“The truth is, when you say the word need, it almost has the same meaning as ‘I need food or shelter,’” Peabody told me. “Yeah, sure, it’s actually helpful to know when the buses are coming, but if you don’t have that information, you go to your neighbor and say, ‘Do you know when the next bus is coming?’”

Peabody dared me to leave my iPhone at home. The day we spoke, I had already planned to report on an event at a library across town. I tried to explain to him that I had never been to that library and that I wasn’t sure which subway stop to get off at. She told me to just write down the directions before I left. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to record interviews at the event. He told me that the Dumb Phone can record audio.

“I really want you to do this, because I know it’s something that’s best experienced,” Peabody said. “When I switched to a Dumb Phone last summer, I didn’t use my smartphone for seven weeks and took a cross-country road trip to New Mexico. I didn’t think I could do that, but I’m telling you, you can.”

I was running out of excuses. Peabody drove thousands of miles without a smartphone. How could I tell him that I needed my iPhone so I could triple-check that Tasker-Morris is the correct train stop?

Smartphones and social media are not a one-sided evil. There’s really value in connecting with friends online, sending photos of your dog to your grandma, and using Apple Pay when you forget your wallet. While researchers don’t classify smartphone dependence like they would a substance addiction, there are certainly parallels. Not everyone has an adversarial relationship with their phone, but for people like me, more screen time often makes me feel more anxious, unfocused, and less grounded. Peabody even compared his relationship with his phone to getting hooked on Juul in college.

“It was very, very difficult, but I totally broke that addiction, and now when I see a vape pen or something like that, I actually hate it. I’m like, ‘Oh no, I don’t want that,'” she said. “When I turned off my smartphone for seven weeks, I thought about using it again and felt the same repulsion. In fact, I didn’t look at it or touch it.”

I was nervous about leaving my iPhone at home, but I relied on my knowledge of the transit system and managed to get across town without my iPhone (I admit, I texted someone just to be safe). extra super safe (that the library is outside the Tasker-Morris stop). When I needed to send a text message that was too long to type in T9, I sent a voice message. I felt more connected to the world around me and nothing went wrong.

I don’t see myself switching exclusively to the Dumb Phone, but I do find it valuable as a tool to help me pay more attention to how and when I use my smartphone. The Dumb Phone ships with a black velvet bag, which you are supposed to store your smartphone in when you leave it at home. I can’t put the iPhone down cold turkey, but I threw the velvet pouch in my bag on a trip to the beach, just in case. I used it for a few things, like ordering food and checking train schedules. But while I was enjoying a day at the beach, I didn’t take out my phone. I had a book, a sandwich, two bottles of water, some sunscreen, what more could I need?