Can You Have a Career Without a Smartphone?

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“WE ARE frying the human brain." Such is the bleak outlook that Jenny Wise Black, a marriage and family therapist in Franklin, Tenn., offers regarding smartphone usage. The clinician’s opposition to phones dates to a 2015 sabbatical she took to tackle her burnout. One day, her iPhone wouldn’t turn on.

Though frustration initially overcame her, the feeling gave way to euphoria. It was “the best day [I had] since I was nine years old," she said. She didn’t end up getting her phone fixed for a month, and in 2016, opted to ditch it for good.

Since then, Black has made a career out of encouraging therapy clients to live without a phone. Beyond her regular sessions, she co-wrote a book on digital media’s impact on mental health last year and the second season of her “Lose the Phone" podcast debuts on Oct. 15.

Digital detox is clearly working for her, but if you’re a middle-management worker juggling 17 active Slack channels, a brimming email inbox and a busy Zoom schedule, is it possible to follow Black’s lead? Peter Frost, a professor of psychology at Southern New Hampshire University, isn’t convinced. “Smartphone technology has pervaded most career cultures," he said. His research has shown that young adults now use their smartphones for 5 ½ hours a day—about a third of their waking hours.

If you aren’t as digitally active, co-workers who respond to messages faster could soon leave you behind. “I can only see phone ditching as a last resort," he said. Many have tried anyway.

For six months last year, Anna Peterson, 43, tried to go cold turkey. The Flushing, N.Y.-based salon owner turned off her iPhone and purchased a Nokia 3310, a candy-bar-size phone that cannot connect to the internet. It initially went well, she said.