Headline, February 03 2022/ STUDENTS : ''' '' NO -PHONE- NO '' '''

STUDENTS : ''' '' NO 

-PHONE- NO '' '''

SOCIAL MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY : I STILL LONG TO HAVE NO PHONE AT ALL. MY PARENTS are so addicted. My mom got on Twitter, and I've seen it tear her apart.

''THESE 'LUDDITE' teens don't want your likes. And for some, the only thing better than a flip phone is having no phone at all."

On a brisk recent Sunday, a band of teenagers met on the steps of the Central Library in New York's Brooklyn neighborhood to start the weekly meeting of the Luddite Club, a high school group that promotes a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology.

As the dozen teens headed into Prospect Park, they hid away heir iPhone - or, in the case of the most devout members, their flip phones, which some had decorated with stickers and nail polish.

After the club members gathered logs to form a circle, they sat and withdrew into a bubble serenity. Some drew in sketchbooks. Others painted with a watercolor kit. One of them closed their eyes to listen to the wind.

Many read - the books in their satchels including Dostoevsky's ''Crime and Punishment,'' Art Spiegelman's ''Maus II'' and ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' by Boethius.

The club members cite libertine writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac as heroes, and they have a fondness for the works condemning technology, like ''Player Piano'' by Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur , the bespectacled PBS aardvark, is their mascot.

''Lots of us have read the book called ' Into the Wild,' '' said Lola Shub, a high school senior at Essex Street Academy, referring to Jon Krakauer's 1996 nonfiction book about the nomad Chris McCandless, who died while trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness.

''We've all got this theory that we're not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real life.

The club members discussed the spreading of their Luddite gospel. Founded last year by another Murrow High School student. Logan Lane, the club is named after Ned Ludd, the folk-loric 18th -century English textile worker who supposedly smashed up a mechanized loom, inspiring others to riot against industrialization.

Jameson Butler - a student in a Black Flag T-shirt who was carving a piece of wood with pocketknife, explained : ''I've weeded out who I want to be friends with. Now it takes work for me to maintain friendships.

Some reached out when I got off the iPhone and said, ' I don't like texting with you anymore because your texts are green.' That told me a lot.''

Vee De La Cruz, who had a copy of "' The Souls of Black Folk ''' by W.E.B. Du Bois, said :

''You posted something on social media, you don't get enough likes, then you don't feel good about yourself. That shouldn't have to happen to anyone. Being in this club reminds me we're all living on a floating rock and that it's all going to be OK.''

A few days before the gathering, after the 3.p.m. dismissal at Murrow High School, a flood of students emerged from the building onto the street.Many of them were staring at their smartphones, but not Logan, the 17-year-old founder of the Luddite Club.

Down the block from the school, she sat for an interview at Chock full o' Nuts coffee shop. She wore a baggy corduroy jacket and quilted jeans that she had stitched herself using a Singer sewing machine.

''We have trouble recruiting members,'' she said, ''but we don't really mind it. All of us have bonded over this unique cause. To be in the Luddite Club, there's a level of being a misfit to it,''

She added : ''But I wasn't always a Luddite, of course.''

It all began during lockdown, she said, when her social media use took a troubling turn.

''I became completely consumed,'' she said. ''I could not post a good picture if I had one. And I had this online personality of, 'I don't care,' but I actually did. I was still watching everything.''

Eventually, too burned out to scroll past yet one more picture-perfect Instagram selfie, she deleted the app. ''But that wasn't enough,'' she said. ''So I put my phone in a box.''

For the first time, she experienced life in the city as a teenager without an iPhone. She borrowed novels from the library and read them alone in the park. She started admiring graffiti when she rode the subway, then fell in with some teens who taught her how to spray-paint in a freight train yard in Queens.

And she began waking up without an clock at 7 a.m., no longer falling asleep to the glow of her phone at midnight.Once, as she later wrote in a text titled the ''Luddite Manifesto,'' she fantasized about tossing her iPhone into the Gowanus Canal.   

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Times & Tides, Technology, and Students, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Alex Vadukul.

With most respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of !WOW!, and then Grandparents, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless