COME LUDDITE CLUB : GIRLS' STUDENTS' ESSAY

IN 2022 - and continuing to 2024 and beyond student Biruk Watlung had a missionary's zeal, it was because she wasn't promoting just a student club but an approach to modern life that profoundly changed her two years ago -

When she helped for the Luddite Club as a high school student in New York. [ The name ; Luddite Club, is a reference to a 19th century movement of workers in England opposed to some forms of technology.]

But that was then, when things were simpler, before she had embarked on the more independent life of a college student and found herself having to navigate QR codes, two factor identification logins, dating apps and other digital staples of campus life.

The Luddite Club was the subject of an article I wrote in 2022 - a story that, ironically, went viral, it told of a group of teenage tech skeptics from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and a few other schools in the city who gathered on weekends in Prospect Park in Brooklyn to enjoy some time together away from the machine.

They sketched and painted side by side. They read quietly, favoring works by Dostoyevsky, Kerouac and Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused, shout how TikTok was dumbing down their generation. Their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish.

Readers inspired by their message responded in hundreds of emails and comments. Reporters from Germany, Brazil, Japan and elsewhere flooded my inbox, asking me how to reach these students who were so hard to track down online.

Snarky Reddit threads and think pieces sprouted. Ralph Nader endorsed the club in an opinion essay, writing : '' This is a rebellion that needs support and diffusion.''

TWO years later, I'm still asked about them. People want to know : Did they stay on the Luddite path Or were they dragged back into the tech abyss?

I put those questions to three of the original members - Ms. Watling, Jameson Butler and Logan Lane, the child's founder - when they took some time from their winter school breaks to gather at on old hangout, Central Library in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.

They said they still had disdain for social media and the way it ensnares young people, pushing them to create picture-perfect online identities that have little to do with their authentic selves.

They said they still relied on, flip phones and laptops, rather than smartphones, as their main concessions to an increasingly digital world.

And they reported that their movement was growing, with offshoots at high schools and colleges in Seattle; West Palm Beach, Fla ; Richmond,Va ; South Bend, Ind; and Washington.

This Master Girls Students Essay, continues to Part [2]. The World Students Society thanks Alex Vadukul.