WASTED YOUTH WAKES * : SMARTPHONE ESSAY

THREE high school initiates to the '' Luddite Club '' had accompanied Ms. Butler to the library ; Lucy Jackson, Sasha Jackson and Tea Cuozzo. They sat quietly as the more senior members talked.

'' It's sort of the cool kids club right now, '' said Ms. Butler. It's been great for my high school life socially. No one thinks I'm a freak. We do improve, rap battles and make zines together. ''

'' Many of us have decided we don't want to be in bed, doom-scrolling and rotting our lives away,'' she continued.

'' YOUTH is being wasted on those of us who are constantly on our phones. We're only young once.''

Her boyfriend, Winter Jacobson, who was visiting from Colorado, was sitting next to her. He started a Luddite Club at Telluride High School in Colorado last year. He said it has a dozen members.

'' Colorado is very different from New York,'' said Mr. Jacobson, 17. '' There's not as much to do in Telluride. People are reliant on their cellphones as their connection to the world, so some of my friends think the club is a joke. I'm still trying to spread the message, though.''

He took Ms. Butler's hand. '' She inspired me to get a flip phone,'' he said, ''because I saw all the superpowers it was giving her.''

After the meeting, the teenagers headed to Prospect Park. Trudging across leaves, they traded critiques of the new Bob Dylan movie. On arriving at their old gatherings spot, Ms. Lane grew pensive.

'' This isn't just a dirt mound to me,'' she said. '' We found ourselves here. This is where we took back something that was taken from us.''

'' I don't attend the club meeting here now because I'm in college, but this space isn't for me anymore,'' she added. '' It's for others to discover. I'm not a kid anymore. I'm about to turn 20.''

Ms. Lane has lately become a public face of the movement. In April, she delivered a talk at a symposium examining technology's effects on society at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

Speaking before a crowded auditorium, she painted a bleak picture of her pre-Luddite life.

 ''Like other iPad kids, I found myself from the age of 10 longing to be famous on apps like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok,'' she said.

'' My Phone kept the curated life of my peers with me wherever I went, following me to the dinner table, to the bus stop and finally to my bed, where I fell asleep groggy and irritable, often at late hours in the night, clutching my device.''

Then at age 14, she had an epiphany.

'' Sitting next to Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn one afternoon, I felt the sudden urge to throw my iPhone into the water,'' she told the MoMA audience. '' I saw no difference between the garbage on my phone and the garbage surfacing in the polluted canal.

A few months later, I powered off my phone, put it in a drawer, and I signed off social media for good. Thus began my life as Luddite.

'' For the youth of today, " she said in closing, '' developmental experience has been polluted, it's been cheapened.

' Who am I? ' has become ' How do I appear? ' ''

The Publishing of this Essay continues. The World Students Society thanks Alex Vadukul.