The new alternative to smart phones 📵

GM. This is Work "After" Work. We're like your favorite radio station in email format. We bring you the hits in up-and-coming trends.

It’s Friday, let’s boogie:

• 📵 The "Dumb Phone" resurgence

• 😂 Meme of the day

ARE DUMB PHONES FOR SMART PEOPLE?

Here's a crazy stat: on average people spend 2.5 hours a day on social media. The highest number ever recorded.

That's 18 hours a week (almost half a work week), 75 hours a month, and 912 hours a year. If you're feeling anxious about all the things you could do with this time, you're not alone.

People are waking up to the fact that they spend countless hours a day consuming content that provides them no value.

Many are shifting to "dumb phones" to cure their social media addictions, something 16-33 million Americans deal with.

What are dumb phones? 
The best way to describe them would be to ask the question: "Do you remember the flip phones you used to have?"

These phones could only do a few things: call, text, and well.. that's about it. To text "You up?" took at least 10 taps with the keypad.

These types of low-functionality phones with a few new added features are making a resurgence coined "Dumb Phones".

This r/dumbphones subreddit is up 150% in the last year 👀

The more conscious we become around social media being an addictive behavior that gives our brains dopamine hits and commonly leads to depression, the more we're trying to break away.

Here are two opportunities from this trend:

1. A better looking "dumb phone"

Many are looking for ways to get off their smartphones but either don't want to pull out a flip phone from the 1990s because it's just plain embarrassing or don't want to go back to the pre-historic ages of having a potato as a camera.

I swear this is what those cameras would consistently look like 😂

Enter, a startup called Light Phone. The modern-day "flip phone".

The firm pledges that its phones "will never have social media, clickbait news, email, an internet browser, or any other anxiety-inducing infinite feed".

Here’s what they look like:

Initial reactions
For $300 a pop, I pictured something better looking. When it comes to style, there’s room for improvement.

With this phone you can text, receive calls, connect to bluetooth headphones to listen to music or podcasts and that’s about it.. no images through text messages or going on the internet.

I think you could do the same thing but a few things better:

#1 Style
This phone looks like a mini-kindle. Be the Apple of design and create a phone with all of these features but make it a "Woah, what's that?" when someone pulls it out at lunch.

#2 A quality camera
This phone doesn't come with a camera or even display images in text messages. A nice-to-have feature is a camera that only allows you to take photos. Once you take them you can check them out later in the cloud but not on your phone. This forces you to live in the moment.

Funding
Light Phone has raised $11.5M in funding and reported a record increase in sales of 150% from 2020.

It’s hard to find recent numbers since it’s a private company but a report from 2019 stated they had a 50,000-person waitlist. I can’t image what it is now… 200,000?

And if you thought this phone was only for boomers, think again. At first, the co-founder thought the same but to his surprise, his main customers are ages 25 to 35.

Looks like millennials are the ones waking up to the fact that their attention is being sucked away by their devices.. this is the biggest generation in the US at 72 million people.

An added bonus
With a product like this, you'd not only help cure social media addiction and a lot of depression issues, but you'd also help the world be more present.

2. Buddy control for social media watch time

Similar to how parents set how many hours their kids can spend on social media, create an app that allows your friends to do the same for you.

Let's face it, adults can spend just as much time on social media as teens but they don't have "parents" to cut them off.

One of my friends gives himself 2 hours a day for social media and only his friend knows the password to unlock the parental controls to give him more time.

This might seem like a silly idea but I think it's not only something my friends do.

Heck, this refrigerator lock box is estimated to do 720 sales a month 😂 …same concept

This way of limiting your social media usage sounds good on paper but it's super inefficient - every time he wants more time, which is often, he has to go to his friend to get it unlocked.

Enter the "Buddy Pass" app. The app that connects to your social media and tracks your watch time. You set your friends as the owners and only they can know the password to unlock your social media.

When you hit the limit it shuts you out. The kicker? It reports how much time you spent on social media with your friends.

Feel bad about spending 3 hours a day on social media? You'll feel even worse when all your friends know just how much time you're wasting on watching people renegade.

Usually, peer pressure is bad but in this case, you'd be using it for good!

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MEME OF THE DAY

I can only pray this is fake 😂😂

That's a wrap! Enjoy the weekend :)

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.