Inside NYC’s Anti-Tech Luddite Renaissance Movement

You won’t find much about the modern Luddite movement online.

By design, those embracing it are ditching smartphones and deleting their social media accounts. My editors, however, spotted a Substack post that mentioned a coming rally and dispatched me to learn more about this offline movement the only way you should: IRL.

And so I found myself on a sunny early fall Saturday on the High Line, an elevated public park in Manhattan that is often crowded with tourists posing for selfies, at an anti-tech event called the Scathing Hatred of Information Technology and the Passionate Hemorrhaging of Our Neo-liberal Experience rally.

That’s “S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E” for short. Several dozen people were there. One attendee told me they heard about it through word of mouth, which makes sense.

“Even if it gives us rabies, we will free the iPad babies!” the crowd of mostly young people chanted.

They donned colored folders fashioned into pointy hats inspired by gnomes, a symbol for the rally due to the mythical creatures’ earthy, non-digital aesthetic. Each hat contained a printed note taped inside criticizing things like AI data centers and inviting people to join “the Luddite Renaissance.”

“5 hours of daily screen time = 15 years of life by the age 70,” the note read. “Loneliness epidemic? It’s not your fault. A society built around a phone is obscene.”

Some brought signs, including one that read “Don’t ignore the gnome revolution.” One person arrived dressed as an iPad baby, complete with a fake phone screen featuring apps like Tinder, Subway Surfers, DraftKings, and Cocomelon.

For many in the movement, the goal is to take a conscious step back from the social media apps and all-in-one smartphones that have become an increasingly overwhelming part of people’s daily lives. Ultimately, they are advocating for healthier relationships with technology.

A 2023 Gallup survey found that 51% of surveyed adolescents spent at least 4.8 hours daily on social media. Tech companies like TikTok have faced lawsuits accusing them of creating addictive algorithms that harm children’s mental and physical health.

“This kind of weariness around technology has been around for a while,” Gabriela Nguyen, the founder of Appstinence, told Business Insider.

Appstinence is a student organization that Nguyen, 24, founded while a graduate student at Harvard University. The Gen-Z-led organization is focused on giving practical advice to people looking to wean themselves off their personal social media accounts.

Appstinence is just one of a seemingly growing constellation of groups, mostly led by young people, advocating for reduced reliance on technology, either for one’s own mental health or as a protest against powerful tech companies that have an ever-growing hold on all aspects of our lives.

As I listened to the speeches, it was impossible not to consider my own relationship with technology. As an under-30 millennial, I remember when peak technology was beepers and Walkmans. However, by the 2000s, my reliance on technology shifted rapidly with the introduction of Myspace and the iPhone. Now, my cellphone sometimes feels permanently attached to my hand.

Like many folks, it’s become second nature for me to have a flood of news notifications 24 hours a day and social media apps that never sleep. I’ve tried to be mindful about how often I rely on my devices, but after over two decades absorbing long and short-form content from tiny screens, it’s hard.

Nguyen, who grew up in Silicon Valley and got her first smart device at nine years old, doesn’t have any social media accounts at the moment. She primarily uses a Light Phone II, a “dumb” phone without social media apps, news notifications, or an email function.

“I think increasingly more and more people are having to question, even if I do need to use a phone for certain things, is the trade-off that I’m making of my time and attention worth it?” Nguyen said.

Eliana Steele, who attended Saturday’s rally, said she grew up with few internet restrictions and had access to an iPad at a young age.

“I feel like I’ve spent so much of my early life glued to a screen. I find it particularly addicting and incredibly dangerous,” Steele told Business Insider. “I think we need to be worried about the repercussions this will have on both individuals and society.”

Another attendee, Noah Edelman, said technology is an addiction that isolates us.

“I really believe that the way for us to come back together to have — not just better lives — but better politics, better ways of having community, better ways of being together as a world all comes from having a healthy relationship with technology,” he said.

Edelman added that although information technology has accomplished “awe-inspiring” things, “power is not always good.”

“We have given ourselves the power to amuse ourselves to death,” Edelman said. “We cannot let ourselves be so tied up in our own small amusements that we forget the bigger things in life.”

About 30 minutes after the rally kicked off, attendees formed a parade and marched from the High Line to the first of two stops: a Tesla store.

Targeting Tesla

Rallygoers, accompanied by a live makeshift marching band, walked about two blocks to a Tesla store in New York City’s Meatpacking District.

Once there, a rally organizer stood atop a literal soapbox and encouraged attendees to write messages about Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the sidewalk surrounding the store.

“We are going to chalk everything we think about these cars, these robots, this AI, these data centers,” he said.

In addition to electric vehicles, Musk is developing robots under Tesla and rockets under SpaceX. He also purchased Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X before launching an AI company, xAI, the following year. Musk also set up a data center for xAI in Atlanta. His wealth, dominance in the tech industry, and forays into politics have made Musk, and by extension Tesla, a lightning rod for protesters.

Some chalked messages criticized Musk directly, while others referenced his products or the technology he promotes. The group stayed for about 10 minutes before traveling to its final stop: the Apple store.

Apple is a food

On the way to the Apple store, rallygoers chanted, “TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts. Show us your weekly reports.”

They also chanted, “Apples are for eating.”

At this point, the rally took on a performative atmosphere as participants staged a pseudo-trial examining Apple and its products. Apple, which owns data centers and incorporates AI into its products, recently unveiled the new iPhone 17 earlier this month.

Many of the speeches during the mock trial and by other attendees throughout the rally emphasized the importance of creating an in-real-life community and being present.

“For every second you have your headphones in on the train, you’re not talking to anybody and you’re not taking in the world. For every one of those seconds, how much of your life do you let pass by?” one man asked.

After attendees found the products “guilty,” one person, dubbed “the executioner,” used a rock to smash the tech products into pieces.

Nguyen, who did not attend Saturday’s rally and doesn’t support smashing tech products, said that stepping back from social media can not only improve one’s mental health but also give one a better perspective of the world.

“If you’re spending too much time online, it’s shaping how you see your position in the world,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen added that she felt a responsibility to address the effects of modern technology on young people.

“We’re going to be inheriting the world. At some point, we’ll be political leaders, CEOs of companies, workers, so we have to somehow answer these questions about how much technology should be integrated,” Nguyen said.

She added: “Departing from the digital world and actually embracing the real world is Gen Z’s coming of age.”