Are we tired of smartphones?

Joe | Sep 02, 2026Sep 02, 2026

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• talk about smartphone habits and screen time;
• watch a video about a woman who swapped her smartphone for a dumb phone;
• review vocabulary related to technology and devices.

In this lesson, students discuss how often they use different smartphone functions and reflect on their own smartphone habits. They compare smartphones with dumb phones and watch a video about a woman who swapped hers for four days. Students discuss the advantages and disadvantages of reducing smartphone use and explore older devices that smartphones have replaced. They can also review useful vocabulary about technology and devices.

WARM-UP AND DISCUSSION

There is an extra vocabulary activity that teachers can use before students talk about smartphone habits. In the task, students read descriptions of four devices and match words and phrases in bold (e.g. screen time, distracting, scrolling through, addicted to) with their definitions. Then, they guess which device each text describes. Then, the lesson starts with a warm-up in which students say how often they do different activities on their smartphone and share more details. Afterwards, they say whether a set of statements about smartphone habits are true or false for them, giving reasons. Moving on, students look at pictures of a smartphone and a dumb phone, explain the name ‘dumb phone’ and name similarities and differences between the two.

VIDEO AND MORE DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students watch a video about a woman who swapped her smartphone for a dumb phone for four days and say whether they’d like to try something similar. They then talk about smartphone habits more and discuss things such as what they’d find hardest about giving up their smartphone and how they might spend extra free time. Moving on, students look at pictures of older devices (e.g. an alarm clock, a paper map, a record player) and say which smartphone functions they can replace, which ones they still use and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Following that, they read profiles of people who want to switch to a dumb phone for a month. Students discuss what they would need to change, what difficulties they might face and who would benefit most.

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