After noticing nearly everyone around him had their noses buried in a device constantly, Calgary high school student Jarrett Gross decided to make a change in his and his friends’ lives.

“In social gatherings is mostly where I started to think negatively of phones, because I saw that people were more or less addicted to their devices and were excessively using them, even in situations when they probably shouldn’t,” he said.

Gross tried to delete certain apps, monitor his screentime manually, and restrict apps through his phone’s automatic screentime limiter, but quickly backtracked.

“It’s always easier to delete the apps, but it almost never works. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are like, ‘Oh, I’m deleting Instagram, and I’m not going to do Instagram again,’ and then it’s the next week they already have it again,” he said.

“Instead, I decided to start using a flip phone and that I would do a study and inform people, and if the results were good, then maybe some people would understand how bad the issue is and maybe make the same decisions as I did.”

Gross managed to rope seven other people into the Calgary flip phone study, including his father and friends. Since the experiment started, one participant dropped out, returning to regular phone use.

Ian Muirhead, a friend of Gross and a fellow student, has been without his smartphone for nearly six months. Even before the experiment, limiting his screentime has been on his mind.

“It’s always been something on my mind ever since I started using a phone, back in grade eight; pretty young to have a phone,” he said.

“Ever since I started using it, I noticed I was spending lots of time on apps like YouTube and I would be angry at myself for doing that. So when Jarrett came up with this flip phone challenge, I had an open mind to it.”

As part of the Calgary flip phone study, Jarrett, Ian and the other participants had their brains scanned in late 2025, before switching their phones, and again during the experiment. When they switch back to regular phone use, their brains will be scanned again.

A control group of six participants also had their brains scanned, but did not change their device habits.

Getting experts on board with the Calgary flip phone study

Dr. Blake Ausmus, who performed the brain scans, said everything started with a cold email.

“I got an email out of the blue where Jarrett, he knew I do brain scans and was a psychologist, and he says, ‘Hey, do you think if we stopped using our phones that would affect our brains?’ And I said, ‘Well, my guess is, yeah, but I can’t say for sure,’” he said.

After some back and forth, Ausmus agreed to do the brain scans and analyze the results.

“The first scans are a baseline. What these scans are, it’s a QEEG or a quantitative electroencephalogram. QEEG is measuring the electrical activity of the brain, so your brain waves, and the quantity, is just a way to take those measurements and make them into something useful for us to look at,” he said.

“We’ll take a look at several locations all across the head and then put them all together to try to make some coherent sense of how the brain is functioning. We’ll be looking at how fast it’s functioning and the different locations, how are the connections, how’s the balance, left to right, these sorts of things.”

Though his scans haven’t been scientifically analyzed yet, Gross has noticed more vibrancy in his life.

“Obviously, (without a smartphone) you get bored more often, which is actually a positive but you feel a lot more free in some senses,” he said.

“One thing that I’ve noticed, and I’ve talked to some of the other participants, is stronger senses. I can almost see better and more vibrantly, or hear better, another big thing is smelling. I’ve started smelling all these smells I hadn’t smelled since I was a kid.”

Without specific analysis, Ausmus suspects the difference in vibrancy can be chalked up to mental health.

“My guess is that it would be more about mindfulness, that you’re using resources of your brain to be more aware of other things,” he said.

Phone use can have addictive qualities: Psychologist

Shane Gross, whose son Jarrett made him sign a contract not to use his smartphone, has found the switch tough, but doable thus far.

“People see me with this flip phone and it looks like I have a burner phone, or like I’m some criminal that has some serious reasons to have a flip phone. My phone is my key to my car, my email, my camera, keys to buildings that I have to go into. There’s so many things, all my music, all my Audible, my notes,” he said.

“But on the other hand, I’m sure we’ve all had that yucky feeling after we’ve been doom-scrolling for way too long and we’re just so mad at ourselves. It’s like Sauron’s ring, it’s sitting on the table, and you can hear it whispering to you, calling you to use it, it’s a very addictive thing.”

Ausmus said the comparison to addiction is not surprising.

“It’s a very fair comparison, and there’s a compulsion to it. Typically, addiction is a term that we reserve for a diagnosis. When we give a diagnosis, but it has a lot of overlap with what an addiction is,” he said.

“Itching for it, or reaching for it without even thinking about it. Yeah, I think addiction is an appropriate word.”

One participant dropping out of the study in favour of their smartphone was also not a surprise for Ausmus.

“The big issue there is if you’re not participating, especially in high school kids, you get ostracized, you get left out. You can’t hear about parties or things that are happening if everyone uses Snapchat to communicate. A friend’s not going to just pass a note to get you up to speed with everything that’s going on,” he said.

“There are consequences of it. Also, trying to do homework and stuff like that, to not be able to search something up really quickly, really puts them at a disadvantage. Me as a parent, I want so badly to say to my daughter, ‘No, you cannot have social media,’ but I get that’d ruin her social life and that’s not fair.”

If widespread youth social media bans came into effect, it’d be much easier to limit social media use across the board, according to Ausmus.

“When there are laws implemented, we’re all in it together, then they can be working together, and it’s easier that way,” he said.

Away from their phones, bothMuirhead and Gross have noticed more meaningful interactions with their friends, including making more specific, device-free plans. Without a direct line of communication, it’s also nearly impossible to cancel plans ahead of time, they said.

Though the 13-person Calgary flip phone study won’t be a big enough sample size to be ground-breaking, Ausmus said the final results will still have tremendous value. 

The individual stories that come from the results, things like increased focus, motivation, and reducing things like depression and anxiety, will all be interesting to watch, he said.

“I was willing to do this because it’s supporting science, it’s supporting curiosity, and it’s fun.”

If the participants continue noticing positive side effects and the final brain scans share similar scientific results, Ausmus thinks one major factor would stop a larger follow-up study.

“The difficulty is the costs associated with it, like who’s going to pay for flip phones for everyone. As much as I’d like to do a couple-100 brain scans, I don’t think I’d be able to do all of that work. Who’s going to fund all of that?” he said.

“But I do think it’s the kind of story that needs to be told. We need to be out there telling people that this is what we’ve tried and this is what we’re noticing. Maybe there is somewhere that would fund a bigger study like this.”