When a buzzing smartphone started to feel like a weight she couldn’t put down, Grace Freeman bought a flip phone on a dare.

Freeman, a full-time seminary teacher, had joked with her students about trading in her iPhone. They laughed and said she would “never survive.”

“I just bought one right then,” she said. “I got it in December and I wanted to do it until the end of the year. And then after I finished like the first three weeks, I was like, I’m gonna do this till spring break. And then after spring break, I was like, I’m gonna do it till I can’t.”

For months, the plastic clamshell replaced the glowing rectangle that had been glued to her palm for years. What surprised her most wasn’t what she lost, but what she says she felt she got back.

“I lived life more presently,” Freeman said.

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