By WSJ Staff

Should we roll back the clock on smartphones?

According to many critics, the answer is yes. We're addicted to the small screens, they say, and everything that comes with them -- like social-media updating and doomscrolling.

Wall Street Journal senior personal-technology columnist Joanna Stern spoke to two of those critics at the 2025 WSJ Tech Live conference in Napa Valley, Calif. Kaiwei Tang is co-founder and chief executive of Light, maker of stripped-down phones with very limited features. Joining him is actor, producer and entrepreneur Aaron Paul, who is a fan of the product -- and especially of what it represents. Here are edited excerpts from their discussion.

Is ignorance bliss?

WSJ: What do you feel like you've gotten from giving up smartphones?

PAUL: I haven't owned a computer in 15 years. I've had a computer before, but it was stolen. Just not having a computer around me and not having my smartphone around and just really going light, I feel healthier mentally, I feel happier. Maybe it's "ignorance is bliss," but I think there's just too much information that we're drowning in constantly. I don't think we're meant to have that.

TANG: We're not trying to ask people to give up technology and live in a cave. I'm trying to say that we have different tools to do different things. You have a big SUV to drive to pick up a lot of stuff. You have a city-driving car, different shoes, different jacket, but for some reason for the last 15 years when it comes to phones, it just has to be a smartphone. Why can't we design something that actually helps humans do things quickly, so I could practice piano or oil paintings that makes me happy, or hang out with friends and family? Versus swiping for an hour and you feel horrible about it.

PAUL: I have friends who get the new iPhone when it comes out, they get it that week. It's like, "Why do you have to get a new phone?"

I do have a smartphone still. I mainly use my Light Phone, but I FaceTime my kids when I'm away working, so I have that with my iPhone. But the phone that I still have was a phone that my buddy dropped in a swamp. I found a rake three days later, and I grabbed it out of the swamp for him to surprise him. He's like, "Oh, I already got a new phone. You can just keep it." So I have that phone. We call it "Swampy," but I don't need a new phone always. You know what I mean?

Married to tech

WSJ: We're really polar opposites here. If I could marry my laptop, I would.

PAUL: See, I think that's unhealthy. People are starting to have relationships with their AI bots. It's really because it's the AI bots, their whole focus is to keep your attention on it and it's so dangerous. My wife's in the school system, and she runs a nonprofit. She talks to young girls about the effects of bullying within their school hallways and just how dangerous it is. With social media, the mental health in these kids and adults has just skyrocketed. We're revisiting that yet again, in a much bigger way, with AI.

TANG: Hanging out with my friends is supposed to be the purpose of technology, but the attention economy really ruined that for me. I want to use modern tools without getting advertisements or someone trying to maximizing my engagement. I just want to use this tool so I could get a taxi home. That's it. That's all I want.

WSJ: You run two businesses. How do you do that with a Light Phone?

PAUL: To go back and forth on an email thread over and over and over and over again is just obnoxious. You can do it in a three-minute phone call. I was on my iPhone, and my daughter comes running in. She's asking me a question, and I'm trying to just finish this quick company email. She stopped asking and went and started playing. She's 7, this was when she was 6. I put my phone down and I went to her, and I go, "I want to say I'm sorry for not being responsive to you. I want to promise Daddy's not going to be on his phone when he's with you anymore."

She looks at me, she goes, "Really?" It broke my heart. I go, "I promise you I won't." And she jumped up and threw her arms around me. She won the biggest prize. We owe it to our kids to at least give it a shot.

TANG: I have a dad who's a customer who bought Light Phones for the entire family, similar to your story. He was watching TV with the kids and on his phone checking emails and his kid came up, asked him to stop because something was happening on TV that he wanted to talk about. That's when he realized, "Oh, why didn't I pay attention? What's wrong with me?" So he goes on the internet and buys four phones for the entire family.

PAUL: It's a drug. It's an acceptable drug that is actually causing damage in our brain. I'm sure most of you or some of you saw the video of the poor kid that made it on the Jumbotron. I think it was at a basketball game or a baseball game. Both of his parents are on their phones, and he's trying to talk to his mom and dad, and he's just so thrilled, but they're just so disconnected. That's so sad to me.

A dangerous future

WSJ: One magazine ran this headline on an interview with you: "Aaron Paul thinks AI is scarier than any 'Black Mirror' episode."

PAUL: Does anyone here disagree with me? Look, there's some really beautiful things about AI. We were just talking about it at dinner. AI and the medical field -- the advancement there is so blinding and beautiful and incredible. But also AI is going to just completely take over most jobs, which is I think is sad. If you don't think it's sad, that's alarming to me.

It's a slippery slope. I don't think people are really grasping the dangers of it all. They're chasing to get ahead of it. They don't want to get left behind, and they want to be a part of sort of the gold rush of AI.

No offense, I get it. You're trying to make a living, and much respect, but you have got to try to grasp what is going to be the ripple effect. What is life going to look like 10 years from now? I wish social media had some sort of limits. I wish that you had to be 18 to be on social media.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 07, 2025 14:00 ET (19:00 GMT)

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