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The Great Read
Three years after starting a club meant to fight social media’s grip on young people, many original members are holding firm and gaining new converts.
Jan. 30, 2025Updated 12:45 p.m. ET
Biruk Watling, a college sophomore wearing a baggy coat and purple fingerless gloves, walked the chilly campus of Temple University in Philadelphia on a recent afternoon to recruit new members to her club.
She taped a flier to a pole: “Join the Luddite Club For Meaningful Connections.” Down the block, she posted another one: “Do You Desire a Healthier Relationship With Technology, Especially Social Media? The Luddite Club Welcomes You and Your Ideas.”
When a student approached, Ms. Watling dove into her pitch.
“Our club promotes conscious consumption of technology,” she said. “We’re for human connection. I’m one of the first members of the original Luddite Club in Brooklyn. Now I’m trying to start it in Philly.”
She pulled out a flip phone, mystifying her recruit.
“We use these,” she said. “This has been the most freeing experience of my life.”
If Ms. Watling had a missionary’s zeal, it was because she wasn’t just promoting a student club, but an approach to modern life that profoundly changed her two years ago, when she helped form the Luddite Club as a high school student in New York.
But that was then, back when things were simpler, before she had embarked on the more independent life of a college student and found herself having to navigate QR codes, two-factor-identification logins, dating apps and other digital staples of campus life.
