Over the past year, I’ve often joked that I’m considering joining the Neo-Luddite movement.

More recently, I’ve been giving it some serious thought.

What does it mean to be a Neo-Luddite? To explain that, we have to first go back to the original Luddites, a 19th-century British labor movement that revolted against the perception that textile machinery threatened to put people out of work. They infamously broke into and burned factories, destroyed weaving machines with sledgehammers, and engaged in armed conflict with employers, merchants, and government soldiers during the “Luddite riots” of 1811-1812. The Luddites named themselves after the mythical leader of the movement named Ned Ludd (often referred to as “Captain,” “General,” or “King” Ludd) who, like Robin Hood, lived in Sherwood Forest and championed the oppressed.

A more accurate historical account disputes that the Luddites were anti-technology—they were more concerned about unskilled workers than machines taking the jobs of skilled laborers—but that hasn’t stopped the term “Luddite” from being used in the modern era to refer to someone who stubbornly opposes new technology and resists progress in favor of clinging to the old ways.

In recent years, however, the term has shifted from being used in a mocking or derogatory fashion to now describing someone who’s reasonably pushing back against newer technology—the internet, smartphones, social media, and now AI—being crammed down our throats at every turn. This new lifestyle choice—harkening back to the zeitgeist of the original Luddites—is what’s now being embraced within the Neo-Luddite movement.

Rage Against the Machines

Whether they identify as Neo-Luddites or not, a growing number of people are now rebelling against modern technology and forming groups and clubs that fall under the Neo-Luddite banner.

Teens and young adults are increasingly exchanging their smartphones for retro-tech “single-use devices” like flip phones, point-and-shoot cameras, and MP3 players. They’re giving up social media in favor of reading, art, and face-to-face interactions.

More and more parents are advocating for delaying smartphone access for kids as long as possible. Both parents and teachers alike are calling for schools to get rid of digital tablets and the use of AI in the classroom based on concerns that such technology can impede learning and cause cognitive atrophy.

Several recent college commencement speakers were drowned out by a chorus of boos when they told graduates that the future is AI. Embracing the opposite Neo-Luddite approach, Harvard commencement speaker and comedian Ronny Chieng told his audience;

“F— AI… I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI. Kill it. To accomplish this, you’ll have to capture and reprogram an AI to be on the side of humanity, then commandeer its own time-traveling technology, send it back to the past to defeat the current AI before it gains sentience. This isn’t just graduation day, this is Terminator 2 Judgment Day.”

On a more serious note, he added, “Make sure your offline world is better than your online one.”

Adults are taking such advice to heart by embracing tech-free days at home, digital detox retreats, and the use of smartphones with disabled apps and greyscale screens to break the unrelenting attentional onslaught of screen time. Church pastors are preaching that digital devices run counter to spirituality and advising parishioners to turn off their devices on the Sabbath.

The Pope himself, in his recently published Magnfica Humanitas, warned against allowing digital media to act as an “instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance” and called for AI to be “disarmed,” arguing that we should make sure that it serves humanity rather allowing it to dehumanize us.

Less Technology, More Mental Health

Admittedly, it’s increasingly difficult to get by in the world today without a smartphone. We use them to call, text, email, manage our calendars, navigate, see what’s going on with friends, track our children and spouses, order food, keep up with the news, verify our identities, pay bills, and even seek out personal validation. And if we believe the tech billionaire CEOs, that’s just the beginning. Mark Zuckerberg claims that AI chatbots are the cure for loneliness. Jensen Huang tells us that everyone should use AI and that we should “create new social norms” to further incorporate AI into our daily lives. And Elon Musk thinks we should implant technology into our heads to create “computer-brain interfaces.”

The Neo-Luddite movement dismisses those visions of the future as profit-seeking hype. It also sees them as fundamentally dystopian—exactly what Pope Leo meant when he warned about AI paving the way to “new forms of slavery.”

While it may be hard to put down our smartphones or resist the gravitational pull of AI, that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Quitting smoking is hard, but smoking is much less prevalent than it was a few decades ago. And not unlike smoking cessation, there’s a mountain of evidence documenting the potential health benefits of scaling back our digital lives, curbing our addiction to screen time, and increasing our engagement with the real world. Individual studies characterizing the mental health harms of social media and digital obsession abound and have been reviewed in books like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation or Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation.

How to Follow Neo-Luddism Without Fully Unplugging

Embracing the Neo-Luddite spirit doesn’t have to mean completely unplugging or cutting the cord of new technology. It could just mean deleting your Facebook or Instagram account, standing firm on not allowing smartphones at the dinner table, or dedicating yourself to meeting old and new friends face-to-face instead of starting a relationship with a chatbot.

As we are ushered further into a world where new technology is being sold to us as both an inevitability and a necessity, I wonder whether Neo-Luddism could become the next big healthy lifestyle choice, like giving up alcohol, avoiding processed foods, getting back to church, or practicing yoga.

As for me, I was recently invited to give a talk about AI-associated psychosis at a conference with some of the top minds in academia studying AI. I was somewhat surprised to learn that nearly all of them were using AI in their work, just as they were surprised to hear that despite me writing about the perils of AI chatbots, I’ve never actually used one myself. That hasn’t been so much a deliberate lifestyle choice for me as just not really seeing the point. The bottom line is that there isn’t anything I’d rather have a chatbot do than do myself.

I have to admit, though, that attending the conference got me thinking that maybe I should at least try AI just to see what it’s all about. But by the time I got home, I found myself feeling even more resolute about making a conscious decision not to use AI on principle. I’m now actively resisting reading AI summaries that appear at the top of search engine queries and am considering turning off that feature altogether.

Maybe abandoning social media will be the next big step—I know people who have done that, and part of me is envious of their willpower and resulting freedom.

Lead on, Captain Ludd! Neo-Luddites Unite!