When Leigh Tynan agreed to get her 13-year-old daughter a cellphone, she didn't want it to become a distraction. "When there's a smartphone or screen, you don't practise guitar, you don't read a book, ...

I use a flip phone. Well, use is an exaggeration. I bought it for emergencies. I keep it mostly for that. When smartphones arrived, I was excited by the advantages but appalled at the disadvantages.

Everything old is new again, at least for one Ottawa teenager. Gavin MacNeil is calling up a fixture of his parents' generation and swapping his state-of-the-art iPhone for a flip phone. For anyone ...