Yondr, a revolutionary company founded by Graham Dugoni in 2014 to make everyday experiences phone-free. Primarily designed for concerts and comedy events, Yondr is a zipper magnetic pouch that cuts down your screen time, limits phone usage, and has become popular among schools in the US. With the upcoming ban on the use of phones during school hours, this pouch has become an essential part of school-going children.
As the CEO calls social media “lame”, Dugoni revealed that he has “never really had social media,” as per a Business Insider report. He still owns a flip phone, and revealed that it has changed a lot of experiences in life for him. ” I just prefer to have fewer inputs,” he remarked, with a desire to live a simple life and long-form conversation.
‘Technology doesn’t knock at the door and ask permission to enter’
Commenting on the modern-day business need to always be connected, the BI report pondered how the CEO runs the company after being offline outside his office. With endless emails, digital signatures, and every-second updates, Dugoni remarked that once a founder indulges in these needs, “Once you open up the phone or you enter into a medium, you’re playing by the rules of the game that are pre-configured.”
In an attempt to put the “old” in “old-school”, the education system is evolving. Several schools that allow a phone on campus require scanning QR codes, for instance, to sign up for clubs. But locking them up in a Yondr pouch takes them back to an era when phones weren’t actually invented yet.
A phone-free school might seem unimaginable to today’s Gen Alpha, but it has come around to be a positive change for many, revealed Dugoni. Commenting on his digital indulgences, Dugoni remarked, “I find social media fundamentally lame…it doesn’t seem like any fun to me.”
In a world where audiences are hooked to recording a concert on their 7-inch devices, Dugoni designed these pouches to take away that obsession. “It’s a very humanizing effect on people, and it’s very healthy for civil society. That’s why we do it,” he explained.
