Gym without smartphones

A health club/boxing gym in the old Redwood City, California neighborhood has suddenly taken off with a way to beat smartphone addiction! Tanner Gym owner Mike Tanner says the club already has a three-month waiting list for new members. He's considering raising the monthly dues “to keep the yuppies in check.”
Tanner, a 60-year-old balding man with impressive biceps and a New Jersey accent, admitted that “yuppies” and their money allow him to keep the gym open so he can continue teaching neighborhood kids for free.

No smartphones! Tanner said his gym was an old boxing club whose walls had collapsed due to neglect. When he got his insurance money, one of his students challenged him to build a giant Faraday cage. Tanner tells how it happened.

I said, “Fara…what? What the hell is this? Then they told me it would block all cell phone signals and the club wouldn't need a smartphone policy anymore. The phones wouldn't work! I said, “Unbelievable! Let's do it!”

Tanner explained that the club runs an after-school program for poor kids where they do their homework and then box. The kids were constantly on their phones instead of doing their homework and that made him angry.

Now they don’t need restrictions because the phones just don’t work. He later showed me a cross-section of the walls with metal bars, which he said acted like a giant Faraday cage. I was incredulous and asked, “So if someone tries to call me, my phone won’t even ring?” He nodded. I was surprised. To check, I looked at my phone. It said, “No Internet Access.” I had a momentary sense of panic. At that moment, he heard something in one of the boxing rings and apologized. One of the fighters stood up, looking stunned, after apparently being knocked down.

I expected Mike to help him up, give him first aid, console him. Instead, he seemed to have turned into a different person! He grabbed the fighter by the arm, roughly dragged him into a corner, and screamed at him half in Spanish, half in English.
The English words I caught were, “What did I tell you about staying inside, Louis? And yet you keep doing it! He's distracting you! You want to keep training?! Now tell me that back! Louis said, “Yeah, Mike, sure! He's not a bad guy!” Then he came back and apologized, becoming Mr. Tanner again. I had no idea how he knew what had happened in the ring, but Louis had done something wrong.

Why do people train here?

I couldn't help but notice all the successful looking people lifting weights and punching heavy bags. They didn't look like boxers at all! I asked Mr. Tanner, and he rolled his eyes. “Those nerds! I love them, and especially their money. But you know, I didn't run this club for people like them for forty years. You see me going to Palo Alto and trying to do computer stuff? Teaching boxing and physical education. That's all!”

To find out more, I spoke to two sweaty participants who were sitting on benches outside, checking their phones.
Chad Freide (not his real name) said, “As soon as I heard about Tanner Gym, I was like, ‘This is for me!’ I’m sick of these little idiots sitting on benches staring at their phones.” I asked Freide if he was bothered by the lack of communication with his family and friends while he was working out. He said, flatly, “No! These people can wait until I’m done working out. If it’s a real emergency, they can call the gym and get me on the phone. That hasn’t happened yet. I wonder why?!

While I was talking to Mr. Freude, another participant, Liz Tennup (also not her real name), came up and offered her opinion: “My mother-in-law got mad when I told her about this place. But it's so nice to have an hour to myself where she can't bother me, and don't even get me started on my kids! I asked Tennup if she felt the need to see what was going on in her social media. She laughed. “I did at first, but then I realized it was all bullshit and my life was better without it, at least for an hour. Now I'm thinking about giving them up altogether.

As we talked, the other participants streamed out. They all seemed unusually peaceful.

The opposite view

My editor always insists that I talk to people on both sides of an issue. I realized that I wouldn’t find anyone here who didn’t like it. Later, I went to Planet Fitness and walked around. As Freide had said earlier, many of the benches were occupied by young people looking at their smartphones and not using the machines. I waited outside and stopped a group of three teenage girls as they were leaving. I asked them what they thought of Tanner’s Gym. They hadn’t heard of it, so I explained how it worked. They were skeptical. One girl said, “Is that even legal? It sounds so, I don’t know, medieval!” Another nodded and added, “It’s 2024. How can anyone live without WeChat and Instagram?”

I tried to continue the conversation, but they left and seemed to all simultaneously reach for their phones, as if for reassurance.

How it works

Many gyms try to “control” smartphone use. They set rules that phone calls should only be made in the lobby, headphones should be used for music and entertainment, and photography is prohibited. In Japan, cell phones are simply banned from most gyms. These rules do not work in America. The addiction is so strong that people sit on benches and look at their phones. Some look at their phones with the screen facing up while doing push-ups, for example. In other cases, people simply ignore the rules and have loud conversations right under the no-go signs.

Tanner’s employees were always wary of trespassers who were angry about the lack of coverage. He pointed to a sign by the door that read, “No Phones. They Don’t Work Here Anyway.” Tanner Gym had to be almost completely rebuilt, and he took the opportunity to install Faraday shielding. The air conditioning and ventilation systems had to be specially designed to block electromagnetic signals. I asked Tanner if there had been any legal challenges to blocking phone signals. He remained silent. I later learned that a number of tech companies had lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to tighten their controls, but Tanner Gym also had its own wealthy backers who were helping with legal costs.
He also surprised me by telling me that some of their new members and financial backers were technical leaders themselves! I asked if I could interview any of them, but he firmly said that he valued the privacy of the members too much to allow it.

Conclusion

Is Tanner Gym on to something? Here in the heart of Silicon Valley, the place that brought us smartphones, have people finally had enough of them? I spoke to venture capitalists who were rumored to be planning a chain of Faraday Cage gyms. They declined to comment.

P.S.
This is, of course, fiction. There is no such gym as “Tanner”, although it should exist.