When Ryan Gleeson punches out a text message or takes a call on his cellphone at parties, he prepares to hear questions from onlookers, and sometimes snickers.

That's because the 24-year-old carries a $50 flip phone — the Samsung Gusto 2. There's no touch screen or apps. No Web browsing capabilities. No collection of music to enjoy through earbuds.

"Definitely it's like a black sheep in the room when I pull it out," said Gleeson, a postproduction associate at a documentary production house in Lincoln Park. "I work with a lot of Apple people — creative types. Everyone has an iPhone."

Gleeson is among cellphone users who choose to be dialed out of the world of iPhones, BlackBerrys and Androids. In an increasingly connected and accessible culture, these stalwarts have chosen hand-held devices that offer only the basics, despite the social isolation and limitations that may come with them.

For Gleeson, hanging up the iPhone demonstrates no "grand realization about humanity," he said; rather, it's a way to tamp down his compulsive email checking.

With the basic phone, "It's a lot easier now to just step away and say, 'I'm not going to work right now,'" he said.

He also feels as though he has more peace of mind and is able to just sit and think, taking in his environment on bus rides to work.

"I feel more free," he said.

Smartphone ownership is growing, and quickly. According to a Pew Research Center survey released in June 2013, 56 percent of U.S. adults had one, compared with 35 percent in 2011.

Smartphone users tend to skew young. According to the Pew survey, 81 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds have a smartphone, compared with 18 percent of those 65 and older.

Still, the survey found that 35 percent of U.S. adults carry a cellphone that is not a smartphone.

Some young adults who could afford the costly Web-browsing phones and the monthly fees associated with them are sticking with more basic devices.

At Sprint, these gadgets are called "feature phones," and fewer are offered now than ever before, said director of product development Ryan Sullivan. Still, the service provider continues to roll out new devices to meet the demand, he said.

In many cases, feature phone users are customers who don't see smartphones as useful or necessary, or who are looking to save some cash, Sullivan said. Without a contract, smartphones can cost $650 or more, compared with about $150 for many basic phones in the Sprint line, he said.

Still, it's not unheard of to have a customer who sticks with a more rudimentary device because they "get over-wired," Sullivan said.

"We all have a threshold for how much access we want people to have to us," Sullivan said.

Craig Griffin likes that being smartphoneless gives him fewer distractions in social settings. The 36-year-old freelance illustrator from Chicago said he has resisted upgrading from his 2-year-old Samsung slider, partially because of the irritation he feels seeing people glued to their screens.

"It's important to me to be there with the people that I'm there with and give them my attention," he said.

But using the simple devices doesn't come without some social backlash.

Billionaire Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made headlines last year after he was photographed at the Cowboys' stadium using one of the rudimentary devices. When Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck revealed in interviews last year he still uses a flip phone, he drew some gentle teasing on sports blogs.

"Flip phone? Who makes a flip phone still?" NFL Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk asked Luck in an NFL.com interview last year.

When Pew researchers recently asked people who didn't use smartphones why they didn't upgrade, a perceived lack of need and the high price of smartphones were the two main reasons, Pew researcher Aaron Smith said in an email.

But some young adults using the low-tech gear see smartphones as a potential disruption.

A Chicago attorney who doesn't use a smartphone said the lack of connectivity allows her to focus more on her job.

"A smartphone is just something that's constantly in people's hands, and I have enough other things I want to do," she said.

Still, because of the potential stigma that comes with not being connected, the attorney, 31, did not want her name to be used in this article for fear she would come off as a "bad lawyer," she said.

"There are some clients who send you emails clearly from their iPhones that are very succinct and very direct and clearly want an answer as soon as possible," the woman said. "So it might make you seem sort of inattentive."

Zach Nugent, 30, acknowledges that his job helping to manage a homeless shelter in St. Charles allows him the freedom to be without the regular access to email a smartphone offers. Clients and co-workers there rarely need to connect with him electronically, he said.

Nugent, of Geneva, has a basic phone that he keeps at his apartment most days, essentially using it as a landline. He said the decision to not get a smartphone was "enforcing a discipline on myself."

Nugent said that if the vast entertainment options and distractions a smartphone offers is always within arm's reach, he might get obsessive about using it and neglect more important tasks.

"I definitely want to do the connectivity thing, just not all the time," Nugent said, though he acknowledges facing eye rolls from friends and family when they can't reach him.

Those who don't have a smartphone admitted there are times when they long for the power and convenience of having what amounts to a minicomputer in their pocket.

Gleeson said he misses being able to look things up quickly on Wikipedia. The attorney who did not want to give her name said she'll borrow relatives' high-tech phones to flip through Instagram on road trips, even though she doesn't have her own account with the photo-sharing site.

Nugent said he has relied on friends' smartphones' GPS capabilities on road trips and sees the great advantages to that over his method of memorizing driving directions from MapQuest.