Tired of impulsively reaching for my phone and mindlessly scrolling, I was hopeful but sceptical this pricey little magnet could change anything
For a screen time addict like me, iPhone screen time limits are a joke. When I hit my self-imposed one-hour limit on Instagram or TikTok, it’s more of a time marker than a barrier.
It’s like a last call for doomscrolling, where the urge for ‘just one more’ can turn a few minutes on my phone into hours. I don’t so much leap over the screen time limit as flick it aside. Would I like to ‘ignore limit for the day’, it asks? One tap and I’m back to consuming content that turns my brain into mind-melting static.
What my mind really needs is a bigger obstacle — perhaps a Brick. Not to be mistaken with the building material, Brick is a new product I recently discovered that’s designed to tackle this very problem. Maybe this will sort out what’s wrong with me, I joked to my husband, who is one of those irritatingly well-balanced people who can watch a film at home without reaching for his phone.
Who is this for?
Clearly, the usefulness of Brick depends on your relationship with technology. I reckon you already know if you need something like this or not. Brick was invented by two American Gen-Z university graduates who felt too distracted by their phones.
I enjoy being online. I like having the world at my fingertips, seeing my friend’s updates and watching funny videos. But this easily slips into a doomscrolling fugue state and I’d like to get back more of my life. Perhaps even watch a film at home without glancing at my phone.
My previous strategy before discovering Brick involved continually removing and reinstalling apps. This had two major drawbacks: I’d only reach this stage following a marathon phone session, and the process of uninstalling then reinstalling apps proved tedious. With Brick, I can prevent myself from binging in the first place.
How Brick works
The idea is to create a strict barrier between you and your device. The Brick is a small magnetic square designed as a more robust deterrent for screen time addicts like myself.
Download the Brick app then create a mode by selecting which apps to restrict or permit. To use it, press the ‘Brick device’ button on the app’s main screen and activate it by tapping the Brick against the back of your phone as if doing a cardless payment. To disable Brick, press ‘Unbrick device’ and tap the Brick against the phone once more. You can ‘Emergency Unbrick’ up to five times if you’ve lost or misplaced the Brick.
When Brick is active, the icons of the disabled applications are greyed out. If you launch a Bricked app, a plain dark screen appears displaying the message: “You’ve turned [app name] off. Your phone is currently Bricked. To access the app, tap your Brick.”
At the bottom, an eye-roll inducing button reads: “Back to what matters” and takes you back from whence you came. The potential benefits: it works, you get to enjoy your life — and phone — without the negatives.
The downside: it costs £55. Brick likes to say that it doesn’t require a subscription like so many things these days, and all you have to pay is the upfront cost of the device. This is good news, but a low bar.
My one month trial of Brick
After testing Brick for nearly a month, it worked — astonishingly so. My screen time hours are down, but more importantly, I have a healthier relationship with my phone.
On the first day, in my eagerness to use the device and general aversion to reading instructions, I simply Bricked my phone when I felt like it, which wasn’t as helpful at curbing the habit. There are just four sections in the Brick app: Brick (which shows if it’s currently enabled and for how long), schedule, activity and settings.
I ventured into the schedule section and created two modes: one for work and another for sleep. The goal was to concentrate better at work and to end and start my days on a better note, respectively. I’m a big fan of the schedule feature — it was the most frictionless way to get off my phone and stay that way.
The most surprising unexpected side effect is how little I thought about the apps when my phone was Bricked. Going into this experiment, I thought I’d need to hide the Brick in the furthest corner of my home to prevent myself from disabling it, but that never happened. In fact, I kept the Brick usually at an arm’s length on my desk or nightstand.
I only unblocked it a few times when it was in work or sleep mode, but this happened rarely and my appetite just wasn’t the same.
What life is like without (so much) social media
Once my phone is Bricked, it was easy to stay that way but I still ached to doomscroll. Like someone with phantom limb syndrome, I’d embarrassingly find myself scrolling the Photos app just to be able to scroll something.
Using Brick drastically reduced my screen time to a level I find comfortable. According to the app, my phone is Bricked an average of 11 hours and 45 minutes a day.
When I started using Brick, my screen time was very high (even for me) due to a one-off sick day phone binge. Although my TikTok usage comes and goes in waves, it’s the one I find hardest to get off so I’ll include stats for it here. For the purposes of this experiment, these are my starting stats: a daily screen time of five hours and 57 minutes with a TikTok daily average of one hour and 26 minutes.
After two weeks, my daily screen time was three hours and 46 minutes and with a TikTok daily average of 42 seconds (the week’s total was just five minutes). Fast forward another fortnight to now, and my daily screen time is down to three hours and 32 minutes, with TikTok taking up an average of 21 minutes a day.
Doing the maths, that’s a 41% reduction in daily screen time and a 25% decrease on TikTok.
Final thoughts — is it worth shelling out £55?
£55 is no small sum, so the frustrating answer is: it depends. I like to break down big purchases into cost per use. Over the past 26 days, my phone has been Bricked for an average of 11 hours and 45 minutes a day. So, over roughly 306 hours of use, it’s cost 18p an hour, and that’s not even considering how much I plan to use it in the future.
After a month, I’ve nearly halved my phone usage, my mind feels less cluttered, and I’m less tied to my phone. That seems like a fair trade-off to me.
Brick is available to buy from their website.
