I was sceptical anything could work against my phone addiction (Image: Brick)
iPhone screen time limits are a joke for real screen time addicts like me. When I hit my self-prescribed one hour limit on Instagram or TikTok, it’s more a benchmark of time than a barrier. A doomscroll last call, if you will, where the itch for ‘just one more’ can stretch a few minutes on my phone into hours.
I don’t so much hop over the screen time limit but flick it away. Would I like to ‘ignore limit for the day’, it prompts? One tap and it’s back to consuming content that turns the inside of my head into mind-melting static. It’s a proper blockade – perhaps a Brick – that my mind desperately needs. Not to be confused with the building material, Brick is a new product I recently learned designed to solve this problem. Maybe this will fix what’s wrong with me, I joked to my husband, who is one of those annoyingly well-adjusted people who can watch TV without a phone glued to hand.
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Who is this for?
Obviously, 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 created by two American Gen-Z university graduates who felt too distracted by their phones.
I like being online. I like having the world at my fingertips, seeing my friends’ pictures and watching funny TikToks. But this easily veers into a doomscrolling fugue state and I’d like to get more of my life back. Maybe even sit through a film at home without looking at my phone.
My other strategy before trying Brick was routinely deleting and installing apps. This had two downsides: I would only get to this point after a social media binge and it’s a faff to uninstall and reinstall apps. With Brick, I can lock myself out before reaching that point.
How it works
The idea is to create more friction between you and your phone. The Brick is a small magnetic square made to be a stronger deterrent against screen time fiends like me.
Download the Brick app, create a mode by choosing which apps to block or which apps to allow. To activate, press the ‘Brick device’ button on the app homescreen and tap the Brick against the back of the phone to activate. A phone can be Bricked manually or on a schedule. Unbrick your phone by pressing ‘Unbrick device’ and tapping the Brick against the phone again. Misplaced or lost the Brick? You can ‘Emergency Unbrick’ your phone five times.
When Brick is enabled, the icons of the disabled apps are greyed out. If you open a Bricked app, a plain dark screen will come up with the message: “You’ve turned [app name] off. Your phone is currently Bricked. To access the app, tap your Brick.” On the bottom of the screen a button reads: “Back to what matters” (eye-roll) and take you back from whence you came.
The potential upsides: it works, you get to enjoy your life – and phone – without the downsides. The con: it costs £55. Brick likes to point out it doesn’t require a subscription like so many things do these days, and that all you have to pay is the upfront cost of the device. This is good news, but a low bar.
I’ve been locking myself out of the most addictive apps for about a month (Image: Brick)
This is what happens if you try to use a Bricked app (Image: Ketsuda Phoutinane)
My one month trial of Brick
After testing Brick for almost a month, I’m pleasantly surprised to say it actually worked — astoundingly 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 focus 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 effortless way to get off my phone and stay that way.
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 the Brick app looks like (Image: Ketsuda Phoutinane)
What happened to me after a month of Brick
Once my phone 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 comfortable level. 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 two weeks to the present and my daily screen time is three hours and 32 minutes with a TikTok daily average of 21 minutes.
Crunching the numbers, that’s a 41% daily screen time reduction and a 25% drop on TikTok.
Brick is the size of a refrigerator magnet (Image: Brick)
Final thoughts — is it worth the £55 price tag?
No doubt about it, £55 is a lot of money, so the annoying answer is it depends.
I like to break big purchases into cost per use. In the last 26 days, my phone is Bricked an average of 11 hours and 45 minutes a day. So in about 306 hours of use, it’s cost 18p an hour and that’s not factoring in how I intended to use it for the foreseeable future.
After a month, I’ve nearly halved my phone usage, my mind is less cluttered and I’m less tethered to my phone. That’s a good tradeoff.
