I’ve had a screen time limit on my iPhone for years, giving me 30 minutes of social media each day. How many times have I dismissed the limit notification and continued watching mindless Reels? I would be horrified to learn that.
It turns out that what I needed was a $59 gray plastic one (self-discipline would have been more affordable, but it was out of stock). The Brick — a magnetic, matchbox-sized gadget — has achieved what no other screen time app has. It really made me use my phone less and improve my sleeping habits.
Brick is different from your standard screen time app because it takes everything a step further into the physical world. The Gadget is a branded, NFC-enabled square that lets you disable your individual screen time limits just by tapping your phone on the Brick, just like you’d buy something at a tap kiosk to pay. Apparently I won’t go on Instagram if I have to physically get up and tap my phone on the Brick to go to Instagram.
“The Brick was born out of a personal need: our phones were getting in the way of our lifestyles,” co-founder Zach Nasgowitz told TechCrunch via email. “We’ve been looking for solutions to this problem in our lives, but nothing seems to be right, so we decided to build something that would solve this problem for ourselves.”
I used Brick to help me with my sleep hygiene and I’m embarrassed to admit it worked better than I had hoped.
Like many other millennials, especially those of us whose jobs are so connected to the internet, I have a bad habit of going to bed at night and mindlessly scrolling through my phone, which makes it difficult to sleep. Even worse, sometimes when I wake up, I stay on my phone in bed and start the day feeling lethargic.
I created a “Sleep” mode in the Brick app that opens every night at 10:30 PM. Then, my phone automatically blocks all apps except messaging apps (which I want to be accessible anyway) and audio apps (I sometimes listen to podcasts or audiobooks to help me sleep). When I wake up, I can’t waste time on my phone unless I get out of bed, walk downstairs, and hit my phone on the Brick. (If you want to keep your phone completely out of your bedroom, but use podcasts as a sleep aid, I’d recommend A dreamer alarm clock.)
It’s a shame that I need a $59 piece of plastic to make a lifestyle change, but it would be so easy for me to fall back into old habits without the Brick. I’ve been testing the Brick that the company sent for review, and it was so impressive that I’m going to buy one so I can continue using it (for ethical reasons, we return or give away our review units). If you really wanted to, you could try DIY something like a brick Using an NFC tag and Apple Shortcuts.
Brick co-founder TJ Driver told TechCrunch via email, “It’s easy to get past software-only solutions like screen time and digital well-being, and what actually works is adding friction.” “This allowed physical technology to step in to create a real disconnect that software can’t replicate. By requiring you to physically return to the device to unblock your apps, the decision to reconnect becomes a deliberate decision rather than an unconscious reflex.”
Users are given a small number of “emergency bricks,” just in case you’re out and about when your phone’s brick works and you need a special app like Google Maps or Uber to get home safely. But since I’m rarely up late, I find it easier to put these apps to sleep so I don’t have to pull out the emergency room for nothing. Knowing I can open the Uber app doesn’t affect my sleep. I’m not a doomscroll in Uber.
“Rather than relying on willpower all the time, it can be more effective to design your environment so that you don’t always have to use your willpower or your brain,” says Driver. “Things like Brick help people choose how they want their phone to best serve them for a given moment or task, and then design their digital environment so they don’t have to think about it anymore.”
This emphasis on customization and agency is what makes the product work for many customers.
“One user had wanted a dumb phone for years, but couldn’t give up KakaoTalk, his primary texting app for communicating with his wife and friends living in Korea,” Nasgowitz said. “He shared, ‘Brick has turned my phone into what I’ve always wanted – a phone that can text, call, take a few pictures and use Kakao. It’s perfect.’
People are more and more interested in switching to “dumb phones”. Disillusioned with Big Tech. But flip phones weren’t designed for our current lifestyles, where we scan our phones instead of printing concert tickets, use our phones to pay subway fares, and have jobs that require us to use special two-factor authentication apps. (Some companies, e.g Dumb Co and commander(They try to fix this by jailbreaking flip phones or creating completely new hardware to download authenticators and apps like WhatsApp.)
If you’re worried about making a more extreme change, like buying a flip phone, the Brick is a happy medium—it works, but it’s not that drastic of an intrusion. You can mute your phone as much as you want whenever you want.
“When you zoom out and think about the movement of screen time as a whole, it’s not giving up on technology,” Driver said. “It’s about reclaiming agency and being intentional again.”
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