Would you pay $60 to not use your phone? A surprising number of people have. That’s the cost of the Brick, a small gray tile that locks you out of all the apps you choose until you physically tap your phone to it. It works similarly to freemium apps like Opal and OS-level settings, such as Digital Wellbeing (Android) and Screen Time (Apple), but the Brick is tougher to defeat.
The idea is to leave the Brick at home, perhaps on your refrigerator (it has a magnet on the back), and walk away knowing that you won’t be able to use TikTok or Instagram until you get home again. But there’s no need to panic: You get a limited number of codes to break the lock without the device, should you have a social media emergency.
You might find it appalling that anyone would pay money to not use a phone that costs several hundred dollars, but then again, plenty of people seem to find the idea extremely intriguing. I tested the similarly minded Unpluq Tag (a small yellow NFC key chain) for a week, and gave the Brick to an interested family member to see how these solutions fare in the real world.
I Found the Perfect Candidate for the Brick
Brick sent me a sample device to test, and I bought the Unpluq Tag myself ($79, with a one-year Premium subscription; or $59.99 per year for just the app).
As I set up the devices, I was at a loss for which apps to block. My podcast app? My library apps? As a lightly crusty Gen Xer who only occasionally gets caught up in Instagram (which I delete from my phone unless I’m posting), I’m not the target audience for either.
The Brick (Credit: Jill Duffy)
Enter my slightly younger brother-in-law. He runs his own company, balances work and home life with two small children, and says he could use a little help with the phone. He also loves gadgets.
But as he configured the Brick, he hit the same wall I did. He didn’t know which apps to block. “I want to block Reddit, but not the app—the website,” he said. the Brick doesn’t let you block individual URLs, though Unpluq does.
“Why don’t you just block the whole browser and see how it goes?” I suggested.
He hesitated, but then remembered that to unblock it, all he had to do was tap his phone to the Brick.
Two Days With the Brick: Less Temptation, More Self-Consciousness
By the end of the first day, the Brick seemed to be working for my brother-in-law. “I haven’t even been tempted to pick up my phone,” he said.
On the second day, he went to a birthday party where everyone was discussing the show The Pitt. Instead of looking up the actors’ names, he kept asking his friends. “Who’s the one who…?”
He said he worried that his friends were judging him for not looking up information himself. My reaction was the opposite. Do you remember what it was like before smartphones, when we told stories only as we remembered them, without referencing IMDb, Snopes, or Wikipedia? A good storyteller captures mood and feeling, builds tension, lands the joke, and no one cares if they get the facts exactly right.
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When Addiction Is Interrupted, Withdrawal Follows
On the fourth day with the Brick, I asked my brother-in-law for any new reflections about the experience.
“I’m a little bit sad,” he said. “I think I’m experiencing withdrawal, like I’m not getting as much dopamine as I’m used to.”
My brother-in-law talked about upregulation and downregulation as they relate to addiction. The long and short of it was that his mind felt happy about looking at his phone less, but his body felt a little down.
Takeaways From My Week of Unpluqqing
Meanwhile, I was on my fourth day with the Unpluq Tag. Unpluq has many more settings and options than the Brick. You create custom schedules for different app groups that apply on different days and times. It also offers options for breaking the lock, such as following a tap pattern on the screen or touching your phone to the key chain. The full range of unblocking options are Random, Scroll, Shake, and Tap Pattern. For each, you choose a level of difficulty from 1 to 5.
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Unpluq Tag (Credit: Jill Duffy)
I blocked Mastodon, WhatsApp, and a few other apps every evening, calling it the Be in the Moment, and I simply haven’t thought about it much. A few times, I unblocked the New York Times Games app to play Wordle after everyone went to bed, but that was about it. When you break the lock, Unpluq lets you use your apps for only five minutes. Then, the lock resumes until the schedule ends. I really like that implementation.
Even at the hardest difficulty, however, the lock is easy to break. With Tap Pattern, for example, you simply tap on your phone where you’re told immediately after seeing a prompt, and it might take nine taps or more, depending on the difficulty. With the Shake option, you shake your phone, pause, and shake it again, repeating until a little meter bar on the screen fills up. The locks are not hard to beat at all, though they are tedious, which I suppose forces you to think about your decision to use your phone.
Unpluq’s companion app (Credit: Unpluq/PCMag)
Although Unpluq gives you more options for your habits than the Brick, I wonder whether people who struggle to put down their phones would do better with the latter’s tough-love approach. With the Brick, the lock is harder to break, and you’re stuck in your current mode until you can switch out of it.
Outsourcing Temperance?
I explained the Brick to a friend, a professor of literature with a PhD in poetry. “Are we really outsourcing temperance?” he asked.
The Brick, the Unpluq Tag, Opal, and other phone blockers come across as outrageous expressions of modern society. They’re up there with Methaphone, a smartphone-shaped piece of Plexiglass that you put in your pocket to replace your real phone so the feeling of an empty pocket doesn’t freak you out—it started as a satirical art project and quickly sold out. Or what about Stretchlab, a membership club where you pay additional per-session fees for other people to stretch you, rather than sitting on the floor while you’re watching TV and bending over your legs?
One lesson I’ve learned over the years of writing about technology is to never assume that my take on a product reflects anyone else’s. I can tell you how I feel about a product and why, but I also need to listen to other people’s experiences. The appetite people have for the Brick shocks me, but it’s real. People want help getting away from the black hole that is modern technology. The reality is that apps are designed, tested, and continually tweaked to be as much of a time-suck as possible. Eyeballs and clicks are monetizable, after all.
A whole lot of people seem to need something more than self-control to tear themselves away from social media. Yet, I’m still not convinced that paying $60 for a device is the best way to do it. You don’t need more technology to solve the problem of technology.
About Our Expert
Experience
I’m an expert in software and work-related issues, and I have been contributing to PCMag since 2011. I launched the column Get Organized in 2012 and ran it through 2024, offering advice on how to manage all the devices, apps, digital photos, email, and other technology that can make you feel overwhelmed. That column turned into the book Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life. I was also the first product reviewer at PCMag to test fitness gadgets, including everything from early Fitbits to smart bras.
Currently, I’m passionate about the meaning of work and work culture, and I enjoy writing about how managers and employees can communicate better, with or without software. My most recent book is The Everything Guide to Remote Work. I also love a good workplace drama.
In addition to writing about work, I cover online education, focusing on learning for personal enrichment and skills development. I have a soft spot for really good language-learning software. Although I grew up speaking only English, some twists and turns in life led me to learn Spanish, Romanian, and a bit of American Sign Language. I’ve studied at the university level, as well as at the Foreign Service Institute, where US diplomats and ambassadors learn languages.
My writing has also appeared in WIRED, the BBC, Gloria, Refinery29, and Popular Science, among other publications.
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