In the myth of Pandora’s box as most people know it, a women seized by curiosity opens a box full of bad stuff — suffering, sickness, death — and unleashes misery upon humanity.
There’s another interpretation of how that whole mess went down, one where the box is actually full of good things: trust, grace and the less sexy but notably important quality that is restraint. In that version of the story, the gods of all those virtuous principles fly right out of the box and head straight for Mount Olympus, far from the sweaty, greedy hands of humans.
So maybe it’s not entirely our fault that, some two thousand years later, we find it difficult to resist gleaming vessels that seem to contain the unknown — untold pleasures or pains or, simply, a video instructing us to do something with feta or instant coffee we had never considered before.
Blame mythology. Blame fate. Blame short-form video and the sticky algorithms powering Instagram and TikTok, whose platforms are engineered to keep us scrolling, tapping, refreshing for the quick rush of a like or comment.
What used to be innocent enough — checking social media to see what our friends were up to — has escalated into a battle of wills in which there can emerge only one victor: man or phone. Many of us are going to more extreme lengths to come out on top, physically restraining ourselves from our devices and spending increasing sums to quash our habit.
These acts have also become something of a trend online, where going phone-free is its own form of cultural currency.
Brick, a newish physical device, has users tap their phones against a small plastic square to block access to certain apps. (A “bricked” phone, once a technical term that has since entered the broader digital lexicon, is a phone that has been rendered unusable.) To regain access, users must physically tap the brick — which sells for about $60 — a second time. Apps like Opal will help you block distracting apps and lock in for “deep focus sessions” — for $99.99 per year.
This is to say nothing of the measures parents and other adults have taken to unglue children from their phones. Schools around the United States have banned cellphones, and some districts have spent millions of dollars on lockable pouches to keep students off devices during class time.
Adults, though, are the only ones who can put themselves in a time out. It’s mildly absurd, some admit, to think of the tests they have put themselves through recently to resist the allure of their devices.
For a week last summer, Tiffany Ng, who writes a newsletter called “Cyber Celibate,” chained her phone to a wall in her home using an old belt and a coat hook.
“I put a really uncomfortable rattan stool next to it trying to emulate the feeling of having a couch next to a landline in the past,” Ms. Ng, 25, said in an interview. On her Substack, she wrote that she quickly realized that “doomscrolling only hits when you’re horizontal.”
‘Skin in the Game’
Our relationship to our phones was not always so fraught. And the methods of keeping it in check were once charmingly modest, even eccentric. In 2016, the media mogul Arianna Huffington sold a tiny $100 bed designed to encourage people to tuck in their devices each night.
The rest of us may have tried turning the candy colors of our phone screens to grayscale, making their content (hopefully) less enticing. Perhaps you would steal a glance at the screen time reports offered by Apple and Android. Maybe neither of those worked and you began taking advantage of the tools built into certain apps to set limits on the time you spend there — and then quickly realized how easily those limits can be circumvented.
The cultural shift from being excited about cellphones and the constant hum of social media to feeling anxiety over that connectivity is a relatively recent development.
A decade ago, opening a platform like Facebook or Instagram meant seeing content posted by people you knew in real life, and it still felt possible to reach the end of your phone, to scroll through every post in a day on Instagram and then — because you were out of things to look at — put your phone down and tuck it away.
Now, the infinite scroll — powered by algorithms that mostly show us content from people we don’t know — can ensnare us, well, infinitely.
In a 2024 survey from Pew Research Center, about four in 10 adults in the United States, and a majority of adults under 30, said they were on their phones “almost constantly.” In 2015, just 21 percent of U.S. adults said the same.
Ava Pumpelly, a marketing professional who lives in Washington, D.C., said she noticed her phone habits were becoming toxic during the pandemic. Then a high school senior, it was all too easy to spend hours a day scrolling, she said, particularly in the early months of 2020, when her school hadn’t quite figured out how to move classes online.
“I felt like there was nothing really to do other than, like, doom scroll and watch TV,” said Ms. Pumpelly, now 23.
Those patterns followed her to college, where she sometimes struggled to stay focused, she said. After graduation, the problems continued.
“I’m not ashamed to say that I for sure have an addiction to my phone,” Ms. Pumpelly said.
She recently started using a Brick to help eliminate the temptation to scroll on social media when she needs to be producing. Her device — the Brick is magnetic — is stuck to her refrigerator, so sometimes Ms. Pumpelly, whose job is remote, will “brick” her phone and head to a nearby cafe to work. If she wants to get back into those apps, she has to walk back to her house.
The physical distance helps. Even just being a room away makes a difference, she said.
“I live in the smallest little apartment in D.C.,” Ms. Pumpelly said with a laugh. “I’m so lazy that, like, just walking to the fridge is enough to keep me from unbricking.”
Erika Veurink, a newsletter writer in Brooklyn, has recommended free or low-cost tips for offline living, like reading physical library books, wearing a watch and sending snail mail. But she too has been drawn to the Brick and said she has been bricking her phone on weekends for months.
She recognized there was some irony in spending money on a secondary device to keep you from using another device you purchased. The cost can be motivating, she said.
“To be candid, I would have paid $500 for it because I am so desperate for something that works to get me off my phone,” Ms. Veurink said. “What I was drawn to is, like, paying a little bit of money — that puts some skin in the game.”
She described the sometimes steep prices of other activities, like doing Pilates or getting a facial as including the unexpected luxury of being forced to not look at a phone for an hour.
Too Trendy?
As anxieties about increased phone use intensify, analog tools have become trendy alternatives bordering on status symbols — particularly considering their price tags — meant to telegraph a sense of discipline and self-control.
Ms. Veurink said it is not uncommon to see a Brick in “what’s in my bag” style content online.
Part of that may have to do with the influencer campaigns companies like Brick are undertaking: Some Brick users interviewed for, but not quoted in, this article said that after posting reviews praising Brick, the company later reached out to pay them to use those videos in advertisements. (Ms. Veurink said she purchased the device herself and does not have a business relationship with the brand.)
“When we see that kind of organic enthusiasm, we sometimes choose to amplify those posts so their voices and perspectives reach a wider audience,.” Kirsten Young, Brick’s vice president of marketing, wrote in emailed statement.
It wouldn’t be the first time an activity whose stated virtue is that it takes place offline — reading a book, writing a letter, touching grass — became fodder for the churning machinery of content creation.
Instagram posts about “bricking” or TikToks extolling the virtues of so-called dumbphones — cellphones with limited capabilities akin to the early days of app-less flip phones — have also raised eyebrows at a time when many social media users are ultrasensitive to any behavior that seems “performative,” a buzzword du jour.
But some see a genuine risk in the fashionable aura surrounding these devices.
Caitlin Begg, the founder of Authentic Social, an applied research lab focused on sociology and technology, described tools like Brick and the app Opal as part of a larger “analog ecosystem,” but voiced concerns that the “analog movement is becoming framed as an upper-class movement.”
Speaking on her landline, a phone from the 1980s purchased on eBay, Ms. Begg, 31, worried that digital detoxes and other temporary restraints on phone use were treating symptoms but not addressing a root cause.
“They’re great for certain periods of time, but then you unblock and that hypercommunication is still there,” she said. She also cautioned against “ascribing morality to screen time.”
“I do wish that we could reframe it a little bit because it’s a little more complicated than that,” Ms. Begg added.
Ms. Ng, the writer who chained her phone to a wall, argued that the decision to abstain from phone use could be “easily romanticized.”
She had posted about her makeshift contraption on TikTok, where she was surprised by how many people asked about building their own phone restraints. She grappled with using social media to promote work about being more present in the real world and how such content might be considered “performative.”
Still, Ms. Ng said posting about her efforts has helped her get in touch with other like-minded people. Talking about getting offline is, perhaps counterintuitively, a very online idea.
Though not for everyone. In December, Gregorios Thomas, who is 23 and lives in Valley Cottage, N.Y., realized the times he felt happiest and most attuned to himself were when he was offline: reading, working out and meditating.
So he decided to give up his phone for a spell. It wasn’t a total technology blackout. Mr. Thomas allowed himself to use his family’s desktop computer and landline. Mr. Thomas works two jobs, one in insurance and the other at a movie theater, and told his bosses the best way to contact him would be by email or in person during work hours. He stayed in touch with friends online via Discord and talked to his sister on the phone a few times.
“When I started doing it, maybe for like the first few days, the realization of how I would bring my phone nearly everywhere was shocking,” Mr. Thomas said. He initially thought he’d go without his device for two weeks, but extended the experiment for the whole month. It was a productive time, he said.
As for his methodology, Mr. Thomas said he didn’t feel an app or any other device was necessary to restrain himself from his phone.
He just turned it off and put it in a box.
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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