A magnetic gray box, no larger than a Post-it note, rests on the refrigerator in Sammy Mousa’s Hyde Park apartment, holding up a maroon University of Chicago Law School flag. The word “Brick” is imprinted on the square’s surface.
On his way to class in the morning, Mousa, 26, taps his phone on the device, in the same way he would tap to pay at a restaurant. Doing so instantly locks him out of Reddit, Netflix, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.
“The usual suspects,” Mousa said.
He then heads to class, with no way of getting back into those apps until he comes home and taps his phone on the device again.
The Brick, invented in early 2023, is the latest attempt at limiting screen time and fighting phone addiction. When making contact with a phone, the device locks users out of certain apps and does not allow them back in until they physically tap the phone on the device again.
“I don’t know the founders, I have never seen their faces,” said Mousa, who has been a loyal user for the past two years. “But it seemed like they had a good cause for starting this, and they actually found a problem that a lot of people suffer from.”
Just 10 miles across the city, Brick’s creators, 26-year-old TJ Driver and 27-year-old Zach Nasgowitz, can be found at the company headquarters in River North. The Milwaukee-raised childhood best friends invented the device in Nasgowitz’s basement, and moved the startup to Chicago in 2024 after it went viral. With a staff of roughly 40 people who are all users, their office is littered with Bricks of varying colors.
According to Driver, the idea for Brick originally came as a solution to their own productivity problems.
“We’d always kind of find ourselves back in these habit loops that we didn’t love,” Driver said. “I wasted a lot of nights and weekends just on my phone.”
Driver found that Apple’s screen time limits were not strong enough to keep him from doomscrolling for hours.
“The big idea that was missing from a lot of the solutions at the time,” he said, “was the idea of physical friction.”
More Top Picks Education
Nasgowitz thought of the problem as a key and a lock. The issue with all of the other screen time barriers is that the key to getting back into your phone was always in your pocket, and with a couple of taps, you’re in.
The Brick is designed to take the key out of your pocket and put it across the room, on the fridge, or in a drawer, and make you put in a physical effort to get back in. For some people, this is enough to keep them from revisiting the same time-sucking sites and apps.
Peter Hohman, of Villa Park, often keeps his Brick in the car.
“If I really needed to do something on an app or something on my phone, and I needed to un-Brick, I would have to walk out to my car,” said 32-year-old Hohman. “If it’s important enough I’ll walk outside and do that, but a lot of times it’s not that essential, and it’s more of just a distraction.”
Hohman has been looking for ways to get offline for a while now.
“I don’t think life is meant to be spent scrolling on a screen for, you know, a third of it,” he said. “That kind of scares me.”
A few years ago, Hohman tried switching to a flip phone.
“I only lasted a month,” he said with a laugh. “It was just so hard to live as a human being in the modern age without a smartphone.”
Maps, online banking and Uber are just a few of the things he found himself missing.
Brick, according to Driver, aims to repurpose your smartphone so that you get all the benefits of the device while eliminating its drawbacks.
“We are very positive around tech. Our smartphones are this amazing tool,” Driver said. “That’s why we have never really thought that the right solution is to get rid of it.”
“I think the beauty of Brick is that it lets you, the user, decide,” he added.
On the Brick app, users can customize which apps they want to block in a given session. You can design different modes, like a sleep mode, a work mode or a default mode. A timer on the screen keeps track of how long you’ve been “Bricked.”
In his default Brick mode, when Mousa tries to click on the Instagram app, a screen pops up, telling him that he is locked out. He has no way to reenter the app unless he taps his phone on the Brick or uses one of his five “emergency un-Bricks.”
A button that says “back to living” takes Mousa back to his home screen.
“Starting a reading, starting a project, is the biggest hurdle to overcome,” said Mousa. “If it’s either pull out my textbook and start reading or grab my phone, just like scrolling for a little bit always felt easier.”
The temptation to scroll kept Mousa in bad habit loops.
“At least two years ago before I started,” Mousa said, “I felt like I had a goldfish brain.”
Before starting law school, Mousa worked as a project design engineer, and often found himself wasting time on social media at work.
“Feeling like I was unproductive all day was bad for my mental health,” he said.
He began using the Brick to lock himself out of certain apps before leaving for work in the morning.
“I was so bored I started doing work,” he said with a laugh. “As I used the Brick more, I noticed my focus improving.”
“It feels like I’m being a better human being,” he added, with a smile.
The mental health benefits of reduced screen time can vary from person to person, according to Courtney Blackwell, an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern.
“It’s really this more nuanced story than just using social media or using my phone a lot is causing mental health problems,” Blackwell said. “If you’re using your phone to avoid something else, that’s where we’re seeing the increased risks.”
Blackwell thinks that the invention of the Brick coming from two Gen Z founders is the best-case scenario.
“It’s important that it’s coming from that generation because they’re going to be the ones who know the user base the most,” Blackwell said.
“I think because we grew up with smartphones, it’s a big reason that we were able to build a solution that works,” said Driver. “We lived with it for so long, and we deeply felt both the negatives and the positives.”
“It’s a rebellion against the war for my attention,” Mousa said, reflecting on why he purchased the Brick. “When I first got a phone, there was none of this algorithm stuff.”
More Top Picks What Are The Best Coats For Winter Find Warm Stylish Options That Keep You Cozy
Although Mousa originally downloaded Instagram to keep up with his friends, the introduction of a curated explore page has changed the game. With the app constantly recommending targeted videos, he now spends more time scrolling through content uploaded by people he’s never met than from his actual friends.
Since creating a device that gives relief from these curated algorithms and other notorious time-wasters, Driver said that many users, including himself, feel grateful to be bored again.
“I forgot how important that feeling was,” Driver said. “What it’s like to just sit with my thoughts, and look around and start a conversation with somebody.”
“I try to spend my free time writing more,” Hohman said. “Just being present.”
The Brick has become such a hit that several celebrities have independently spoken about using it. Lorde, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Steven Colbert are just a few of Brick’s A-list users.
For Driver, seeing the business move from his friend’s basement to Lorde’s Instagram story has been surreal.
“The fact that they’re all talking about it is huge,” Driver said. “It has really just solidified how universal the desire is to spend our time more intentionally.”