I pick up my phone roughly 80 times a day. I know this because I finally looked, and the number made me feel nigh on disgusted. I’m a technology journalist – phones are literally my job – but even I’ve reached the point where the reflexive scroll-check-scroll loop feels less like a habit and more like a pokie addiction I can’t shake.
If you’re reading this, you probably feel the same way. The average person now spends close to seven hours a day staring at a screen. This month, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for building addictive products that caused a young woman’s mental health problems – a landmark verdict with thousands of similar cases pending. The platforms were designed to keep us hooked, and the question is now, what we do about it.
Most of us have tried the obvious fixes: deleting Instagram, setting timers, placing the phone in another room. They work for a day or two. Then the FOMO kicks in, or you need Google Maps, or you just want to check one thing, and suddenly, it’s midnight, and you’re deep in a Reddit rabbit hole about second-wave emo bands from 1995.
The good news is that 2026 has produced a genuinely useful crop of tools designed around a simple insight: willpower alone doesn’t work. What does work is friction – making the bad behaviour slightly harder, slightly less rewarding, or slightly more annoying. Here are five approaches worth trying, plus a handful of rogue ideas that cost nothing.
The Brick is a small magnetic puck – a little bit bigger than your thumb – that uses NFC technology to disable whatever apps you choose. You tap your phone to the Brick, and Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or whatever you’ve selected vanishes. No notification, and no option to override. The only way to get those apps back is to physically return to wherever you left the Brick and tap again.
I found that my daily screen time in the two weeks that I habitually used the Brick – at work, on holidays in Tasmania and spending time with my family – dropped from nearly six hours to under three. It was transformative, and showed how compulsively I reach for apps, particularly in ‘in between’ moments.
The smartest trick? Leave the Brick at home. It’s magnetic: stick it to your fridge, your front door, or your side table next to your bed. When you’re out with friends or at work, you simply can’t unbrick. You just accept that the feeds can wait. And that dopamine hit you do get when you ‘unbrick’ is glorious.
Unyoked – the Australian off-grid cabin network founded by twin brothers Cam and Chris – has been including a Brick in every cabin. The idea is to pair the physical device with Unyoked’s deliberately sparse, no-Wi-Fi settings so guests can experience what a genuine digital detox feels like, then carry the habit home. Unyoked put me up for two nights to try it for myself and it effectively ‘cured’ some early signs of burnout. I got through one and a half books, explored some nature, and came out of it feeling much more present.
The Brick costs $96 (no subscription, and there are usually sales), offers five emergency ‘unbricks’, and supports scheduling.
If the Brick is the American take on physical friction, Locked is the Australian one. Founded by Jordan Lingohr, Locked pairs an iOS app with a small NFC tag – available as either a keychain-style tag or a slim card that slides into your wallet. The concept is similar: tap your phone to block distracting apps, tap again to unlock.
Lingohr says every other screen time app he tried had the same fatal flaw. “That ‘off-switch’ lives on your phone,” he tells me. “Effectively, that means you’re carrying the off-switch in your pocket with you, wherever you go.” It’s the core argument for why physical devices like Locked and the Brick are gaining traction over software-only solutions.
What sets Locked apart technically is its Strict Mode: activate it and iOS will prevent you from deleting the Locked app while a focus session is running, closing the obvious cheat of just uninstalling the blocker to reach social media. It’s a one-time purchase with no subscription, the tag needs no battery or charging, and multiple iPhones can pair to the same tag – handy for families. There’s no Android support yet, but it’s coming.
Lingohr’s ambitions for 2026 extend beyond individual users. He says the company is pushing into workplaces and schools, where he believes the impact will be greatest. He’s also clear about the cultural problem he’s trying to solve: that it’s become socially acceptable to stare at a six-inch screen while sitting, standing and walking, even in the company of other people.
The tools already on your phone are better than most people realise, they’re just poorly configured out of the box. Apple’s Screen Time lets you set per-app daily limits, schedule full downtime windows, and restrict entire categories of apps. Android’s Digital Wellbeing does roughly the same.
The critical move that most people skip: set a separate passcode for Screen Time restrictions, then have someone else enter it. If you don’t know the override code, you can’t just dismiss the limit when temptation hits at 11pm. Combine this with Focus modes on iOS or Work and Bedtime profiles on Android, which can hide whole categories of apps from your home screen at scheduled times, and the built-in tools become meaningfully harder to bypass. Not impossible, but harder – and in the friction game, harder is everything.
Hear me out: yes, they’re low-tech, borderline absurd, and yet they’re remarkably effective. Timed lockboxes – essentially kitchen safes with countdown timers – let you physically imprison your phone for a set period. Set it for two hours during deep work, close the lid, and the phone is gone until the timer expires. No emergency exit, no override, and no negotiation.
It’s the nuclear option, and it won’t suit everyone. But for focused work blocks – writing, studying, creative sessions – it can be a godsend.
This one addresses the ‘why’ rather than the what. A lot of compulsive scrolling isn’t really about wanting to see content – it’s a coping mechanism for anxiety, boredom, or restlessness. Apps like Headspace and Calm tackle the underlying drivers through guided meditation, breathing exercises, mood tracking and CBT-style tools designed to reduce the urge to reach for the phone as a default stress response.
They won’t block Instagram for you. But if the reason you keep opening Instagram is that your nervous system is jangling, and you don’t know what else to do with your hands, teaching it to calm down might be the more durable fix.
Move all dopamine apps off your home screen. Stick Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and the rest into a single folder called “Later” on your second or third screen. The extra two seconds of friction is surprisingly effective at interrupting the autopilot reach.
Switch to greyscale mode. Both iOS and Android let you render the entire display in black and white. It sounds weird and trivial, but colour is a core part of how apps hook your attention – those red notification badges, the vibrant thumbnails, the dopamine-engineered gradients. Strip the colour out and your phone becomes way more boring. Instagram in greyscale looks like a newspaper from the 1940s. It really can trick your brain; you’ll be amazed how quickly you put the phone down.
Neither trick requires downloading anything, buying anything, or admitting to anyone that you have a problem. They’re just environmental tweaks that make the bad choice marginally less appealing. Which, as it turns out, is all most of us need.
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David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
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