How I (Basically) Quit Social Media

I am a shill for the Brick

Have you all heard of the Brick? If you’ve talked to me about your inability to control your doomscrolling lately, you probably have! It’s a piece of plastic with a magnet that makes you stop looking at social media.

You order the Brick (it’s $50, but there are various discount codes online), download the app, then tap your phone to the Brick and it blocks whatever you’ve programmed it to block. It has broad presets (Social Media, Games, etc.), but you can customize everything. Once you’ve bricked your phone, the only way to unbrick it and get access to those apps is to physically tap the Brick again.

I keep my Brick on the fridge in the kitchen, a place where I do not scroll. It’s possible that my inherent laziness is part of the magic here—if I’m on the couch, I have to get up (!) if I want to drown my brain in social media. That brief moment of contemplation (am I willing to remove myself from this couch?) is enough for me to decide that I don’t, in fact, need to scroll. My initial Brick usage was pretty intermittent. Part of the issue with keeping it in the kitchen is that I forgot it was there. But then I started to remember and I would tap it before going to work and I’d go all day without my social media refuge. What really did it for me was when I went on a weeklong vacation and forgot to unbrick my phone. I had all the intentions of doing so, but with packing, leaving for the airport at 4 am, etc. I just simply didn’t.

Here’s the cathedral in Cologne that I couldn’t show anyone because I didn’t have Instagram! Go see it if you have the opportunity, but not in February.

And then, when I came back, I just didn’t care. I had lost interest in how other people are depicting their lives for others. My phone remains bricked. I have Instagram on my iPad, but I use that/have it around me a lot less than my phone. I’ll still go on it every few days. I think the algorithm is trying very hard to draw me back in, showing my favorite accounts (@weratedogs, @nature_is_not_metal, and my partner’s account) right away, which is actually great, because I just look at those and then close out. The other week I got this screentime notification and felt ridiculously proud:

Again, this is from my iPad, not my phone, but I don’t have social media on my phone.¹ So 1 minute of Instagram per day.² Pretty great!

What am I doing instead? Reading, knitting, gardening, going on walks, and hanging out with friends. It’s nice! 10/10 would recommend.

The One Disadvantage

Though I didn’t use my Cove Instagram account often, not being on there at all makes me feel a little bit distant from you all, so I am going to try to up my newsletter game a bit and possibly use the Substack chat function. As always, please LMK if there’s anything you would like me to write about.

xx,
Alex

1. The caveat here is that I have gotten very into Reddit! But I’ve curated it to my various hobbies and it’s not stressful or political. My favorite subreddit is r/BenignExistence

2. I quit Facebook in 2016, never allowed myself TikTok because I knew that was just too dangerous, and Elon forced me off of Twitter. I do have a Bluesky, but it’s just not as good as the Twitter of yore was.