How Brick Became a Status Symbol for the Aspirationally Offline

But one tool, in particular, has succeeded in capitalizing off of this moment more than the competition. A two-by-two inch plastic device that’s now somewhat of a status symbol for the aspirationally offline: Brick, a tiny plastic square that requires users to tap it with their phones in order to access social media.

The device has become a Labubu for people with a Roth IRA. Created in 2023 by Gen Z founders Zach Nasgowitz and TJ Driver, the $59 gadget has earned headlines like “I Bricked My Phone for 2 Weeks. My Brain Feels Much Better.” Its users colloquially boast of being “bricked” or even “bricked up.”“I realize every time I say ‘I bricked my phone,’” Lexi Merritt, a 31-year-old user from DC, says, “I'm basically spreading the gospel.”

In reality, Brick seemed to spread like any other trend: online. Brick declined to share any sales figures with me, but Nasgowitz said they saw a “very big jump” heading into 2026. Many Brick users, he added, fall between the ages of 20 to 35—people who are not quiet about their usage.

Creators like Jaci Marie Smith are now influencing followers to buy a product that could ultimately cause them to lose followers. Even regular users, especially across the more literate platforms like Substack, are posting Brick photos and testimonials frequently enough that Megan Trincot, a 32-year-old from Chicago who was turned off by Brick’s $60 price tag, still managed to get in on the trend by using an NFC tag and the app “Foqos” to DIY her own.

This online evangelism has unsurprisingly rubbed some people the wrong way. “I think if people were really satisfied with BRICK, they wouldn’t feel the need to log on just to post a photo of it,” writer Kaitlin Phillips posted on Substack Notes. Mikala Jamison meanwhile loved Brick when she first used it. But while others found the process of physically walking to un-brick their phones “humiliating” enough to be a deterrent, the 31-year-old says it was just too easy. “I wanted something that was way more punishing,” she says. Now she pays for the Freedom app instead. ($9 or $40 a year.)

Twenty-nine-year-old Sarah Wood Gonzalez concedes that Brick is only as effective as you choose to use it. In a “dream world,” it would know to block her phone right before she was about to log on. “Sometimes I get down an internet rabbit hole and waste so much time only to pick my head back up and be like, ‘Wow, I should have Bricked my phone,’” she says.

As a result, accusations of “performative onlineness” can accompany these digital detox declarations, as Vogue deems “unplugging” a new “luxury currency.”

“I do find it funny when I'm doomscrolling on my phone and all I see are videos of people talking about how much happier they are now that they're never on their phone,” Lexi Merritt, a 31-year-old user, says. “We're all at the same party here!”

It makes sense that old posting habits die hard. By getting offline, we’re removing ourselves from the town square, and eliminating the attention that, for the past fifteen years, was the most significant proof that we exist. What’s compelling about Brick is that, like the scrapbooks and DVDs we now covet, it’s real. It serves as a physical embodiment of a lifestyle that otherwise, by nature, would go unnoticed. It’s a gold star for our efforts.

Many of us were pushed to digital exhaustion in part thanks to the bloat of social media platforms producing a relentless swirl of trend cycles that allows consumers to pick up and discard culture at increasingly rapid rates. It can feel unwise to invest in emerging trends that might quickly dissipate, or take them seriously at all. There’s no reason to believe Brick won’t fall victim to this same pattern, but it’s not the Brick we ultimately want. It’s the life we hope we’ll be living when using it: One where hours aren’t lost to short-form video binges and neverending scrolls and discoursing about whether we are using a tool to reduce our screen time for the “right reasons.” Now unfamiliarity with the current TikTok discourse and latest brain rot isn’t just elegance, it’s also a relief.

Still, it’s unclear if the Brick is emblematic of a trend or if it’s ushering in something more sustainable. A lasting corrective to our bloated screen times will require more than just our self-control. As long as the majority of our entertainment industry, news industry, commerce, and connection continues to rely on social media to stay afloat, unplugging entirely is an enormous sacrifice. A more significant shift will require a slower pace, in the background. The long arc of our digital retreat is not inevitable, but it is entirely possible if we are consistent enough to gradually force external conditions to change with us, brick by brick.

Kate Lindsay is a writer who covers Internet culture. She is a co-host of Slate’s ICYMI, a podcast about life online.