Logan Ivey has tried everything to cut down on his screen time. He bought a modern “dumbphone” that’s designed to be used as little as possible, tried a device called a Brick that removes distracting apps and notifications from a smartphone, and even resorted to a classic flip phone when all else failed. Still, nothing was working. So he turned his iPhone into a 6-pound weight.
The 6 Pound Phone Case is a bulky, stainless steel contraption designed to make your smartphone extremely annoying to use. Inspired by the aesthetics of an ’80s brick phone, the case transforms a typical, ultra-portable iPhone into a cumbersome eyesore—and that’s the whole point. Ivey, who has been using the case for the past two months, says it has helped cut his screen time in half. Currently, the 6 Pound Phone Case is just a prototype, but Ivey is raising money through a Kickstarter page to sell a small batch of the cases for a whopping $210 each (the hefty price tag, he says, is due to the high manufacturing costs and current tariffs on steel).
Ivey’s invention is the latest in a recent series of out-there projects designed to help smartphone users “hack” their brains into cutting the doomscroll short. In the late 2010s, dumbphones enjoyed a spike in popularity—but since then, many users have met with the unfortunate reality that they need smartphone functions like maps, Google, email, and other services to navigate the day-to-day.
Creative minds have thought up all kinds of solutions to this conundrum, including an app that forces you to literally touch grass before you scroll, a phone case that doubles as a tiny screen, and an app that uses an animated bean character to guilt-trip you out of going on social media. The 6 Pound Phone Case is the newest addition to this wacky smartphone detox lineup—and it might just be the most effective.
Ivey uses social media for a living. He’s both an independent creator and a full-time social media producer for Matter Neuroscience, a company he describes as dedicated to “bridging the gap between everyday behavior and molecular science.” Part of Matter Neuroscience’s mission has included building an app that lets users track their emotions every week to understand what kind of behaviors drive happiness. Through this project, Ivey says, he realized just how much his phone was sapping his energy and blocking his “feel-good neurotransmitters.”
After trying dumbphones, a flip phone, and app blockers, Ivey realized that, especially given his job in social media, it was just too inconvenient to try replacing his smartphone. Instead, he needed a way to make his iPhone feel more like a tool than an addictive pastime.
“I asked myself, ‘How can I keep all the functionality of my phone, but still use it less?’” Ivey says. “Then I thought, like, What if my phone was just really heavy and inconvenient to use?”
Matter Neuroscience partnered with Ivey to help make the idea reality. He turned to the clunky form factor of an ’80s brick phone as inspiration, designing a case with one flat surface and two jutting rectangles on its top and bottom. Cutouts for charging, volume buttons, power, and a tapered camera hole keep every part of the phone functional—but its stainless steel construction, which can be removed only by unscrewing four screws with an Allen wrench, makes it physically difficult to hold for too long.
“At 6 pounds, your hands and arms physically get tired while using it,” the case’s Kickstarter page reads. “That fatigue reminds you to put the phone down.” Further, it adds, the case’s size is inconveniently big, purposefully preventing the user from tucking it in their pocket. “You have to carry it in a bag like a laptop, or leave it in another room. That means fewer phantom notifications, fewer sidewalk swipes, and fewer brain rot sessions while pooping (and maybe less hemorrhoids).”
In Ivey’s experience, the 6 Pound Phone Case has cut his screen time from four and a half hours per week to just two. While Ivey does hope to sell some of the cases through his Kickstarter with Matter Neuroscience, he doesn’t have plans to patent the design, and sees it as a concept that could have genuine potential for other phone case companies.
“Those little moments in life where you just instinctively reach for your phone, I don’t do anymore,” Ivey says, “because I either don’t have it on me or it’s too heavy.”
