{"id":359848,"date":"2026-04-02T06:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/359848\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T06:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:19:11","slug":"i-live-to-scroll-its-for-work-i-convince-myself-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/359848\/","title":{"rendered":"I live to scroll. It\u2019s for \u2018work\u2019, I convince myself \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Sunday afternoon last month, I impulsively purchased a new \u20ac900 iPhone<\/a> and put it on my credit card. That very day I also ordered a device to lock myself out of the very same phone. Ah, the duality of woman. <\/p>\n

I, like so many of us, have a problematic relationship with my phone. It is my constant companion, a Pandora\u2019s box of entertainment, friends, strangers and Heated Rivalry<\/a> reels on Instagram. If earning a living wasn\u2019t a necessity and bed sores weren\u2019t a risk factor, I would happily lie around all day, scrolling, laughing, occasionally crying, gasping, learning and filing informative and instructional TikToks into folders I will simply never look at again. Folders with names like \u201chandy DIY bits\u201d and \u201cbook ideas?\u201d <\/p>\n

I live to scroll. \u201cIt\u2019s for work,\u201d I convince myself, turning over to reach for my charger so I can watch the 17th video in a woman\u2019s Insta series about renovating her basement toilet in rural Portland. <\/p>\n

Even though I do use my phone for work and I appreciate that it\u2019s a miraculous and powerful tiny computer that lives in my pocket\/hand, I\u2019ve never handed over \u20ac900 to buy one before. (If I\u2019m to be completely honest, I just searched my emails for the Harvey Norman invoice and it was actually \u20ac979. Is it any wonder I still have no mortgage? How many avocado toasts is \u20ac979?)<\/p>\n

In my defence, the purchase has freed me from two tyrannies. First, the oppression of the \u201cinsufficient storage\u201d warning. Apple loves to regularly insist that you download an operating system update, followed quickly by a scolding about how many podcasts and identical videos of a beach you have clogging up your device. Not any more! My new phone has so much delicious storage I\u2019ve been downloading audiobooks just for the hell of it. <\/p>\n

Second, I am liberated from the clutches of a phone contract. Sure, your Vodafones and your Threes will sell you an iPhone 17 for \u20ac200, but then they\u2019ll charge you \u20ac60 a month for two years for the pleasure of using it. I\u2019m paying \u20ac14 a month to a company called GooGoo or Bonzo or similar and am beholden to nobody. Plus, I sold my old phone to one of those refurbishment companies for \u20ac100 so I\u2019m practically making money. I have a first-class honours degree in Girl Maths and these numbers are sound. <\/p>\n

On that same afternoon that an \u201cinsufficient storage\u201d message tipped me over into making the click-and-collect purchase of the new phone, I also ordered a Brick. <\/p>\n

A Brick is a physical device which, somewhat ironically, has been aggressively marketed to me on social media for some time. You place the little grey box somewhere in your home and use the Brick app to lock yourself out of your phone. Then, when you want to use your device you must physically take the phone to the Brick and tap to unlock it. <\/p>\n

The idea is that you\u2019ll set the Brick to ban you from all of your most distracting apps when you need to focus on work or reading or sleeping. It essentially turns your smartphone into a \u201cbrick\u201d phone of the olden days when the most sophisticated diversion was a game of Snake. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brick review: This simple device helped me halve my screen timeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There are plenty of other apps to lock you out of various operations on your phone, but an addict like me can get past those in the blink of an eye. I\u2019ve lost count of the times I\u2019ve overridden my self-imposed time limits or simply deleted another useless nanny app. <\/p>\n

The Brick has a setting that won\u2019t allow you to bypass it even if you think you have deleted all trace of it. It comes with five \u201cemergency unbricks\u201d which will unlock the phone without physically tapping it off the Brick. I don\u2019t know what happens if you use all five and, frankly, it\u2019s more thrilling not to find out. <\/p>\n

Having a new verb, to Brick, is also a novelty. Anne bricked her phone yesterday. Barry would brick his phone but he\u2019s only scrolled for four hours today. Daddy can\u2019t believe his children have been reduced to bricking their phones because in his day he had to walk four miles barefoot to post a letter. <\/p>\n

Has my Brick cancelled out my new phone? No. I\u2019m not quite ready yet to give the Brick the level of power it\u2019s capable of. I\u2019m building towards the ultimate goal of a daily automated bricking schedule and maybe, someday, placing the Brick in my car rather than just out in the hall. Baby steps. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Sunday afternoon last month, I impulsively purchased a new \u20ac900 iPhone and put it on my credit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31093,9822,4791,111,139,69,145,613],"class_list":{"0":"post-359848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-emer-mclysaght","9":"tag-for-you","10":"tag-instagram","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-tiktok"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}