Taking a BRICK to social media

Something funny happens when I tell people about my business.

When I started my company earlier this year, I mostly expected people to tell me I was insane. A marketer who doesn't help her clients with social media? A marketer who openly says she thinks social media's a soul-sucking racket that companies should use less?

At the very least, I thought I'd get a polite "Oh, that's different," before an abrupt change of subject. So few people are willing to be confrontational outside of a comment section these days.

But what I've found in the last year is that not only are people eager to hear more about why I'm pouring cold water on social media, they're equally eager to tell me how much they hate social media, both for business and personal use.

It's exactly what happened when I was in New York earlier this fall. I'd been in town for a conference and decided to meet a former colleague for brunch.

We ate at Sonnyboy in Lower Manhattan, a spot we picked largely because I can't eat gluten and their gluten-free ricotta hotcake was whispering my name. Lure me with anything resembling a pancake that I can actually eat, and I'm there. (In case you're wondering, the hotcake does not disappoint. Go, but don't tell them I sent you. They have no idea who I am.)

As we caught up on life, work, and recaps of summer adventures, she eventually wanted to hear more about my company. And as I shared that I was crusading against social media as the de facto marketing tactic in business, it turned out she and her friends had been going through a social media pullback of their own recently. That's when I first heard about BRICK.

If you've tried to use Apple's Screen Time feature, or Digital Wellness for Android, you know that these features are only somewhat effective because you can just regain access to your apps by overriding your settings right from your phone. It's sort of like putting a parental control password on the TV and then giving the kids the password anyway.

BRICK is different. A plastic square the size of a small Post-It notepad and in a generic if unappealing light grey color, it's a physical key of sorts that controls access to the apps on your smartphone. Once you tell it which apps it can lock you out of, you have to physically tap your phone to the brick to unlock your apps.

Maybe that's a low barrier if you decide to carry your Brick around with you, but what if you put it in another room, or got comfy in bed and realized you'd have to get up to unlock your phone for your late-night doomscroll?

Better yet, what if you left for work and you were "bricked" out of social media until you got back later that evening, or left town for the weekend? (See this October 2025 review from Wirecutter for a first-person account of how effective this is.)

My former colleague is a young 20-something, and she decided to buy Brick after a friend of hers had used it and been so happy with it, she'd evangelized the rest of their friend group to buy them too.

After several days without access to Instagram, she told me she could see how unhealthy her relationship to social media was. "It sounds extreme, but going to un-brick my phone sort of felt like being an alcoholic reaching for a drink," she said. "I know I shouldn't. I know I'm gonna feel bad after I do it, and I felt guilty going to tap back into the app."

Friends, Gen Z is so eager to get away from social media apps that they're spending $59 on a plastic magnet to help them do it.

Gen Z's getting so worn out on social media and phone addiction that they're inventing this little piece of plastic to save themselves from the stuff. I'm not mocking, I'm genuinely impressed! But that should be a signal to businesses and marketers everywhere that the relationship between consumers and social media is souring.

This little magnet is so serious that it's HSA/FSA eligible because of the mental health benefits of staying off social media, and Oprah's also talked about it. I mean, if Oprah's talking about something, you know it's making its way to thousands if not millions of homes.

And while it may not mean millions are making a clean break (yet), it does have big implications for businesses and marketers.

For small business owners in particular who are currently relying on social media to reach their audiences, it means more of what you've already been feeling: less likes on your content compared to your total number of followers. Less engagement, less traffic and revenue coming from social media. That void you've been shouting into is gonna get more and more quiet.

If you're a marketer, or you're a small business owner doing your own marketing, it means you have to get serious about re-balancing your marketing efforts. Social media may not go away entirely, but it won't always be the dominant way to reach an audience. Hell, I don't think it should be the dominant way you reach your audience now.

Relying on social media's a choice, and if you're in the camp of people who hate using it, or wish you could use it less, here's your sign that you can start making different choices with your marketing strategy and there will be an audience who's thrilled you're not asking them to be on Instagram just to engage with you.

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Want help to make your business less dependent on social media, or move your business off social media entirely? Get in touch!

I'll help you build a marketing strategy that relies on channels you actually own, so your business runs no matter how much or how little you post.