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Though it felt a bit like discovering an addiction treatment at my local heroin store, I found the screen-time solution that works for me via an Instagram ad. For months, Meta’s algorithm badgered me to buy a little piece of plastic mounted on a magnet. I could touch my iPhone to it and it would temporarily turn my device from a smartphone to a dumbphone. I could set certain apps to become inaccessible until I touched my phone to the piece of plastic again. The little block was called “Brick.”

For a guy who spends eight hours or more on my phone fairly often, the results have been good. According to Apple’s screen-time reports, days in which I “brick” my phone cor

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