A video of a woman using a transparent ‘phone’ went viral. But can it actually help curb your smartphone addiction?

Is that clear “cellphone” you’ve noticed on TikTok legit? It might be, sooner or later — however in the mean time, it’s only a piece of plastic designed to make us mirror on our relationship with our actual telephones.

It began in Might, with a TikTok of a girl holding what seems to be a clear cellphone whereas standing in line at a boba store. However the video — which acquired hundreds of thousands of views and had folks describing the cellphone as one thing out of Black Mirror or a sci-fi film — didn’t really contain any actual tech. As a substitute, it was a part of a social experiment spurred by tech content material creator Catherine Goetze — aka CatGPT — who seems within the video. It was all to create a buzz across the “methaphone,” a bit of acrylic formed like an iPhone.

“My buddy is definitely the inventor and creator of those and he instructed me that what he needed to check was, if we’re all so hooked on our telephones, then might you probably curb anyone’s habit by changing the sensation of getting a cellphone in your pocket with one thing that feels precisely the identical,” Goetze defined in a follow-up TikTok, which revealed the reality behind the acrylic “cellphone.” She credited toymaker Eric Antonow with creating the methaphone on her web site.

On his web site, Antonow defined that the toy’s identify, the “methaphone,” is a nod to methadone, a substance used as a hurt discount software within the remedy of morphine and heroin habit.

“I embody myself amongst individuals who don’t like the present relationship with telephones and their apps,” Antonow wrote. “I needed a tool that might make you assume. It’s a mirror in your cellphone emotions. You flip it over in your palms and questions would possibly begin to come up. Woah, how can this factor have such energy and presence in my life? What wouldn’t it be like to hold it round with me all day?”

Goetze’s web site now hyperlinks to a type you possibly can fill out if you would like your individual methaphone. In change, Goetze asks that folks share suggestions about their experiences utilizing this piece of non-tech.

“We’re all simply people up in opposition to, what? Everything of massive tech?” Goetze requested in her TIkTok. “I feel that is why this little piece of acrylic feels so empowering. I imply, truthfully, look, have I used my cellphone much less prior to now week that I have been carrying this round with me? In all probability not. However simply the concept I might have one thing in my life — one thing I can contact and maintain — and the dialog that this little man is sparking on-line … that is what actually issues,” she mentioned.

Can an acrylic cellphone actually curb smartphone habit?

Individuals in Goetze’s TikTok feedback are skeptical that the methaphone would assist folks curb a smartphone behavior. One wrote, “I’m hooked on TikTok, not my cellphone.” One other added, “No one is hooked on holding telephones, they’re hooked on the apps.” And a 3rd famous that “As an older millennial that might not work for me. I grew up when there have been no cell telephones, so I’m hooked on the entry to info, not the thought of holding the cellphone.”

Kostadin Kushlev, an assistant professor at Georgetown College who explores how know-how impacts happiness, instructed Yahoo Information that there has not been sufficient analysis on objects just like the methaphone to say definitively that it’ll or is not going to assist folks curb their smartphone behavior.

There’s some precedent for the methaphone, nevertheless, Kushlev famous, in that some individuals who stop smoking might wean themselves off of cigarettes or vapes by selecting to make use of nicotine-free gadgets which have the identical really feel as their most popular smoking gadget.

Nevertheless, Kushlev added that there are numerous explanation why individuals are so hooked up to their gadgets, and it doesn’t need to do with the bodily object itself.

“We dwell in an consideration economic system, and our consideration may be very beneficial when it comes to promoting advertisements — and finally, the platforms we use, like social media and gaming platforms, know how one can hook folks,” he defined. A method they do that is via “variable reinforcement,” which is an idea that’s just like how slot machines work. Because you by no means know once you’ll get a like or a remark, that unpredictability retains you checking in and scrolling, in hopes you’ll get a notification that triggers a success of dopamine. That makes the conduct extra addictive over time.

And the flexibility to create engagement is “the primary metric by which these platforms decide success, and the primary metric that may be measured,” he defined — that means there is a main incentive from corporations to maintain your eyeballs in your cellphone.

So whereas the methaphone could also be an attention-grabbing dialog starter, it’s seemingly not going to be the factor that helps you kick a smartphone behavior for good.