The Barbie Brick is a blessing for us all – not just the kids

Time for a digital detox? Three generations put the new retro Barbie ‘brick’ phone to the test

“Nothing beats spending real time together,” gushes the blurb for phone manufacturer HMD’s Barbie Phone. Offering only text and calls, a basic camera and a handful of games, the new flip phone’s design harks back to the days of the early Noughties, before Apple’s iPhone entered the market in 2007 and revolutionised our lives. 
Who’s it for? My eight-year-old would love it, but the marketing is aimed squarely at older Gen-Zs and younger Millennials who are trying to dial back on their smartphone use. Four in 10 of the 16–24-year-olds in the UK that own a smartphone (and that’s 98 per cent of them) worry that they spend too much time on social media. HMD’s collaboration with Mattel is a good fit. The dollmaker’s message is all about empowering young people to reach their full potential. HMD – short for Human Mobile Devices – makes a big deal about their phones being designed for talking, sharing, and capturing ‘moments’, not desperately chasing likes and ranting at strangers on X. 
But can I, a middle-aged mum who gets lost down internet rabbit holes, benefit from a Barbie-style detox? Can my Instagram-addicted octogenarian mum? 
And what about my 14-year-old daughter, already glued to her smartphone for seven to eight hours a day? Is she heading the same way as the “generations of young people who are becoming alienated from their own selves,” that psychologist Dr Arthur Cassidy warns me about when I approach him for tips on digital self-discipline? “We should be introducing some basic CBT techniques into our schools, so that young people can learn how to discriminate between what makes them happy and what causes stress,” he says. “We need to help them to find satisfaction in real human connection.” 
“This is literally the cutest thing ever!” my daughter says as she unpacks the Barbie Phone from its baby-pink box, uncovering gems, stickers and a candy-coloured lanyard with charms. But the novelty soon fades. Perhaps at 14 she’s too young to fully embrace the phone’s tongue-in-cheek playfulness, but my daughter is concerned her friends “will think it’s kind of weird”. 
She agrees to try it at the weekend so no-one will see her. She got her first smartphone just before she started secondary school. Although she feels a bit stressed when she’s expected to respond instantly to every Snapchat, she likes that she can talk to her friends on the app whenever she wants and – news to me – enjoys keeping up her ‘streaks’. Every day she’ll send some of them a squiggled ‘s’. Why, I ask, baffled. “It’s just like… I don’t really know, it’s kind of a symbol of your friendship.” She also likes receiving her Spotify Wrap, a summary of her listening tastes for the past year: “Everyone gets excited about it”. 
Should I be worried about my daughter’s phone use? She’s set a time limit on her TikTok, she’s left group chats when the subject matter was out of her comfort zone (“It started getting a bit self-harmy”), and she knows when she’s using social media to avoid homework: “I could definitely cut down on Instagram and I actually want to as it’s a bit annoying when I’ve literally been doing nothing.” Is the Barbie Phone the answer? “I’d like to keep it cos it’s cute and fun, but I’m not thinking of it as an actual phone. It’s a toy.”
I don’t get off to a good start without my smartphone. I can’t check my train times, and I can’t access my Gmail using the passkey when I arrive in the office I’m working in that day. As a busy freelancer with three children, I like the convenience of accessing email anytime, anywhere. Eventually I remember my password, but I start the day flustered. However, I spend time marvelling at an exquisite tub of flowers beaded with raindrops on the station platform which I wouldn’t have noticed with my head in my phone. 
On an average day I check my smartphone frequently, racking up between four and five hours of screen time. Sometimes what I read is genuinely useful or entertaining, though I also click on things that I couldn’t care less about, like the state of Ben Affleck and J-Lo’s marriage. 
Come evening I must book my Pilates session through the gym app (they go in seconds), so I gratefully switch back to my smartphone. I liked the tactile nature of the Barbie Phone, the clicky buttons and the fact that, despite the sparkly pink vibe, it was surprisingly robust. Right now, my smartphone offers me more benefits than disadvantages; however, the break made me resolve to look up occasionally and appreciate my surroundings.
Although she asked if it was available in sensible navy (yes, you can get a similar version in blue), my mum is the most game to give the Barbie Phone a chance. “Nothing in my life is urgent these days,” she says. Living on her own, it’s easy for her to lose hours on Instagram with ‘silly videos of cats’, when she should really be practising her hobby of painting. Each day we ping each other our Wordle and Quordle scores. It’s a small thing, but a significant one. 
At 80 she’s in great health, but this enables me to check in without being intrusive. “It makes me feel still here and functioning,” she agrees. “And connected to you – because I want to beat you!” Apart from her banking app, what she would miss most if she switched to a ‘dumb’ phone is WhatsApp. One of her friends has recently gone into hospital, and his wife made a huge WhatsApp group so everyone knew what was happening. Mum enjoyed playing with the Barbie Phone (it amused her friends at her weekly pub evening), although her arthritic fingers struggled with the buttons. Switching back, she realised it made her more mindful of her Instagram compulsion, and her phone use the next day reduced by about an hour.
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