6 Pound Phone Case Offers the Weight of Distraction

Smartphones started out life as simple, handy devices just for making calls and sending the occasional text message. Over time though, they’ve become an all-too-familiar companion, constantly distracting us from the real world. One company, Matter Neuroscience, decided they’d had enough and came up with a clever solution: make the phone a pain to hold onto. Their ‘6 Pound Phone Case’ (yes, that’s actually its name) weighs in at a whoppin’ 6 pounds. This stainless steel monstrosity wraps itself around just about any contemporary iPhone – giving you that all too familiar sensation of deleting email after email after email.

Matter Neuroscience came up with this contraption after pouring over the impact of screens on our daily lives for a bunch of years. We check our phones hundreds of times a day, usually without even thinking about what we’re doing. They quote studies suggesting that excessive social media use has a major impact on our mental health, most often for the worse. All those likes and notifications give us a fleeting dopamine kick, but before you know it you’re feeling anxious and stressed out. Face-to-face interactions are a whole different story though – those release a whole lot of feel-good chemicals like endorphins, which are good for your long-term contentment. The idea with the 6-Pound Phone Case is that it breaks that cycle by just making every interaction a whole lot more work.

Using a phone that’s been shrunk down to fit inside a 6 pound steel shell totally changes how you feel about having it in your hand. After just a few minutes of swiping away, your arms will start to feel like lead, which is probably a pretty strong signal that its time to put the thing down. It won’t fit in a pocket, and forget sitting it on your lap – you’ll have to carry it around in a bag or leave it behind when you go for a walk. If you do need to take it with you, you’ll be carting it around just like a laptop. To put the thing on and take it off requires a bit of DIY know-how: you’ll need to remove the screws and use an Allen wrench to get it off. Don’t think you’ll be tempted to just chuck it in the bin – its a right pain to get off. A cutout in the steel lets you still charge it and use the buttons, as well as access the camera lens.


Now about pricing: the bottom line is just the raw costs of making the thing. Each unit costs $190 to machine out of metal, put together, and sort out import fees. You’ll chuck in another $3 on packaging, and then add the platform’s 5% plus payment processing fees. A tiny sticker gets slapped on for $1 more – which brings the grand total to $210. The company says they’re basically selling the thing at cost just to get the word out.


You can pledge on Kickstarter to get your hands on one – the cheapest option is just $5, but only include the “I hate my phone” sticker and the occasional project update. If you want the actual phone case and sticker, you’ll have to cough up $210, or you can get two for $420. However, the top-of-the-line brass upgrade sets you back $500.
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