First off, I refuse to blame anyone’s phone addiction on a lack of self-control. I now find it almost impossible to accomplish even the most minor task without the help of my smartphone. Not only is my iPhone my alarm clock and my kitchen timer, it’s also my calendar and my grocery list. I text my husband and check my work Slack and look up recipes and play podcasts while cooking.
So if you have trouble putting yours down, I don’t blame you. Our entire infrastructure revolves around everyone using some type of mobile device. I was going to install a landline in our house for our kids to contact emergency services, but then it occurred to me that I could just repurpose old Apple Watches for my kids’ use. Moreover, there’s some debate as to whether phone addiction actually exists.
That said, it’s hard for me to not fall into black holes. One recent morning, I absentmindedly clicked over to TikTok while brushing my teeth and became wholly absorbed in watching videos of small dogs sitting on large mushrooms instead of getting my kids ready for school. If you can pay a company to block sites and apps on your computer while you work, it starts to seem more reasonable to pay a company to help you put your phone away.
Box It Up
Photograph: Taralynn Lawton/Arlo
Aro is both an object and a membership. You can join at either $18 a month or for slightly cheaper year or two-year subscription plans. Each subscription covers every member of your family.
Once you’ve joined, you get your Aro Home, which is a largish white box, 12.5 inches by 8 inches. A smoothly opening bamboo lid with a metal nub reveals four interior slots for four phones, one wireless charger, and four Lightning connectors. (An Android app and version is coming soon.)
The app connects to your phone via Bluetooth. Once you place your phone in the box, it automatically starts tracking your phone-free session, which ends once you remove your phone from the Aro. When you check the Aro app, you can tag your session with a label. My most frequently used tags are Breakfast, Working, and Family Time.
Aro starts with an initial goal of setting your phone aside for one hour a day and will adjust once you spend more time, but after a few weeks I haven’t seen any changes. The subscription also apparently covers challenges and lets you look at your accumulated data, but so far these are pretty basic. For example, I’ve currently achieved challenge badges for a seven-day streak and 10 sessions. You can also compete against groups, but I don’t know anyone else who owns an Aro.
I placed our Aro in the kitchen, since that’s where I tend to juggle the most tasks and have a hard time paying attention to the one at hand. But I would probably have more or longer sessions, including overnights, if I kept the Aro in my bedroom. Fortunately, I don’t have any problems setting my phone aside to sleep. (I’m not better than you, just exhausted.)
Hands-Free
Putting the Aro Home in such a prominent position did have one immediate effect. My kids, who don’t have phones, could see that I was committed to getting off mine. More important, they had a safe place to put it when they forcibly grabbed it out of my hands.
I know what you’re thinking. “One hour a day? Ha ha, pfft.” But it’s not as easy as you might think, especially for a mom of two elementary schoolers who also works full-time from home. There were so many times when I put it in the box only to find that I had to retrieve it a few minutes later.
