In Might 2025, a video went viral exhibiting a lady standing in line holding what gave the impression to be a totally clear smartphone, with no photos or UI seen to the particular person filming.
Whereas the clip has unfold throughout a number of social media platforms, it was initially posted to TikTok by consumer ‘CatGPT,’ racking up over 26 million views in simply two days.
Viewers immediately took to the feedback, curious to know what new clear tech was. Some surmised that it was a prototype for a brand new cellphone that hadn’t but been launched to the general public; others had been satisfied that it was a intelligent edit.
Nevertheless, it seems that it wasn’t both of these issues. As a substitute, the rectangle of clear plastic was simply that — a transparent, plastic rectangle meant to imitate the texture and form of a smartphone.
Viral ‘clear smartphone’ isn’t a cellphone in any respect
CatGPT, the girl who was filmed standing in line, defined the state of affairs in a follow-up video on Might 15, explaining that the clear acrylic was known as a ‘Methaphone.’
Based on the TikToker, the ‘Methapone’ was created by her good friend to duplicate what it appears like to carry a smartphone in your hand in an effort to assist curb cellphone dependancy.
“He instructed me that what he wished to check was, if we’re all so hooked on our telephones, then may you probably curb anyone’s dependancy by changing the sensation of getting a cellphone in your pocket with one thing that feels precisely the identical?” she mused.
“This little piece of acrylic appears like a bodily artifact that immediately responds to this collective rigidity all of us really feel about how our gadgets, which are supposed to make us extra related, are literally having the precise reverse impact.”
Viewers, nonetheless, weren’t satisfied that having a bodily ‘alternative’ cellphone would truly do something to cease them from endlessly doomscrolling on social media.
“No one’s hooked on holding telephones, they’re hooked on the apps,” one commented.
“For my part, it’s pointless. Primarily a bit of acrylic that you just’re making an attempt to make have a deeper which means than simply being a bit of plastic,” one other mentioned.
“Soooo, it’s a bit of glass,” one other quipped.
The Methaphone was efficiently backed on Indiegogo for $1,100, and the marketing campaign has since been closed. And whereas it is perhaps the primary phone-related dependancy suppression software to make it into the mainstream, it isn’t the primary time somebody has tried to cease an dependancy by changing it with the sensation of one thing related.
As an illustration, Fum is a tool that replicates the sensation of smoking with no dangerous chemical substances or vapor for these making an attempt to give up smoking or vaping.
The jury’s nonetheless out on whether or not or not the Methaphone may have as huge of an affect, although, given simply how prevalent social media dependancy is.
