It doesn't look like much. A plastic box, just a little heavy because of the weight of the lid. But it's the most effective thing for self-imposed digital detoxes and other addictions. You place your phone or device into it, set a time of confinement, say eight hours, until the next morning. After a five-second countdown, two mini-rectangles pop out of the lid and the box is locked.

On the photos of suggestions for use are smartphones, games consoles, cigarette packets, bank cards and, strangely enough, a condom. David Krippendorf, inventor of the KSafe, originally called it Kitchen Safe. When he created it in 2013, he imagined himself coming to the rescue of all those who couldn't stick to their diets: People would use the box, as he did, to store cookies and chocolate. "A year later, I realized that people were using it to lock up their smartphones," he said.

KSafe sales surged in 2020, following the release of The Social Dilemma, a documentary by Jeff Orlowski dedicated to the addictive exploitation of algorithms broadcast on Netflix, which knows a thing or two about the subject. It showed Tim Kendall, former director of monetization at Facebook and ex-president of Pinterest, the image-sharing social network – and therefore responsible for everything that happens to us – explaining that he had promised himself 1,000 times that he would never take his phone into his bedroom again, and that he was unable to do so.

There, on the screen, appeared the box into which every member of a family slipped their phone at dinnertime. Tim Kendall is now CEO of Moment, an app for monitoring time spent online, which raises questions about the sincerity of his confession. Was he truly repentant, or has he decided that the smartphone detox market is now bigger than the social networking market?

Today, half of these boxes are sold in the United States, and Europe is now the second largest market. Two weeks after buying one, I lock my phone in it for two hours at a time when I need to concentrate for work, and then for the night, feeling like I'm asking for a casino ban.

There's something a little decadent about the idea of paying a third of the value of my used phone to keep me from using it. But, after all, in a society of abundance, others pay for fasting courses, and Marie Kondo has sold millions of books to help sort through and have less stuff at home. Besides, with teenagers, it's easier to say, "We'll all put our phones in here," than, "Give me your phone."

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