Earlier this year, Eric Antonow was in a coffee shop with his family when he felt the familiar, twitchy urge to reach for his phone. He joked to his family that, like an addict jonesing for a hit, he would one day need a medical-grade solution to detox from his phone. “It was a joke, but I got two laughs from my two teenagers, which is gold,” Antonow says. One recipient was Catherine Goetze, who quickly posted a video about the Methaphone to her 400,000 followers on TikTok. After Goetze’s video, Antonow says the Methaphone “massively sold out.” (He had initially ordered a run of 100 units, sold as a limited release, for $25.)