Ikea – of flat-pack furniture fame – has created a new object of joy: a tiny bed. Not for your child. Not even for your much-loved pet. But for your smartphone. Assuming it isn’t a slice of viral satire (leading to panic when Ikea realises it actually has to make the thing), the bed is modelled on one of the company’s own. It even has a little duvet.
The reaction online has, predictably, been a perfect blend of confusion, ridicule and “AWW, CUTE!” Honestly, though, I think Ikea’s smartphone bed is genius. Because, let’s face it, most of us are useless at putting our phones down at night. We sit there mainlining YouTube and doomscrolling until our eyes scream. When we finally put the phone down, our brains are amped up like a freshly charged battery, making dropping off all the more difficult.
Sensible folks will recommend you just charge your phone in another room. But for most of us, that’s not realistic. Our phones double as alarms, emergency lifelines and links to whatever fresh chaos the morning will bring. So Ikea’s reasoning makes a weird kind of sense. If your phone must sleep next to you, maybe giving it a tiny bed will help you get some rest too.
Sleep mode
I’m fully aware that sounds completely bonkers. But it’s not. Psychological tricks to cut down on phone use can work. By turning putting your phone away into a ritual – literally tucking it into bed – you’re giving your brain a symbolic off switch. The phone is out of sight, out of mind. Ish. If nothing else, you might feel bad about disturbing its little nap. And even if you haven’t by this point fully anthropomorphised your phone, it’s a more deliberate act to wrench your device out of a tiny bed than to just pick it up.
While I don’t have a tiny bed for my own iPhone, I have used similar tricks elsewhere – and you may have too, without realising it. For example, Pomodoro app Bear Focus Timer only runs when your phone is face down. Try to cheat and an angry bear glares at you. It’s absurd, but it works. Similarly, I find StandBy somehow instantly transforms my iPhone into an appliance. It’ll sit there, clamped to a charging dock, showing a clock and tasks list, rather than being an attention vacuum. Ikea’s bed operates in a similar mental space, only with 100% more duvet.
Do not disturb
Ikea isn’t the first company to give phones a comfy place to snooze. Back in 2016, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global launched The Phone Bed Charging Station, a $100 slab of solid-wood decadence, with velvet-lined compartments, a satin-clad mattress and a dual-sided microfibre blanket. It’s no longer on sale, quite possibly because it gave owners the sneaking suspicion their phones had it better than they did. However, it’s also quite possible that putting a phone to bed wasn’t quite enough of an incentive on its own to avoid using the thing when you shouldn’t be.
Fortunately, Ikea has thought of that too. Because if you leave your phone tucked into its bed for a full seven hours per night across an entire week, you’ll earn a voucher. As in, money to spend. Which, as everyone knows, is an infinitely more effective motivator than “feeling rested”. The catch: right now the bed is a promotional item, only available in UAE stores when you spend Dhs750+ (about $200/£150), including an item from the Complete Sleep Collection. Here’s hoping Ikea notices all the noise about its latest entry into the world of tech accessories, though, and takes it worldwide. Because if our phones can get a good night’s sleep, maybe we all can too.
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