It may look like a toy, but it has a serious purpose: helping people disconnect from their phones.
According to the Decoding the Digital Home Study published by EY, more than four out of ten Italian families — precisely 42% — are interested in digital detox, concerned about the time their loved ones spend online. In fact, 36% of respondents admit to spending more time on social media than with their families.

To respond to this growing need, in addition to dumb phones — mobile phones that only allow calls and text messages — and time-lock boxes designed to “imprison” smartphones for a set period, IKEA has come up with an original solution.

It’s a mini bed equipped with NFC technology where you can place your smartphone, as if it were going to sleep. Called the Phone Sleep Collection, the gadget uses the Ikea app to monitor how long you go without using your device and offers a small reward to those who succeed: anyone who gives up their phone for 7 hours a day for a whole week receives an Ikea voucher worth about €23.

Born from a concept by the advertising agency Memac Ogilvy and part of the initiative called Complete Sleep Collection launched by the Swedish company to encourage customers to adopt healthy sleep habits, the mini bed is a miniature version of the Tyssedal model. There’s another detail: before using it, you have to assemble it — just like a real bed.
 

At the moment, however, the Phone Sleep Collection is not for sale. Ikea is distributing it for free only in the United Arab Emirates to those who spend at least 750 dirhams (about €175) in-store and purchase an item from the dedicated collection. For now, no further details are available, but a possible launch in other countries in the future cannot be ruled out.

All photos courtesy Ikea