About Our Guest:
Catherine Price is an award-winning health and science journalist, speaker, and founder of Screen/Life Balance. She is the bestselling author of several books, including How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, and Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food. Her journalistic work has been featured in publications such as The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, and Popular Science. Catherine’s TED talk on fun has been viewed more than 5 million times.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Hi, Catherine. Thank you so much for being here.
Catherine Price: Oh, thank you for having me.
Lainie Rowell: It's so good to see you again. We did actually get to see each other in person in July when you completely owned the stage at a conference, C A M T S S P L I, the world's longest acronym. But you were one of the keynotes for that conference and everyone adored you.
We made the mistake of only buying a limited quantity of your books and they sold out. I don't know, did I tell you this? They sold out.
Catherine Price: No, that's not true. Wonderful.
Lainie Rowell: So people like ran from the arena and there was a really long line and they all sold out. It was sold out immediately.
Catherine Price: Oh, that's so nice.
Lainie Rowell: If there's anyone listening who plans to have Catherine keynote their event, a word to the wise, order more books than you think because she sells her books because they hear her and they want more. So
Catherine Price: that's really great.
Lainie Rowell: And I'm so happy to have you here. You've written a number of books I want to talk about the journey. So you had how to break up with your phone in 2018. Then another book. okay, , Talk about how to break up with your phone. , How did that start? And how do we get this new iteration of it?
Catherine Price: So yeah, I mean, I am a health and science journalist by background with a with a love of personal essays. I had not intended to write about technology at all. I wasn't interested in particularly, but I had my daughter in 2015, and I started to notice when she was a baby that there were a lot of moments where I would be with her and I'd be on my phone and I noticed that she would be looking up at me, this little baby, and then I was looking down at something else.
And it really bothered me. I think for a number of reasons, one is that it just wasn't what I wanted her impression of a human relationship to be. And it wasn't how I wanted to be living my own life. And then I also just knew from my background as a science journalist, that babies can only focus about 10 inches in front of their faces, presumably so that they're able to bond with the caregiver who is holding them.
And I also had come across something called the still face experiment, which is a very interesting experiment which if you Google it, there's a two minute video that's guaranteed to make you cry. But it basically the idea is to have a baby and a parent interact normally with each other. And then for one to two minutes, the parent goes totally still faced and doesn't respond to the baby at all.
And the baby goes through these stages very quickly of confusion and distress and then the baby gets to the point of shrieking and trying to get out of the seat that they're in. It's very difficult to watch, and the good part of the video is that when the parent starts to interact with the baby normally again and respond to them, the baby calms down.
They've done studies that actually show that there's a spike in cortisol levels and heart rate, like the baby's physiologically stressed out. They calm down. But the question is, what happens if that connection is not re established? And all that is to say that when I noticed that I was looking at my phone when my daughter was looking at me, I started to wonder, oh my goodness, am I still facing my own child?
And what impact might that have on her? And that really bothered me. So I decided that I needed to create a better relationship with my phone and better boundaries with it. And I started looking around for a book that could give me a solution. But But at that point, this was around 2016 at this point, there wasn't really a book that gave a solution.
There were a few books I found talking about screens and the internet in general, but nothing that filled that gap. And so I thought, maybe I could write that book myself and try to create a book that would combine a look at what our screen time is doing to us, with an investigation into why it's so hard to look away from our screens and phones, and then combine that with an actual plan to help people take back control.
So that is what ended up being How to Break Up With Your Phone. And that was great. That was, yeah, 2018 is when that book came out. I was feeling pretty good about it. I did the plan myself, and I did create a much better relationship with my phone, and I, it truly has changed my life and, and my relationships, and I'm thrilled about that.
But I didn't realize I was going to open up a new problem for myself, which is what led to the subsequent book, The Power of Fun, which we can talk about later But yeah, just as a teaser there, if you end up spending less time on your phone, you end up with a lot more free time and you have to figure out what to do with it.
But yeah, that's how, that's how How to Break With Your Phone came to be. And then I'm happy to say that I got permission from the publisher to do an updated edition because things have changed since 2018. I've revised the plan a bit and added a lot more updated material and that revised edition is out as of February, 2025.
Lainie Rowell: I am so glad that one, you put the book out into the world. What's that saying? We write the books we need to read, and you went to go read the book, it wasn't there, so you wrote it. I love that. And then, that story about you and your daughter has always resonated with me. I've been familiar with your work for a long time.
And, I thought about it recently because our family just got a new dog. Now, I know you're talking about the human relationship, but I noticed that my daughter, who is a teenager, she's not on social media, but she does have a phone. I noticed that we got this new dog and this dog was looking to her for attention and she was looking at the phone.
I just completely threw my daughter under the bus, but, she's young and it's my job to help her through that. And so we had to like, I just want you to know, you didn't realize it. But Lash was looking at you and you were looking at your phone and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is Catherine.
Catherine Price: It's so funny you say that.
I'm looking to my left because my dog is lying on the, she's a black dog. She's like on a bright white bed next to me. That's great. But anyway, she does the same thing. That dog will notice if I'm on my phone or my husband is on his phone. and she, she's a very quiet dog but she gets very grumpy if she notices this and she'll start going and sometimes actually barking at us and it's become a running joke between me and my daughter that it's when Tasha the dog catches me on what we call the rectangle and we'll say oh you're on the rectangle she doesn't like it when you're on the rectangle again you know what are you doing it's and I think that's an important thing for people to recognize is that Even animals notice when our attention is diverted.
And so I think as parents, and I say this without any kind of guilt tripping, but I think it's important for us to recognize that our kids notice when we're not paying attention to them, when we're physically present, but we're mentally in a different space. And you can decide what you want to do with that realization.
But for me, I was like, oh my goodness, I need to be very careful about not acting like I'm with my daughter when I'm not actually with my daughter. Cause she can tell. And in some ways that feels more damaging to me than just, not being with her in that moment, you know, physically separating myself and saying, I have to go do something, but I will be back.
And when I'm with you, I am present with you.
Lainie Rowell: It's so remarkable that you had that awareness of what was happening with you and your daughter, because when you're staring at that device, all your, all your focus is on that. And so it's really hard to step away from that and look at the big picture and be like, what's happening in this scene right here.
And so the fact that you did that, I think is. is lovely. And, you know, in your book, you talk about how we often reach for it without thinking about it, right? And that that can leave us almost feeling numb and And I think when you were talking about it in the book, you were saying like, numb rather than soothed, right?
And I mean, I have worked really hard to have healthy boundaries with my phone. I mean, I could list out all the things. I do not keep my phone in my bedroom. I, I actually use, this is meant for kids, but I use downtime, time settings on myself. And it's just, as you would say, a speed bump. I can override it very easily.
My kids can't, but I can. It's very easy to override, but it's a. It's a trigger to go like, wait, why are you doing this? You're not supposed to be doing this. So I've got downtime from sleep time to eight 30 in the morning. Cause I feel like if I win the morning, I'm going to be better off throughout the day.
I have trained my social media. My kids even talk about, they're like, mom, you're looking at that too long. It's going to think you like it.
Catherine Price: That millisecond it takes for it to decide that you're, you're interested. Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: I'm like, oh, you're right. You're right. And this is really, don't, you know, move on, move on.
I've turned notifications off. I have, anyways, all this to say that I feel like I do more than the average person and I am still not perfect. So even with these practices, it's not always easy. And so what advice do you have for us? Help us out.
Catherine Price: Well, I would say to cut yourself a break because it, you're exactly correct.
It's not easy and no one's relationship with their phone is ever going to be perfect. Mine is not perfect. And I literally wrote the book but it's a lot better. And it's something that. It's a constant, it's a reminder to me, like my, the work I've put into trying to create a healthy relationship with my phone not only has resulted in a better relationship, but it's trained me to just be hyper aware of it.
And so I'm constantly checking in with myself. And I think that's probably what we all should be aspiring to in terms of our definition of success, because in reality, these apps and devices are designed to steal our attention from us. They're designed to be addictive. They're designed to be difficult to have good boundaries with, and so to hold yourself to the standard of perfection is not, well, really for anything, right, that's not realistic.
I think everything that you're doing is exactly what I would advise that people do to create boundaries with their phones. And in the examples that you're referring to, you've created physical boundaries such as not having your phone in the bedroom.
I would also add to that, and you probably have done this already, but making sure that people have standalone alarm clocks so that you're not relying on your phone as an alarm clock. It's actually really interesting how often people have said, Oh my God, I did this. I knew I was supposed to, but I finally did it and it changed my life.
Because if you think about it, You have to touch an alarm clock to get it to be quiet. So if your phone's your alarm clock, you're going to touch it first thing in the morning. And as you were talking about, in terms of winning your mornings, if you touch the phone, the phone's going to dominate your morning because you're going to see whatever is on its screen.
So just getting your phone out of the bedroom and getting an alarm clock can really help you regain control of your before bedtime hours, which in turn will prevent results in better sleep and then that will also give you an opportunity to decide what you want to do in the moments after you wake up and really set the tone for the whole day.
But I also always say it's very important to have a positive goal in mind for this entire endeavor because a lot of people will come at the idea of reducing their screen time from a very restrictive perspective. Especially around New Year's, you know, everyone's like, Oh, I need to cut back on my phone.
My book always has a spike around New Year's. And it's very clear why, because that's when people start to have these self restricted resolutions. So I would encourage people instead to frame it as what do you actually want to be doing more of? You know, where do you want to be spending your attention?
What would make you feel good? And as you were saying, what would make you feel soothed or nourished or alive or energetic? How can you make more time for that stuff? If you focus on that, you're naturally going to decrease your screen time because you only have a limited amount of time in the day, and you're going to have to cut back on something else.
So I really recommend trying to figure out what is your positive reason for wanting to cut back on screen time. What do you want to do or prioritize instead? And once you have that positive framework in mind, it's also going to be a lot easier to figure out what you need to do in terms of creating boundaries.
So we just talked about some physical boundaries you can make, but can also create better digital boundaries with your phone by, for example, greatly reducing the notifications on your device. They really shouldn't be called notifications, that's an indication that it's important information, but the only entity to whom all those notifications is important, is the app makers, because they make money if they can interrupt our lives, our moments with our kids, our moments with our friends and family, and get us to turn to our devices.
So instead I suggest think of those as interruptions and then ask yourself what's worth being interrupted for and then only allow interruptions from those apps and only allow whatever Interruptions are important and there might not be all of your options. And I also would recommend that if you know that an app is problematic for you, try getting it off your phone, you know, even if it's for a few hours, but I'd recommend try it for a day, try it for a weekend, see what happens.
I haven't had news apps on my phone in literally years because I realized I would just keep checking them. and oh please, please everyone, please turn off the notifications and the interruptions from news apps just in general because I think Apple even does that by default. All the Apple news notifications, those rarely make anyone feel better.
You rarely get notifications about puppies. It's just not really designed for that. So yeah, I'd recommend figuring out whatever your problematic apps are. For many people it's social media or it's games or it's the news. It's basically the apps that are designed to mimic slot machines and they're apps that are designed their business models such that they make money when we spend time on them.
So those would be some starting suggestions I would have. And I also think it's important to retrain your attention span because all of us have very atrophied attention spans if we ever develop them at all because when we look at our phones and all the messages and the information that were presented by them. It's really causing us to get into this superficial shallow level of focus. We're constantly distracted and flitting between things almost like water bugs on the surface of water instead of ever actually diving in. I think we don't realize that. We feel kind of scattered and frazzled and burned out.
We don't really know why. And I think a lot of that is because we're trying to multitask all the time and we're dividing our attention between multiple apps, multiple notifications, all these things at once. So one thing I suggest is, in addition to creating better boundaries with the phone, set aside some time each day for uninterrupted focus.
And it can be as simple as putting your phone in the other room or talking to Turning it off. They can be turned off, by the way. It takes a little while, but, and actually reading. Just pick up a book or a magazine article. Ideally not something online because there are links which are distracting, but try to just read a book for 10 minutes.
And don't be alarmed if it's extremely difficult at first. It will get easier, your attention will come back, in many cases, surprisingly quickly, but that actually is incredibly useful. You can meditate or you can do another attention building practice, but even something as simple as just reading for 10 minutes will help you begin to rebuild your muscle of attention.
Lainie Rowell: Yes, you and I are. are very focused on attention. That sounds redundant, but I heard phones called the dopamine casino and I thought that was a really good expression. Because it does fall in line with that, like everything is geared towards trying to get your attention and get you to stay there longer, which obviously casinos are trying to do too.
I have notifications or as you call them interruptions turned off and it has, almost never had a bad consequence. And even when it is, it's, it's usually just been a matter of like my husband went to the store and I wanted something picked up and I didn't get the notification from him because my phone's silenced and all that thing.
So I do think that we do have to train ourselves to have that attention. You talk about flow in the book, which is something that I feel deprived if I don't get into flow on a somewhat regular basis. I almost started to feel anxious about it. Like I know I haven't had time to get into flow.
Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Because I think that's an important one.
Catherine Price: Sure. So flow is a term coined by a psychologist named Mihal Csikszentmihalyi, who is a Hungarian psychologist.
Lainie Rowell: By the way, you handled that beautifully. His is one of the hardest names to say.
Catherine Price: Well, I don't know if I said his first name entirely correctly, but yes, Csikszentmihalyi.
It is not spelled like that. It's Hungarian. But anyway, he came up with this term flow to describe the state of being totally actively engaged and present in your experience, often to the point where you lose track of time. And often at the edge of your limits in a pleasant way where you're challenged, but you're not frustrated by it.
And the quintessential example that I like to mention is Rock Climbers, and he actually did a lot of work with rock climbers. interviewing rock climbers to talk to them about the state that they were in when they were climbing rock faces because as you can imagine, you have to be totally engaged and present and focused in order to do that.
But you can also think of an athlete playing a game or a musician playing a piece of music or yourself in the middle of a really good conversation or when you're totally immersed in a work project when time seems to. I'd like to, to clarify when I talk about flow that you can also lose track of time when you're watching Netflix, but that is not the same thing.
That's passive consumption. And that's what Csikszentmihalyi called junk flow. Yeah. Real or true flow is a really active and engaged state. And then I do a lot of work about fun, as you know, because that's how we initially met, but I also like to point out that I think one of the key elements of fun is flow, and so anything that distracts you is going to kick you out of flow and therefore prevent you from having fun, and so I always like to bring that up too, that it's not just flow that you're going to miss out on if you're allowing constant Distractions to interrupt your day.
You're actually going to miss out on the opportunity to have fun
Lainie Rowell: Well and I want to talk more about fun. But before I forget I do want to ask you about how you do kind of a collaborative breakup because I love that you and your husband do the digital sabbath And I would love You know, your advice for strategies, like, first of all, tell us what the Digital Sabbath is, and also, you know, what are some strategies for getting other people on the bus with us, because it's like, it's like a social contagion, it's like, so clear, I mean, if you step into an elevator, and one person pulls out their phone, everyone else will pull out their phone almost immediately, and it's just, we see someone grab a phone, and then we're like, oh, I should have my phone out too, so, what, what's the Digital Sabbath, and what should we do to help people other people join us?
Catherine Price: Yes, well, I might actually reverse the order that I will answer those because one of the questions I get the most often is, what do I do about my girlfriend, boyfriend, you know, partner, husband, wife, kid, like who a friend who's on their phone too much, and they don't think that they're on their phone too much, and I don't know how to have this conversation.
And one suggestion I always give is that you can, you know, say that you listened to some woman, as in me, give a talk about phones, and you could say that she brought up the idea of this digital Sabbath, or taking a 24 hour break from your phone, and that you're curious about trying this, and you'd like them to join you as a favor to you to deal with your problem with your phone, right?
Lainie Rowell: And chances are we have a problem too, or at least could use a refresh. You'll benefit from the practice, right?
Catherine Price: Exactly. And the 24 hour break from your devices, there's a lot of terms for it, but one term that's used is the digital Sabbath. And you're taking a break from technology intentionally, and then using that time to do things that are more present and more connected.
But I like the idea of inviting other people to do that with us, not only because the experience is better when you do it with other people, but because it's a really good conversation starter, because chances are if you're asking someone who you know has a problem with their phone to join you in taking a break from their phone, they're going to push back. And that itself can be an interesting entry point to a conversation. And then it can get a little bit sensitive. Like I then start feeling like a couples therapist where it's like, okay, well make sure you use a lot of I feel statements instead of, you know, don't say you're always on your phone.
You say something like, I just, I feel kind of hurt when we're together and your attention is on your phone, but you're sitting with me across the table on a date, you know, whatever that is, and frame it in a positive manner. Yeah. So like, I'd really like to have a special experience together where we're fully present, and I'm really curious about trying this experiment where we spend, you know, the night or 24 hours without our phones.
Like, would you be open to doing that with me, just as an experiment? And frame it as an experiment, because it's just a day, or it's just a dinner, or it's just a night. I mean, that's not that much time. And I really like, I like that for a number of reasons. It just, as I said, it starts the conversation.
It's going to lead to realizations because you're going to have a lot to talk about as a result of the experiment. You're probably both going to feel antsy and jumpy and anxious for the first while, but you might be surprised by the end of it and how different you feel, how you actually feel calmer or time may seem to slow down, or you just may start to realize, oh, wow, I really, do feel more connected when we're not on our phones.
You know, there really might be opportunities for genuine insight from the person who had been very resistant. So I encourage you to try that, even if it's just a one off thing. And then the other thing I would suggest is that I designed the breakup plan in the book to be a 30 day experience. I should also clarify, by breaking up, I don't mean throwing your phone out.
I mean creating a new, healthier relationship. But I always encourage people to, if you're going to do that plan, invite someone else to do it alongside you, because it's like having an accountability buddy for anything, you know? It's going to be easier to stick to it if you're doing it with someone else.
And honestly, it'll be more fun. Like, the breakup plan is not designed to be restrictive. It's. designed to help you learn more about yourself and get back in touch with what you actually want to be doing with your time and to bring you closer with your loved ones. So if you can convince a loved one or two or, you know, your book club or whatever, like a group of friends to do that with you, I think it can be a really rewarding experience beyond whatever changes you end up making to your relationship with your phone.
Lainie Rowell: I love that road map at the, it's like the part two of the book is the 30 day breakup and you even say like skim the plan, get an idea of what's happening as we move forward. There might be some things you could do today that maybe won't be that hard for you. Just go ahead and start that.
Catherine Price: Yeah, exactly. And that would be like, you know, turning off those notification interruptions or getting the phone out of the bedroom. Like, just do that now. Then, then if you do do the 30 day plan, you'll be ahead of the game.
I also just thought one more thing I should say in terms of a tip. I think that can be very useful to people if you're just trying to change something on your phone that will help you is that we typically have all of our apps on the home screen in the order that we downloaded them in and that's, that's Kind of silly if you think about it because chances are some of your most problematic apps are sitting there right on your home screen staring you in the face every time you open your phone.
So I would spend a little bit of time today or sometime someday soon just rearranging your home screen. I actually took all the apps off my home screen and I just put them into the app library and I search for apps manually when I want to open them and just that little switch means that I'm much more likely to not open apps on autopilot because I don't see them And it makes it more likely that it's an intentional choice.
So that can be really helpful for people. And I'd also say there's a number of app blocking apps and also gadgets, like third party solutions where you can set an actual limit for your phone time. So I know you were just saying you use the downtime features, but as you also said, you can override all of them with the tap of a finger and then just feel bad about yourself for having done so.
So I would suggest researching some of these third party solutions. I have some listed at catherineprice.Com if people want to check them out, but just look up like app blocking app or app blocking gadget and there's a number that are really great where you can easily find them actually block apps you're trying to take a break from and essentially turn your phone from this temptation, this Pandora's box, into a tool, like a Swiss army knife that actually helps you because you still have the maps and you still have your calendar, but you don't have social media.
So I recommend those.
Lainie Rowell: I want to talk a little bit about kind of going a little deeper in the stress and in the book you talk about the prefrontal cortex tends to freak out and default to more impulsive parts of the brain. So how does this neurological dynamic kind of influence our phone habits? Like, this is where I'm kind of asking you to nerd out because you do have that science journalist background. So I want you to dig into that if you're okay with it.
Catherine Price: Oh, sure. . So I got very interested in the question of why our phones and these apps are so hard to put down and what is happening in our brains when we interact with them. And so I, I love to dork out about this. I would say the first thing I think that, is interesting and important to recognize is just how consciously the most problematic apps are designed to suck us in and that the term used by the companies making these apps is actually brain hacking.
They're trying to hack our brains and our children's brains so that we will spend the absolute maximum amount of time as possible on them, because that is how they make money. And the way they do that is to pack their apps with dopamine triggers. Dopamine is a chemical our brains release that is a way of indicating when something is worth doing again.
So it's actually a salience indicator, and it's a motivator. So for example, If you were to be walking in the woods and see, you know, raspberries on a bush and they look really appealing and you taste them and they're sweet and you don't die and you're nourished, your brain will release a teensy bit of dopamine reminding you the next time you're in the woods, you should look for those raspberries and motivating you to seek them out and eat them again.
So you can see why dopamine would be evolutionarily essential for a species. It reminds us to do things like eat and reproduce, but our dopamine systems are non discriminatory. They're not evaluating whether it's actually a behavior that we want to repeat or should repeat. Basically, if something triggers dopamine, we will want to repeat it without any kind of judgment.
And so that means if you want to create a product that will get people hooked and get them to come back compulsively again and again and again and again, all you need to do is put dopamine triggers into your product. And that is exactly what slot machine makers do. There are dopamine triggers everywhere on a slot machine.
Yeah. So it's worth pointing out that many of our most problematic apps are deliberately designed to mimic slot machines. And the term I've heard used for phones that I think is particularly compelling is that they are slot machines that we keep in our pockets. Yeah, and if you recognize some of these dopamine triggers you can start to fight back against some of the most problematic aspects of our phones. So for example, bright colors are huge dopamine triggers, especially contrasting colors like that bright red of the raspberry against the green leaf. You can think about what a slot machine looks like, very colorful, and what your smartphone looks like, also very colorful.
Those are all Colors that have been chosen by humans, not like the raspberry, that's just, it just grew that way. But humans can study which colors are the most likely to trigger the most dopamine and get us to come back. For example, the red of a notification bubble is the same red as a stop sign, it's the same red as blood, it actually is the same red as the raspberry.
That red is particularly good at getting us to pay attention to it. So that's why a suggestion many people use is to turn your phone screen to black and white because if you do that, even temporarily, you'll notice it is viscerally less appealing. It's amazing. I can feel it on a physical, like a physical level.
I am not as interested in it. I would suggest, though, if you try that, you need to make sure that you adjust your phone settings so that it, It is a quick toggle back and forth. In other words, you don't want to have to go deep into your settings every time you want to turn it to black and white and back to color because you'll never stick with it.
But as a quick pro tip, if you google how to use the accessibility functions on an iPhone, to adjust the color you will be able to just hit the side button three times quickly and it will go back and forth between black and white and color to make it easy if you need to see something in color. So colors are a huge dopamine trigger.
Novelty, huge dopamine trigger. So you're gonna find something new every time you look at your phone. And if you've ever found yourself kind of cycling through apps like this, Like checking the weather again and again, why are you doing that? It's cause your brain is hoping there'll be something new there.
So anything that delivers novelty is dopamine trigger, but even better than novelty is unpredictability. So you'd think that you'd want to be finding good results like every time you check or every time you play slot machine. But in reality, if we want to, It's only an occasional good result and you can't predict when that good result will be, you're more likely to stay there and keep using it.
And obviously you can see that with a slot machine and you can see that with your phone. You don't know what's going to be there. So you feel that you have to keep checking. Anticipation is also a trigger. So in a slot machine, like it could show you if the three cherries lined up immediately, but that's why you have to wait for the wheels to stop turning even on the digital slot machines where there's no actual lever to pull. It's kind of nuts. And if you think about on a phone, you're pulling to refresh or there's a pause before things load and whether or not that's a deliberate design element, which in some cases it is, that will get your brain to release even more dopamine and anticipation.
So my point being, Our phones are packed with dopamine triggers, and that is a deliberate attempt to hack our brains to motivate us to keep coming back for more. And, it's kind of crazy to think about all the, all the, other impacts that our phone use is having on our brains. I don't know how many more you want me to go into, but I think that it's important for people to recognize that if you're struggling with your phone habits, it's not your fault, because so much of this is happening on a subconscious neurological level that we don't ultimately have control over, because we don't even know it's happening.
So if it feels hard, It's because it is hard and it's very important not to beat yourself up.
Lainie Rowell: I would hate for someone to think, like, I just don't have the willpower. You are up against something that has been designed to make sure that you reach for this phone as often as possible.
It's so interesting so, like I said, I have notifications turned off as I'm guessing you do too. My social media apps will remind me like, Hey, notifications are off, wanna turn back on? No, no, I don't. I really appreciate that I believe you present a balanced approach.
You're again, not saying throw away your phone, and you're not saying like, never use these things. But it's just about being intentional and really focused. And what do I want my attention going to? And how can I set myself up to have the most success in that and so I really appreciate this very holistic approach and let's get back to fun a little bit because I do love the arc of like okay well I'm gonna write the book that I need to read about how to break up with your phone, which is really probably more about have a better relationship with your phone.
Is that fair to say?
Catherine Price: Oh yeah, I think that's an important distinction. I was kind of alluding to that, but just to be really explicit, because I think we tend to think of phone as a category and then we just like make ourselves feel guilty when we spend quote too much time on it. But in reality, The phone itself is not the problem, it's all the stuff on the phone, and there's a lot of things on the phone that are legitimately very useful, like the phone, or maps, as I was saying, or your banking app, or, weather, or whatever, like there's a lot of, I think of them as kind of Swiss Army knife tools on your phone.
Or stuff you like legitimately enjoy in small doses on the phone that you use it for, like, keep that stuff. What we're trying to figure out is where your real problems are, the stuff that it's like junk food apps where they just make you feel, or the slot machine apps, honestly, that make you feel gross after you use them.
That's what we're trying to get rid of, but I don't think it would be realistic or even a sensible goal to try to just eliminate phones entirely. I mean, you could if you wanted, but there's a lot of useful stuff.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and actually there was a guy, I wish, I even tried to find it before we chatted, I cannot find his name, but he was on a podcast and he got interviewed, and he actually did give up his phone, like a hundred percent, and for a significant amount of time, it was either a month or a year, maybe you know who this is, but
Catherine Price: hello goodbye phone, hello world.
There was a guy whose son was asking for a phone and he said, well, I'm not giving you one. And the son's like, basically like you're being a hypocrite. And so his dad just got rid of his phone for a year.
Lainie Rowell: It might have been him. The interesting thing was yes, there were benefits, but he, like, literally could not be a full participant of society, because it's like, how do you do your banking?
It's like, there were just things that, like, how do you get a car? Like, if you can't If you're not somewhere with a taxi, like, how do you?
Catherine Price: I know that's, yeah, my big issue is like, oh, there's no Uber, like, yeah, it's hard to, some of the things are truly convenient and that do help you and do make your life better, you know, or easier.
And you do want to keep that part.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, there are even minimum wage jobs that you have to actually apply for online. That is how ubiquitous the expectation is that we all have this. So yes, Like you say, unrealistic to throw away the phone. But just to have that intentional relationship, to use it like a Swiss Army knife.
I love when you say that. And then to, when you are gonna do, because I'll be honest, I do, I do social media. I have some very real intention with it. Like when I get on social media, it should be to learn something, to share something that adds value to others, or to express gratitude, or maybe to amplify.
Like I have these like buckets of like, what am I going in here to do it? And there are times where I'm like, I think me and my kids could use a little fun and we're gonna look at reels. And now I can do that with my kids because my feed is pretty well trained that I don't get expletives, I don't get inappropriate content but there's definitely times where I'm just gonna like stand somewhere and I'm bored and I just say you know what I'm gonna go ahead and go on social media This is gonna be fine.
I'm gonna look through some reels I'm gonna see Jameis Winston, and how excited he is to play in the snow. He is delightful.
So let's talk about your phone and fun. But first tell us what your definition of fun is because I think there's a really great message here too.
Catherine Price: Yeah, so the reason I thought it was important to come up with the definition of fun is that I realized that there wasn't really a good one.
And the reason I got interested in fun, as I was alluding to before, is that when I started spending less time on my phone, I ended up with more free time and I didn't know what to do with it. And so I started trying to fill my time with things I might enjoy, one of which was taking a guitar class. And I started to have this really euphoric feeling in the class.
This was in very early parenthood, so I'm gonna blame that on the fact that it took me an embarrassingly long time to put a name to the feeling I was experiencing, which was fun. And so I got very interested in what fun is, because it was just, filling me up and lighting me up and making me energized for, you know, the rest of the week.
So just as I wrote a book about phones because I couldn't find what I was looking for, I realized there wasn't really anything written about fun. There weren't books about fun. There was no research about fun, which was fascinating. One of the top hits on PubMed, the database of biomedical literature, was an article about toenail fungus called Putting the Fun in Fungi.
And I was like, wow, if that's one of the top hits on PubMed, then there's a, it's a gap here. And then I also noticed that the dictionary definition of fun which is basically that it's light hearted pleasure or enjoyment or amusement. It didn't match up with the feeling that I was experiencing that I described as fun, and when I started collecting stories from people around the world about their fun experiences, which is something I started to do, didn't match either.
Like, it was very clear that people's most fun memories were some of their peak memories from their whole lives. So I thought, huh, maybe it needs a new definition. And I thought, I don't know, maybe I could come up with one. So I did come up with one. And then I ran it by all these people that I was collecting stories from to see if it matched their experiences and they said it did. So what I came up with is that the moments in which we're having what I call true fun are when we're experiencing a combination of three states. One of them is flow, which we've already talked about, the state of state of active and complete engagement in the present moment with absent distractions.
One is playfulness and one is connection. So playfulness, connection and flow. And by playfulness, I don't mean that you have to play games Be childish or silly, necessarily, unless that's your thing. I really just am talking about having a light hearted attitude. Not taking things too seriously, finding ways to laugh, silencing your inner critic.
This was a state that came up in nearly everyone's stories of fun. And then connection refers to the feeling of having a special shared experience. And I did find some people who had this feeling of connection when they were alone, maybe to their own bodies, maybe to the physical environment, maybe to an animal.
But in the vast majority of stories, even for introverts, there was another person involved. My proposal is that True Fun is this combination of playfulness, connection, and flow. And if I were showing pictures right now, I have a Venn diagram, because, you know, what's more fun than a Venn diagram?
But with playfulness, connection, and flow as circles, and in the center is this kind of bullseye of fun, of true fun. And I call it true fun because I realized we use the word fun all the time, and a lot of times it's for things that don't result in this euphoric feeling, because we'll say things like, Oh, I'm looking at social media for fun, but then we feel gross afterwards.
So I came up with a term called fake fun. Which is a term I use to describe products or activities that are marketed to us as fun, but that don't actually result in the euphoric feeling of true fun. And those are things that, in most cases, people will benefit from reducing or eliminating so they have more time for the good stuff.
So I think of my own leisure time as being in these three buckets of things that might produce the feeling of true fun, things that are likely to result in the feeling of fake fun that I don't want to be doing, and then there's also a category of things that are just, you know, enjoyable or nourishing in a quieter way, like reading a book or going for a walk or taking a bath or, you know, doing yoga.
Definitely worth the time, but it's a different energy that results from that kind of activity than from activities that produce true fun. So all of this goes back to your question about the phone. I would say, of all the thousands of stories I've collected from people around the world about their peak fun moments.
I can't think of a single one that happened on a phone. Certainly didn't happen on social media. What I would say is that the times in which I see technology playing a role in this true fun is when the technology or the device or the app is being used as a way to playfully connect with someone else in real life.
So if you're having a conversation with someone on the phone, like a synchronous conversation, Video or phone conversation and you're laughing and you're totally engaged and present and playfully, you know, in flow That's using your phone in a way that creates true fun Or I've heard from a lot of people who are video game fans that if they're using the video game as a structure helps them interact with their friends.
So they're laughing and they're bonding as they're playing a game. That's a way in which I've seen technology produce true fun. But anything where your energy gets stuck in the phone, I almost think of it as feng shui, like if your energy goes through the phone to help you to connect to someone, that's probably a good thing.
If it gets stuck in the phone, that ends up being fake fun. passive consumption, it might be stimulating like you can get a dopamine rush from it, like a quick hit of satisfaction, which many of us get when we first check social media. That's the feeling of that dopamine reaction.
But it's not going to be fulfilling and it's not going to leave us feeling nourished in the same way as the actual fun experience.
Lainie Rowell: I think that's important to distinguish, and yes, I can imagine that if you're asking people about their true fun experiences, it doesn't mean they've never had true fun on a phone, as you just said but it's probably not up there as, like, one that they're thinking so highly of they need to share it with you.
I will say, when my kids were young, we used an app called A Story Before Bed. It's not around anymore, sorry, spoiler. But it was really sweet because my family, like, we were just talking before we hit record, I've got one that lives in Hawaii, we've got several that live in Oklahoma.
So we're dealing with different time zones, sometimes trying to FaceTime with them wasn't like the best. So this was an app where it like recorded your family member in the book. And then my kids would actually listen to the grandma read them a story before bed.
Catherine Price: I would say that sounds like a really sweet way to use technology as a way to create that connection. I mean, maybe not in the same, like, you know, you weren't together, so it wasn't like a shared experience in the moment, but I totally agree with you that, like, that's an example where technology enables us to do something we couldn't do otherwise, and that's really neat, and what an amazing memento, or hopefully, hopefully the videos at least still exist, where you have that to look back on.
Like, that's one of those things that's like, wow, how amazing that we can do that.
Lainie Rowell: It was really, really sweet. Trying to be really intentional with like, okay, well, this will be a fun thing for them to do where they get to feel connected to a family member.
Like you said, the thing that they couldn't have done without the technology, but not in place of other things like playing with friends or anything like that. So, right. It all comes back to such an important part of your message, which is just being intentional. It's not about beating ourselves up, it's not about being perfect, but just being super intentional, how are we trying to lead our life.
What is something that you can't share enough? Or you haven't had a chance to share before. So like, this is the one you'll scream from the rooftops like you just cannot say it enough. Or it's something like, you know, I don't feel like I've had a chance to talk about this enough.
Catherine Price: Well, one thing I feel like should be shouted from the rooftops right now is that social media is not appropriate or safe for kids.
They should not be on social media. They're legally not supposed to be on social media. And for so many reasons, like, please, please do not allow your children until they're at least 16 to be on social media, not just because of the kind of content. So another thing I think can't be said enough is that our social media feeds as adults are not the same as a kid's social media feeds.
We have no idea what they're seeing, and these algorithms are very good at spinning them into rabbit holes, which are often very self destructive and can lead to horrifying consequences. So there's the content issue, but a thing, a thing that is not talked about enough, either the predators that are on the internet, the internet, and how easy phones make it for these predators to find our children.
And so if you are worried about your children's safety in the real world, you should be even more concerned, way more concerned, about their safety in the online world. Just as one example when I give talks about this, I've been doing a lot of talks to schools recently and parent groups. There's a PSA from the New York FBI office about Roblox, which seems like an innocent, fine game, but it's about the sextortion schemes that are happening on Roblox, where predators will engage with kids using the chat feature, and we'll start to befriend them, and get to know them, and then eventually ask them to share a compromising photograph on a different platform, and then as soon as they do that, the extortionist will send a message saying that I will share that publicly with all of your friends and family unless either you send me more photos, or you pay me money.
So it can be financial extortion as well. It's terrifying. And it's led to, in the words of the FBI agent, a horrifying number of deaths by suicide for kids. I don't think parents are aware of this. And I recently gave a talk in Washington, DC, and a man came up to me at the end. And he said, you know, that thing you were saying about Roblox.
And I said, yeah. And I didn't know where he was going with this. If he was going to say it was overblown or what he said, no, I work in the prosecutor's office And he said, this is my day, every day, all day. It's worse than you could possibly imagine. And so I think that there are many things that we just don't recognize as parents when it comes to threats that our kids are encountering online.
And I cannot say this enough, that social media in particular is not safe for our kids. If your kid has access to any internet enabled device, you have to be consciously and frequently checking all the settings, talking to them about these risks, talking to them about what safe use looks like. It is truly unbelievable.
I just spoke to a woman two nights ago who's a pediatrician who was telling me a story about two brothers who are 8 and 10 years old who, were looking at graphic pornography on their mother's phone in the car with her while she thought that they were on Spotify. And they ended up acting out something related to this, I don't know the details, with another child or they somehow this translated to real life and a case had to be opened because there were now children involved in the situation.
Horrifying. But these kids were eight and ten years old in the car with their mom who thought that they were just looking at Spotify. So. I just really, parents, we need to be paying attention. I don't say that. I know that sounds like I'm fear mongering, but it actually just is reality. And and it's also just a huge waste of time.
Like even if nothing else, the average teen is spending five hours a day on social media and that is 70 days a year. Like the opportunity cost could not be higher. Well, it could be higher, but it's really, really high.
Lainie Rowell: It's already really, really high. Yeah. And I, I really worry about Even for myself, just this need for validation.
Like, I don't want that starting soon. I mean, it's already going to start in ways that I cannot control. So what are the ways? And I would just add, because I spent years working with our local police department and on internet safety, you know, back in the day, where I think the target was wrong about what the actual threat was to catch a predator.
That's actually pretty rare, at least according to the authorities. It was really just the things that you don't really think about. And so I would just say, when you're talking to your kids about Roblox, make sure that they know that you can help and that it's not about taking away the device.
Cause I think sometimes kids are afraid to share because they're worried it's going to mean I don't get the thing anymore. And so like really encouraging them to be open and then like, you're not going to get in trouble if something bad happens. Just tell me about it.
Catherine Price: I was just reading something about that yesterday. Yeah, very important of like, you know, teen girls who are getting preyed on, on like, Instagram where they have shared a compromising photo and all the, all this is happening, but they won't tell their parents either because they're being told that they shouldn't, you know, by the person who's doing this to them, or because as you're saying, they're worried the phone will be taken away.
So really having conversations both about how to stay safe. I mean, the, I don't think kids should have access to a lot of those things, honestly, but the steps you can take, like, if your kid's playing Roblox, you can turn off the multiplayer. The chat feature. They actually just rolled out some new features to protect kids.
Instagram, belatedly, put out new teen accounts, which are an improvement over the previous thing. I still do not think, you know, Instagram is a good platform for most people, but you know, there are some changes that are being made by these platforms, but a lot of loopholes remain, and I think kids need to be made aware of that, and then parents definitely need to educate themselves.
And again, I have a running list of resources on my website that I put together for these talks I've been giving. So it's just CatherinePrice. com and there's a resources tab and it has a whole lot of information on the kids and phone stuff in particular.
Lainie Rowell: That's perfect because you beat me to it because I was going to say, how can people connect with your work?
Catherine Price: Yes, so the best way for people to connect with me kind of depends on what you want But the place I hang out the most online is on Substack, which is a newsletter platform I have a newsletter called How to Feel Alive And if you look for that and Substack and my name you will find it.
I'd love to have you join us It's a place where I write you know, essays about my own life, but I also do practical suggestions for screen life balance, for spending less time on your phone, and having more fun. So the tagline for that is basically scroll less and live more. So please join me there and I'm going to be running a bunch of kind of interactive elements in the coming months.
And then, as I was mentioning, I have resources for parents who are particularly concerned about their kids, both on the sub stack, because I've got a section for kids and phones, but but also at CatherinePrice.com/resources. And I also have a number of courses in addition to my books and yeah, workbooks and things that you can find at CatherinePrice.com too. Technically I'm on Instagram at _ CatherinePrice. So I do share tips there, but just know that I'm not going to be personally responding to anything on that because I hate Instagram.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I appreciate that in your newsletter I do subscribe, and I feel like you're, you're very, like, forthcoming about, like, here's what's happening in my life, and you, you share these stories that kind of, like, Catherine's human, too, and, like, we all, we're all just doing our best, right?
Catherine Price: Yes, we are all just doing our best. That is, that is true.
Lainie Rowell: All right, well, Catherine, thank you so much for all of this wisdom, and I hope people check out all your books, especially How to Break Up with Your Phone, the new edition that's now out, and The Power of Fun.
Catherine Price: Thank you very much.
Lainie Rowell: And thank you all for listening.
