2%.
That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.
I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2 I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world.
Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.
Listen to 2%.
That's T-W-O percent on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This was one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me, each night, each morning.
Listen to.
Nora Jones is Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello everybody, I'm Gemma Spike and welcome back to The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode.
Can i tell you guys a story to start this episode off, the story that inspired me to do this episode.
So The other day I was at this bathhouse like spa thing.
When I was back in Australia for a week,
This spa is like our go-to place like When I lived there, I used to go there probably once a week.
It has this like huge pool, this like soak thing, this like cold plunge sauna, all the good stuff.
And whilst we were there, there was this group of three friends, and all of them were on their phones.
And I mean, they were on their phones in the soap pool.
They were on their phones, like in the sauna at one stage for like two or three minutes, like sitting around in the quiet spaces, literally like cold plunging, all on their phones, not talking, not listening to each other.
And I'm going to be honest, I tried very hard not to judge them.
I tried very hard to kind of understand maybe why they were doing it like, come up with an explanation, but it really stuck with me.
It really made me see, like perhaps very distinctly and clearly for the, the intimacy pandemic we are in that has been created by our phones.
And I don't mean the fact that our phones are making us lonely.
I feel like that's been explored a lot.
I don't mean the fact that our phones are addictive or that our screen times are too high.
I feel like Sure, that's a part of this.
But what really struck me was that, even when these people were able to find a time that worked for all of them, they were able to make progress plans for an in-person hangout.
They paid their $45.
They cleared their schedules.
They were face to face.
Like they beat all of the odds, overcame all of the difficulties of seeing our friends these days.
Here they were and they were still on their phones.
Their phones were still in the way.
They still took priority over real world interaction.
And I feel like that was such an obvious example of our phone addiction.
That Yeah, it basically inspired, this episode.
Again, I wasn't sitting there shaking my head, judging these people.
If anything, I was just kind of profoundly shocked that this was so normalized that you would be in this serene space with your friends on your phone.
And I think we're at a point where it seems like we are progressively getting more and more sucked in, such that this is becoming kind of a normal occurrence.
And it's really making me think, like what is the peak of this going to be?
And like psychologically, what is the cost to our relationships and to how people continue to make relationships when our phones are always like the third party or the third person in any interaction?
So today we are going to explore a different side to our phone and social media use that I don't often see discussed, which is the cost to intimacy.
This goes in so many different directions, so many crazy directions, that you may not think it goes in.
We're not just talking about the cost of too much screen time, but The actual science behind why you need to remove your phone from social situations, why you shouldn't have your phone on the dinner table, why the loss of boredom in our lives created by our phones means that people know each other less.
And, of course, you know five ways that we can reverse this, five ways that we can prevent or stop our phones from taxing our relationships and preventing vulnerability, intimacy and connection in this day and age.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
Let me start by saying technology, our phones, like it's obviously made our life so much easier in so many amazing ways.
I feel like any episode where somebody just criticizes technology is obviously not very convincing, right.
Like phones, technology is responsible probably for a larger degree of connection That we are experiencing compared to previous generations.
You know, how many people have met the love of their life on a dating app?
Like I have.
How many of us have been able to sustain long distance friendships connections, relationships with family because of technology?
Literally everybody.
You know, I've moved.
I don't know what.
Now, like four times as an adult and I can very honestly say I would not still be in touch with a lot of those friends without technology, and that's like fairly obvious to say that, but honestly, like it has been pretty incredible for human relationships.
However, In this day and age, it is not a hot take to say that most of us, our addiction, has gotten to a point where it's no longer just about connection.
It's about immediate gratification, which takes away from connection.
We were sold this idea with social media and with our phones that this would improve how we relate to other people.
We're now getting to the point where it's actually taxing relationships.
And the addictive nature of our phones is compromising our humanness.
Like literally as I'm recording this, I think last week Meta and Facebook were forced to pay like a 400 million fine because they designed their technology to be too addictive and it's been proven by a judge to be hurting social harmony.
So I think, in response to this, there's been this growing research area about technoference, technology interference, which basically looks at how technology, something that once brought us closer, is actually becoming a barrier to human connection.
Like this is a deep area of study.
And it's even creating what one developmental psychologist her name is, Michelle Druin has called an intimacy famine.
So essentially we as humans, we need a certain level of intimacy to sustain ourselves, the same way we need food water shelter air, whatever.
And Our phones are giving the impression of giving us connection and intimacy, but actually they don't contain any real social nutrition, meaning we're experiencing an intimacy famine without even realizing it.
We think that we are getting nutrition from the kind of miniature social interactions we have on our phones.
It's not a real meal.
It's not actually feeding us.
Why is this the case?
Well, real intimacy requires presence.
We all know that.
I'm not saying anything revolutionary.
But you cannot connect with somebody if you're not looking at them, listening to them in their presence, showing engagement.
When there is a phone there, when there is a phone on the table, when there is a phone in your hand.
It means that presence is interrupted in two ways.
Firstly, you know, The fact that we are so often on our screens and entertained by our screens just means that our daily need for social interaction is less.
Secondly, even when we're interacting with other people, often that presence of our phones actually unconsciously makes people feel snubbed or like our attention is could be broken at any moment by this device.
And that makes vulnerability hard.
It basically stops intimacy.
This is what researchers are finding.
It stops intimacy from reaching any meaningful level, because we can't sustain our attention on a person long enough for them to be vulnerable and for us to create a vulnerable space.
Okay, let's start with that primary reason why our phones are ruining presence.
And that is that, again, we are just on them all the time.
There is this, I guess it's a research body.
It's called SellSell.
It's like sell, sell.
It's a phone retail platform.
And they did the survey a couple of years ago on like 5,000 smartphone owners.
To understand essentially, like once and for all, what is the impact of this technology on our dating lives, on our relationships, on our behavior at this point in like humanity's history.
And their survey showed that 71 of people spent more time on their phone each day than with their partner.
That's nearly three in four people who were in relationships spent more time with an inanimate object than someone who they loved and cherished.
That same study found that phone use is also reducing the amount of sex that we're having and the quality of that sex as well.
This statistic literally blew my mind, but they found that one in five people who were spoken to in the study admitted to looking at their phone whilst they were having sex.
And the majority of respondents said that their phones were, you know, the last thing they saw before they went to sleep each night, the first thing they saw when they woke up not their partner.
Like isn't that insane?
Like people –
Checking your phone during sex, that is like the level of addiction that we are at.
That is the level of like, I don't even know what's a bigger word than addiction, like dependency.
You know, what's really interesting about this is, as much as that is like a shocking statistic and yet surprising, I kind of get where it's coming from.
Not to play like devil's advocate, but you have to remember that our phones have replaced or have changed the way that we relate to other people.
They've also become a way that we soothe loneliness, and when we were out of a relationship or when we were lonely when we weren't with friends, whatever it is, the phone is our companion in those moments.
One study on I think it was like 500 Chinese university students found that the people who had the greatest phone addictions, even when they did have sustained and strong support systems, often had gone through a period where they were very, very lonely.
And that contributed to them feeling a deeper sense of like dependency on their phone.
Basically, when we are lonely, our phones help us regulate that emotion.
But in turn they actually make us lonelier, even when we do find connection, because they give us that small, like minute, dose of social attention and connection, whilst never giving us the full meal.
Basically meaning that they are like breadcrumbing us with real intimacy and, at the same time, making it harder for us to experience actual in-person intimacy, because they're always there.
So that's the first way that our phones kind of get in the way.
We literally cannot pull away from them even when we are with other people.
The second way they interrupt intimacy or they hurt intimacy is that social snubbing or that concept of phone snubbing that I briefly mentioned before.
I think we have all had this experience.
I've done this.
Let me be real where we're talking to our partner, we're talking to our friend, to our boss, to our parent and suddenly they like pick up their phone and To respond to a notification, like right as we are burying our soul, or right as we're like about to eat dinner, or engaging with them talking, telling them something important.
And suddenly, as soon as that happened it, like it, immediately sends you a signal that they are no longer interested, that they are no longer listening.
Somebody picking their phone up at the dinner table is like the technological equivalent of walking away from somebody mid-conversation at a party because somebody more interesting came in.
That's literally what it is.
And it hurts.
It really hurts.
That's why, like I always well, I don't always do this, but I try hard to you know don't eat with your phone at the dinner table.
Don't bring your phone to special moments or have it present, especially with the people you love.
Because That attention-grabbing nature is not something that you always have the mental strength to overcome just because you think you can.
Studies have been done on this phone snubbing phenomena that we're seeing more and more of, and the harm that it's doing to intimacy.
And one particular study from 2025 said did actually measure.
They were like does this hurt people's relationships?
Like on a level that betrayal, might you know Telling somebody your secret, telling somebody a story, or being vulnerable with them and then having them reach for their phone.
Like, what is the emotional reaction that that brings about in somebody?
And the results showed that when somebody was in a relationship with somebody who was more prone to using their phone during moments of intimacy,
They had greater levels of resentment, greater levels of anger, greater levels of shame even.
And over time, this research found that it significantly diminished relationship quality, relationship stability, relationship vulnerability.
Because there was less and less space or time to meaningfully share, to meaningfully connect.
And the thing is, is like vulnerability and intimacy are freaking hard.
Like it is hard to sit in front of somebody and say, this is what I'm struggling with.
This is what is really impacting me.
This is what I feel is missing in our relationship, whatever it is.
And for somebody to then essentially send you the signal that, like this inanimate object, my phone, is more important than this.
Conversation like that is going to shut down future attempts at intimacy and it's going to mean that the bond suffers as well.
Another study from 2019.
Again, it's just basically reiterating the same finding, which is that technoference causes feelings of rejection.
It causes feelings of dismissal.
And it is like the silent killer of relationship these days.
This study went more in depth and it actually asked people to keep like a diary over 14 days of like how often their phone was interrupting their relationship.
And 72 of these couples who were involved in the study said now that I notice it, now that I'm thinking about it, this phone, this technology is creating an interference in our relationship.
They also reported higher phone usage during the day, correlating to more conflict, more irritability, more anger.
So there was like multiple, multiple interruptions that were happening.
So I just think that this is like a very powerful reminder to not see your phone as this, like passive, harmless object, but to understand the power and the ability it has to damage even like your closest relationships, without you even realizing.
The other thing that our phones and social media have done that I think is killing relationships, and more so friendships, is that they have strangely, also commodified friendships so that it's become this like tit for tat online way of engaging with one another.
I think, especially with social media.
Basically, we now show loyalty to our friends not by showing up for them in person, not by helping them physically, not by being around them more or sharing experiences.
But also, and more so, showing up in likes, showing up in comments, showing up in social media engagement, being present in their online lives more than their in-person lives.
It's like this extra layer that we are now all having to prove ourselves on in our friendships that, like you, can you give somebody so much when it comes to your in-person friendship.
But there's this level of online loyalty that, if we don't live up to, creates a lot of resentment.
And I think that's something that doesn't get spoken about enough.
The way that social media and our phones have downgraded physical intimacy and downgraded like a real social connection and upgraded a kind of fictional online connection of liking engaging, commenting.
Like I'm sure we've all had this feeling of posting, like I don't know, a photo that you think is amazing or a story and expecting, like your friends, to comment on it, expecting your friends to respond, whatever it is, and them not, and feeling hurt.
Like the new rules and the new playbook for friendship online and the fact that, like you know it's, it's understood, but not always communicated, means that There are more and more of these like small slights and this small sense of betrayals that come with friendship being converted into like online interactions.
Can I talk about one final way?
I think that our phones are killing intimacy.
That also doesn't always make this conversation.
Hot take.
Our phones are killing intimacy because none of us know how to be bored anymore.
And the thing is is that when you're bored, when you are sitting around with your friends and maybe like twiddling your thumbs, that is when you truly get to know people.
Because you naturally fill those silences with stories, with personal details, with vulnerability that creates closeness.
Because you're kind of like, there's this empty space and people step into it.
Nowadays we don't get that anymore, because when you're bored at the function, when you're bored at the party, when you're bored at dinner like, you pick up your phone and immediately that opportunity for vulnerability and to connect is like shut off in that moment.
And it's so ironic that then we all kind of walk around wondering why our friendships aren't as deep these days.
But to get close to somebody, there is going to be that level of discomfort that you have to sit in to get to know them more.
And we are stopping that discomfort with technology.
I think that's really what it is.
We can't just sit alone with our thoughts when we are alone.
We can't sit alone with our thoughts when we're with other people.
The moment we feel a hard emotion or we feel awkward, instead of like forging through which is what you have to do for friendship we kind of retreat into something comfortable that will soothe us with, like this nice constant trickle of easy dopamine.
But it's actually avoidance and it's actually hurting our relationships and our ability to really get to know people.
That's just my theory.
I feel like people have other theories about it, but the boredom one is huge.
Okay, let's actually explore the psychology behind why this has come to be.
And why it is that, even if you understand all of this, you still cannot pull yourself away from this technology.
Because it's not you.
There are actually some deep I don't know conspiratorial conspiracies, controversies behind these addictive patterns and behind why all of us, I think, now have a boundary and a dependency issue with our phones.
So stay with us.
2%.
That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.
I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2 I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world.
I'll be speaking with writers, researchers and other health and fitness experts and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.
We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory.
We got it wrong.
Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress.
Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.
Listen to 2 that's T-W-O percent on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield.
And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons I've had special guests like Dave Grohl Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolfe, Jeff Tweedy really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLachlan, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Groban.
You related to the phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the phantom in that.
That's so funny.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Aka Wodum.
My next guest you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Ferrell.
Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that comes Look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Ms.
Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant. they would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County, as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Like I said before, our phones offer this like bite-sized ecosystem of what socializing and connection used to be, in just like a highly addictive, commodified format.
We already know that.
We already know that that's really what gets us hooked, especially to social media.
Beyond that though, the reason they keep getting in the way of intimacy is that they have also become one of the primary ways that we regulate our emotions, much like any addictive substance or object, really.
That's really the root of all addiction.
It stops us from feeling the bad feelings.
And like all addiction, the cycle has to begin with intoxication.
The substance has to initially be too good to say no to.
Our phones do this.
Our phones are too good to say no to.
They feel good because that was an intentional design choice.
Like, they are designed to capture as much attention as possible.
When they were designing early models of the iPhone, the team behind them like hired neuroscientists, hired psychologists, hired scientists onto their design teams, like onto their prototype teams.
And essentially their mission was how can we break the brain's feedback loop and reward loop so that people are obsessed with this, so that this becomes the new way of life?
How do we get people addicted?
They added so many features into the design of these devices that it actually created a name.
It's called persuasive design.
Basically making it harder for you to say no to the object than to say yes.
Basically meaning that the path of least resistance is the one that you don't always want to choose, but you just constantly go down.
Another way to describe this, another psychological idea that explains this, is called nudge theory, and nudge theory essentially says again your phones have been designed to give you the impression of choice, but in actuality, every choice you make, like when to pick up your phone, how long to scroll for, when to turn it off, You are actually being subtly nudged towards by design features that were intended to get you into that space.
I feel like that's all words.
I'll give you some examples.
The best example is the use of blue light rather than more warm light.
Blue light is more attention grabbing than natural light, meaning it's harder to pull your eyes away from the screen.
I also feel like even the design of the screen gets us trapped.
Like that small screen.
It occupies your whole field of vision.
It basically gives you tunnel vision compared to a TV, compared to an iPad, compared to even a laptop.
Even like the size of these items.
It's so hard for your vision to like pull away from it.
We get sucked in intentionally.
And that's before we even add on other features of apps that were designed with the phone in mind, like the infinite scroll of social media, all these other addictive properties that we could get into.
Essentially, like it is you against a team of very smart people who essentially were paid to get you hooked.
There's the same developmental psychologist I mentioned before, Michelle Drouin.
She's done so much research on this and she speaks about I think it was in her book.
She speaks about how she realized she had a problem with her phone when she began to understand that her phone behaved.
Just like someone close to her in her life.
It made noises.
It commanded her attention.
It asked her to resolve issues, alerted her to problems.
It like basically communicated with her.
And she talks about how we groom our phone to remove smudges, how we always have it close to us.
We become nervous if we can't find it or if the battery dies.
Again, dying.
Our phone is almost this human thing.
We've essentially come to...
I don't know if it's anthropomorphized, but assign our phones with human qualities.
Assign this non-human object with the characteristics that a friend would have or a partner would have.
And that alters our emotional and cognitive response to that object, meaning we feel a greater sense of.
Dependency, meaning we feel like us and our phones are in a relationship.
They fulfill the psychological needs and the psychological deficits that have come, with friendship being harder, relationships being harder, that they created.
It has replaced the need for a real world companion, essentially.
Not always, but in a small way.
When we rely upon an inanimate object to fulfill our intimate emotional needs, of course that is going to have bleed-on effects to how we eventually live.
And as a society begin to relate to one another.
And that's why I think, you know, when the question comes up of like, why does this matter?
Well, it matters because human relationships matter.
And they are much more important than a relationship with an inanimate object.
But if you are not conscious and if you are not cognizant of how much time you are spending with this device and spending with this technology, pretty soon it can become your primary relationship.
I had this realization a few years ago when I started truly calculating how many days of my life I literally miss per year from being on my phone.
Are you ready for this number?
If you have a screen time of six hours a day, you will spend 90 days each year on your phone.
That is 99.04 days on a screen. consuming things that you will likely not remember in 24 hours time.
Let that sink in.
90 days.
If I'm being honest, I have that problem.
I know a lot of people have that problem.
I'm not going to sit here and claim to be like this person who has the perfect relationship with technology and with her phone.
However, I do feel like we need some new strategies, because that is a lot of time that we cannot get back and that is a lot of time that, if we are being honest, would be better spent with the people we love, actually physically experiencing the world or like at least working or caring about something that is more permanent and more meaningful.
The way that we are going to do this is essentially adding friction back in where these technology companies took friction out.
Essentially, make it harder to use technology.
Have boundaries the way that you would for like a toxic relationship, right?
I will also say, If you want to experiment with going phone free, or at least smartphone free, it's actually not as doom and gloom as you may think.
There is this whole social movement of people right now going smartphone free, going technology free, going social media free.
And as much as I'm not going to again recommend it, like early studies do show, they are a lot happier, even if they lose some convenience.
Like they are doing better than most of us.
A study from 2018 had 300 people just share a single meal at a restaurant with their family and friends and they either, you know, had their phone on the table or had their phone put away, and those people, just in that moment, had an increased level of happiness and social harmony and fulfillment compared to the people who had their phones present.
So even in those small moments, like choosing to resist does make you feel better.
Another study found I think it was from like 2024 three quarters of people who left their phones at home just for a day Also felt happier in the long run.
That impact, I think, lasted like a week.
And the final study I want to talk about here is this 2025 study that found that going without social media and the internet for two weeks psychologically and emotionally reset people's entire moods going forward.
91% of the people in this experiment felt better in the weeks and months afterwards.
That's the option here.
Setting boundaries, creating more friction, having those phone-free periods, having those phone free moments, months you don't have to start with two weeks.
I think just start with designing your home to be less technology friendly.
Having like no phone zones in your house or like a designated phone zone, I think is like an incredibly important strategy here.
I talk about the always be charging trick in like this New York Times article.
So essentially, what she's doing to stop her phone from interrupting her relationship and stop her phone from interrupting her life is that she says I can use my phone as much as I want.
But if I'm going to use it, it must always be charging.
And she only has a charger in one spot in her house.
She even speaks about needing like I think she needed like a recipe for something.
And she like obviously she can't bring her phone to the kitchen.
So she like hand wrote the recipe from her phone and went kind of analog with it.
It's not completely taking away the need for technology or the use of it.
It's just creating guardrails.
Phone-free evenings as well.
I feel like just saying two days a week, two afternoons a week.
I'm just not going to have my phone on me.
I'm going to go out.
I'm going to risk it.
I'm going to see my friends without my phone or I'm going to get to the restaurant and put my phone away is also incredibly valuable.
And again those studies show add intimacy back into our relationships, because it's not always the phone, it's social media, specifically deleting social media when you walk through the door or only having it on your laptop.
I was doing this for a while.
I was like, I can only go on social media when I'm outside my house.
So when I walk back in the door, I don't know, 5 p.m., 6 p.m., like that app is getting deleted.
And then when I leave the next morning, like that's when I can re-download it.
Just creating again guardrails that say that essentially communicate to yourself like this is not going to be the thing that's allowed to dominate my life.
Like this is not going to be this omnipresent thing.
I am actually in control of this technology and what I want to do with it and what it gets to do with me.
And even just creating that tiny bit of friction of like deleting the app, maybe what it takes to just I don't know let it release its like kind of grip from your mind.
Also like social media free weekends.
I feel like I'm just throwing heaps of things at you guys.
And having like obviously abstinence is one thing.
Not spending as much time on your phone is one thing.
Not spending as much time on social media is one thing.
But it's not going to be effective unless you also have alternative habits.
For when you're bored, for when you're sad, for when you're lonely.
Again, the real reason and the main reason, I would say, that technology and our phones and our relationship to our phones have gotten to the addictive point that they have is because they have become the sole way that we know how to deal with hard feelings.
And so having a strategy, having something else that you can do when those hard feelings comes up, starts to interrupt that dependency cycle.
That begins with boredom, that begins with sadness or loneliness, where the only kind of antidote we have now is to scroll as a distraction, is to put on a TV show in the background as a distraction.
Give yourself an alternative.
Give yourself, I don't know, a journal practice.
Give yourself... Have a puzzle that you're doing.
Have a friend that you call instead.
Have...
Anything in your home, in your life, that you can do first, before you immediately like pick up your phone to avoid and suppress whatever bad thing it is that you are feeling.
I think at the end of the day, this is somewhat of a value thing, right?
You cannot change your relationship with this technology unless you have a deep moment with yourself and seriously consider what do I value more?
Quick dopamine or deep connection?
Because that's really what we're going up against.
Do we want short term gratification or long term gratification?
The phone offers short term gratification.
Relationships offer long term gratification.
And, keeping that number in mind, actually doing the math with your screen time.
How many days are you losing?
How many years of your life are you to this object, to this inanimate object?
I think is the motivation we need to have healthier habits.
So I think I'm going to wrap the episode up there.
I feel like this was a very ranty episode.
We touched on some psychology, but...
Really, I think the through line is just be more conscious about how technology is interrupting intimacy.
Genuinely interrupt.
Acknowledge if this has and continues to create problems in your relationships and whether you want it to continue to create that problem in your relationship, and apply some of those strategies.
Add the friction back in so that being present with your friends, being present with your partner, with your family, is the easier thing to do.
And being online, being on social media, being on your phone, is the harder path, is the path with more resistance.
All right, let's wrap it up.
I want to thank our researcher Lucy Davidson for her help with this episode.
If you have made it this far, leave a little phone emoji down below so that I know that you listened all the way to the end.
And if you have any more strategies around how you're going to reshape, change your relationship with technology.
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I don't know if I have anything else to say, just that I hope you enjoyed this episode and that i don't know.
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