How to Break Up With Your Phone: Being a More Present Parent with Catherine Price | Ep. 160

23:23Catherine Price:And it featured a clip about a follow up study done at I believe it was Temple. And parents were asked to just scroll through their smartphones. They were asked to play with their kids, their toddlers for a couple minutes with these Legos. And then they were asked to just scroll through their smartphones in the way that all of us do at some point. And they videotape the kids' responses. And it's really difficult to watch because the kids immediately know that the connection's been broken. They ask their parents to pay attention to them. One little girl just sits down and waits for her mom to finish, you know, scrolling.

23:54Catherine Price:So anyway, this is a very long answer to your question. But I think to me, there's many costs that are associated with the use of smartphones and social media, especially as parents. But to me, the most important one is the cost of not having these opportunities for connection with your child and that that compounds over time. And I do a lot of talks these days to students who are in third grade on up. And I always ask, have you ever felt or ignored or hurt because of something your parent has done on their phone? And every kid's hand goes up. So I think that that's really the most important cost to me is the cost or the connections that are not happening, the bonding moments, the shared experiences, the connection with one of the people that presumably is the most important to you in the world and that they feel it too, you know, and then they end up seeing a model where the most important thing in the room is not the other person.

24:45Catherine Price:It's a phone. And like, what do you grow up? How do you grow up? Who do you become if that's what you see modeled to you? Okay. Can we be real about motherhood on the internet for a second? It can be so mean. There's comparison. There's the comment sections. Everyone who somehow thinks that it's like a personal attack on them. I mean, you go looking for a little support and you always leave feeling worse than when you started. I want the complete opposite of that, which is why I created the mom club and why it is a safe place to land. There's no scoreboard in here. There is no one upping each other.

25:31There is none of the hostile Facebook group energy. And I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. It is for moms who are for each other, asking honest questions and getting honest, kind answers back. So if you've been creating a corner of the internet that's actually safe and fun, come join me and other like-minded moms at learningtomompodcast.com slash join. that's below in the show notes i cannot wait to have you inside a hundred percent i think we talk so much about like cycle breaking in this generation like our this parenthood generation that we're all in we talk so much about cycle breaking whether that be you know like i was spanked as a kid and i'm not gonna spank my children or i was yelled at i'm not gonna do that like you know cycle after cycle but how many of us are creating a new cycle with phone use for our children.

26:28It's just so interesting to think about.

26:30Catherine Price:Yeah. And going back to the like, you know, not trying to make anyone feel shamed or blamed for anything you've done in the past, but I found it to be, I mean, it was a life changing wake up call for me. I'm grateful I had that moment so early in my daughter's life. But I think that no matter where you are in your parenting journey, you know, it's not too late to change course and to change your own habits. Wow. So you said something a little bit back about like, it was like a, just a reflection question of, you know, how is this impacting our lives and like our community and not just our attachment.

27:00And I know there's so much study behind social media use specifically and like mental health, but are there other ways that this impacts how our brains are rewired or how we seek dopamine then out in our everyday life.

27:19Catherine Price:Yeah, I think that we're just beginning to understand the effects that all of the various forms of screen time are having on all of us, not just kids. There's been a lot of focus on depression and anxiety. Those are honestly pretty hard to tease out when it comes to correlation versus causality. You know, what comes first? Does social media cause depression and anxiety or does it just contribute to it or are you more likely to use it if you already are depressed and anxious? I don't know that it's really that important to try to get to the root of that because it's very clear that for some people it is causal.

27:51Catherine Price:And like overall, is this making people feel good? In many cases, no. So I'm not as fixated on that. But in terms of other effects that these platforms and the type of content we're consuming are having on our brains, there's a lot of research coming out now that's really interesting and disturbing about short form content in particular. And what that does to our ability to pay attention and stay focused. And I'm talking about things like YouTube shorts or TikTok shorts or honestly, any form of video content these days, it's just getting shorter and shorter and shorter and choppier and choppier.

28:24Catherine Price:And I know that many readers of How to Break Up With Your Phone have told me they feel this. I mean, they felt this even before shorts were a thing. They would say, I used to love reading books, but they still say this all the time. And now I feel like I can't read an article or even like a post, like a caption to a post without trying to seek the next thing. and so there really is there is an impact on the brain when we train our brains to be short form sorry short yeah short form or short what am I starting to say when you're consuming so much short form content it actually trains your brain to be more distractible than our brains already are and so I think we should be aware of that as individuals and as parents that it's actually quite hard to get the human brain to focus because if you think about it like being too focused actually isn't very good as a survival strategy because you might not notice threats in your environment.

29:16What we consider distractions now for our ancestors might have been threats.

29:20Catherine Price:Like you're reading a book under a tree and like you don't notice the rustling in the grass and there's a lion waiting to attack you and you're like really into your book. You know, like it's actually not that great for us to be too focused. But I also think that this is not necessarily like a change in the brain per se, but another way that our relationships with our phones and devices, the way that it's affecting us is just this sense of exhaustion and burnout and just feeling just overwhelmed all the time, especially as a new parent. And I think there's this kind of unfortunate irony where we are exhausted and overwhelmed by virtue of the circumstances that we're dealing with.

30:00Catherine Price:Like genuinely early parenthood is just exhausting and overwhelming, but we turn to our devices to help us in those moments. And in reality, they're just adding to our exhaustion and our feelings of overwhelm. Because what are we doing when we look at our phones? We're probably consuming content on social media. And regardless of the emotional feel of that content, it's nonstop, it's never ending, and it's short form. So your brain is having to switch between lots of stuff and just different emotions rushing at you post by post. And then you just also disengage from what you're doing in general.

30:37Catherine Price:And you're just having to, your brain is just overwhelmed by the amount of content it's being asked to process in any given moment. And it's not giving the actual nourishment or the actual relief that you're seeking. It's actually just adding to your feeling of overwhelm. So yeah, there's a lot of ways in which our devices are affecting us that go beyond the kind of mainstream conversation about, you know, specifically depression or anxiety. So good. So, so good. Question that I have for you. Is there a, I mean, there's stats on like how much screen time is appropriate for children, you know, like under two zero and like, you know, blah, blah, blah, as they get older.

31:18But my question is like for an adult, is there a recommended use time? Are you just like absolutely none, delete everything, get rid of your phone? What is appropriate?

31:35Catherine Price:For what in particular? For social media? For adults. For phones? For phones, yeah. There's definitely not one answer for anybody. And I say that for a couple of reasons. One is that, and this is part of the reason phones are so challenging is the phone is not just one thing. It's not like an old fashioned telephone. I mean, we rarely use it as a phone, honestly. It's like a computers. Yeah, it's a mini computer. It's like a Swiss army knife. Like I mean, there's some stuff that's just genuinely practical and helpful. There's a lot of stuff on it that's practical and helpful, you know, like your banking app, or like maps or your plane ticket or your health records.

32:10Yeah, or like you can't even go to a concert now. Unless you have the app that actually scans your phone, not just like the barcode.

32:17Catherine Price:Right, right. There's so many ways in which it's practical or necessary in modern life. And so I think when people start to look at their screen time statistics on, say, an iPhone and freak out about it, it's like, well, how is that getting separated? I mean, you also might have stuff that you just genuinely enjoy or find educational, like listening to podcasts. Is that a bad use of your phone? Or sometimes I'll be like, I'll look at my screen time and be horrified by it. Then I'm thinking, oh, wow, I think that that counted my two-hour conversation with my best friend from journalism school. Like, that's a great use of my phone, right?

32:45Catherine Price:I think that And that's one reason there's no set answer of how much screen time or how much phone time is too much. I mean, there's probably no such thing as too little for an adult. But I'd also say that if you are using something like social media to really get curious about how it makes you feel. And if you want to be using it at all, and if the answer is yes, well, then what amount makes you feel good? because everyone has different experiences with how much they want to engage with something before it feels bad. Let me back up for a second. What I would suggest that people actually do is look at what you're doing on the phone and try to separate it into categories, just as you might look in a refrigerator and kind of categorize what foods are healthy that you want to eat, you know, unlimited amounts of.

33:33Or like your budget.

33:33Catherine Price:Or your budget, right? And like what is, or what is something that's like delicious in small quantities, but you know that if you have too much of it, you're going to feel bad afterwards. And think about it the same way with screen time. And then you can have a whole category of stuff that you're like, yeah, I can use that as much as I want for that purpose. Like why feel any way about your use of Google Maps? I think you should, you know, but then you can get curious about, okay, well, what are the apps that you really feel like actually aren't adding to your life or that are similar to junk food where you like using them in a small quantity, but then you, there is a line after which you're like, oh, yeah, I actually don't feel good anymore.

34:08Yeah.

34:08Catherine Price:And that's where you can start to make real changes. And you can say, okay, well, maybe I should pay more attention to Instagram or to the news or work email or like whatever that problem app is. I've personally found it very useful to just get those things off my phone. So I'd say if you're able to identify everyone knows what they are, what your problem apps are, I'd really encourage listeners to do an experiment with deleting it off your phone through the weekend. I don't know what day you're going to listen to this podcast, but like, so sorry if it's Monday. Just try it. Try doing it through the weekend, like through Friday, whatever.

34:40Catherine Price:Just pick some period of time. Experiment with getting these things off of your phone entirely. And just check them from a computer if you really want to check. But don't use the phone because the phone apps are much, much harder to stop using. And you have them in your pocket. And I have done that for myself with the news and with email. And I also use an app blocker so that I can actually just choose which apps I want to allow during particular times and block everything else. And that I think is much more useful as a strategy than just saying, oh, I have this particular number of hours per day or per week that is my limit.

35:13Catherine Price:Like, I think that that's not necessarily the most useful way to come at this question. There's this specific guilt that comes with motherhood where you feel like no matter what you do, it's not enough or it's not clean enough or you should be trying harder, you know, when you order the thing off of Amazon because you're tired and it's easy. And then this little voice goes, you didn't even check. You don't know what's in that. You're putting that on your kids. And that voice can be so mean. So what I want to say to you is you are not a bad mom for not having the time or the energy to research every single product like it's your part-time job.

35:57You're not. You're doing the best you can with the little bit of margin that you have, and that counts. So this is why I actually love Truly Free Marketplace. Yes, it is connected. It's owned by the same company that owns Truly Free Home, where I get my laundry detergent and cleaning supplies from, but it is different. So they started this other company. It is called Truly Free Marketplace. They sell their laundry detergent and stuff on there too, but it's basically like a clean Amazon and it takes some of that guilt off of you and gives you time back in your day because you're not having to research 500 different products to make one clean swap.

36:38You are already starting at a much cleaner spot. You can filter by what actually matters to you. So non-toxic, plant-based, non-GMO, whatever it is, and you're automatically looking at way better options instead of gambling. I still say you like use your own judgment always, but you're not starting from zero and beating yourself up anymore. And it's free because they're running a deal right now that if you sign up, you get free lifetime membership. Eventually their website, it's going to be like Amazon Prime, but if you get in, that's the best like comparison for it. But if you get in now, then you're grandfathered in for free.

37:26And the link that I have for you below in the show notes gets you that free lifetime membership plus a$10 gift card just for signing up. Go take a little of that weight off yourself. The links in the show notes below. So, yeah. I – this is the irony is that I – my husband always teases me for this as well because it's very ironic. I fixed my phone addiction by getting a second phone. Oh.

37:57Catherine Price:Second phone is my work phone, right? Yeah. So, like, I have to be on social media as a quote-unquote influencer. um but this work phone is kept like in a drawer away from the kids it is not gonna it doesn't have data like I have to be connected to wi-fi and that has instagram and all the apps and then all of that is deleted from my phone phone so my phone phone is basically one of like it's a dumb phone plus Spotify and Apple and Google Maps or whatever. Is it actually a, I always prefer basic phone because I feel like they're smarter than smartphones, but is that phone like a pared down iPhone or is it a different?

38:45No, it's a, it's an iPhone that I just have deleted everything from.

38:48Catherine Price:Interesting. Okay. I think that's great. I mean, I think that's funny because people are always like, is that ironic? You've got like two phones to try to make yourself use the one phone less, But I think that you're actually addressing one of the fundamental challenges here, which is that everything is packed into one device. You've got like your mobile office in the same device as like your medical records and the same as your kids school stuff is like and your your TV is in there, too. And like, I mean, it's all in one thing. So I actually highly support what you're doing. I think that there is kind of also a general move now to kind of tease apart some of these purposes.

39:23Catherine Price:is like you see this analog movement among a lot of young people of like actually going back to slightly less convenient analog analog technologies like an ipod was in new york the other week and there was a big ad in the subway for refurbished ipods very you know and it's like why did they stop making the ipod like just have it connect to apple music wirelessly and just play music like that would be so great so anyway i support what you're doing i think that's a really intentional way to come about the challenge. But I'm curious, does it work for you? Like, how have you seen this working? No, it really does.

39:55Like, I, I highly, highly recommend it. Of course, it's not for everybody because I have like an action. I don't know. It's like my work phone and not everybody can relate to that. But I mean, I've had to even, you know, so I've been on my phone, on my real

40:11Catherine Price:phone that's with me every day, that really is just for text and calls and like maps and music. that, I mean, I was at the beginning, I was like so desperate and I was so bored. And I'm like, I mean, it's right. It's addicting as we've talked about. So you're sitting at a light and you're like, what else am I going to do? Because everybody pulls up their phone. We shouldn't, but I'm speaking transparently. We all pull up our phones at a red light. And I was getting so desperate because I didn't have anything that I was just like scrolling my email all the time. And then I was just like, this is so dumb.

40:45I've already deleted the app. I'm on gmail.com. Oh, wow. On the Safari browser. So then I've had to log out of like everything, like even in Safari.

40:56Catherine Price:Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, right? Because I think once you start to notice and you're like, wait a second, what I'm doing is completely illogical, possibly dangerous. And I'm aware of this, but I'm still doing it. That's when it's like, wait, this is not entirely under our conscious control, right? Because like, you know, you don't want to be doing that. And yet here you are. I've become the person who will like stand behind people at coffee shops and I'll look over their shoulder to see what they're doing on their phone. And I've done this too, but you'll find yourself and you watch people just cycle through apps.

41:24Catherine Price:Like I've seen people go like they'll go to the weather and then they'll go to the news and they'll go to email and then another one and then they'll come back to the weather like still while they're waiting in line for coffee. And I'm like, the weather is still the same. And you just were out in it because you just walked to the coffee shop. you know and I say that as someone who has done that myself too but it is interesting once you have once you start to notice that that is the first step in being able to change your habits by the way is that noticing that like wait a second like I'd encourage anyone listening right now to today just see if you can notice times in which your phone just appears in your hand and then ask yourself why why is that there to the bathroom yeah because god forbid we have we think for ourselves instead of or we just sit in a moment of silence or boredom right and comfortability right yeah no it is the bathroom thing is pretty pretty dramatic yeah yeah um well okay we are i gotta get to this and this has been such a leeway so we're listening to this and we're so amped up we're like i'm so on board i want to really significantly and impactfully reduce my screen time so I can have a more present life, give more to my community, give more to my kids, blah, blah, blah, blah.

42:35What does breaking up with your phone look like? What do we do?

42:40Catherine Price:Well, so it's a 30 day plan. And so that's in how to break up with your phone. The first half of the book is a look at some of the stuff you and I've been talking about, what is our screen time doing to us? What is the cost of this relationship we have with our phones? And then the second half is this 30-day plan. So I would answer that question with two prongs. The first is philosophical. And I think that this gets left out of the process and the conversation often. And that's why many people try to change their phone habits and then feel like they failed and then they go back to what they were doing before and they feel bad about it, which is a great combination to have not changed your habit and to, you know, be mad at yourself about it.

43:19Catherine Price:so what I really encourage people to do is take some time to actually ask yourself what do you want to pay attention to what's important to you you know because if you don't do that then the companies are going to make that decision for you their algorithms will make that decision for you they will suck your attention away and they'll make money off of your time which is particularly I think upsetting if you think about them making money off of the time that you're like holding your baby but anyway so I'd really recommend asking yourself that question in the book I actually have an exercise that sounds totally silly, but I actually encourage people to play around with it, which is to write a breakup note to your phone.

43:55Catherine Price:And basically, it's an exercise where you treat your phone as if it's an actual romantic partner and you say like, you break up with it. You say, okay, like, here are the things that I love about you. Like, this is why we got together. You know, there was a reason. But this is the ways in which I think our relationship isn't working anymore. You know, I resent the fact that you interrupt me when I'm putting my kid to bed. I think it's weird that you come into the bathroom with me, you know, like whatever it may be. I'm angry that I ended up spending my vacation time scrolling on your screen instead of actually enjoying where I was.

44:33Catherine Price:Whatever it may be. And I find that when people do this, it starts playful and then it gets really deep really quickly. And then as the final step of that letter, just write Like, well, what do you want? Like, what would a good relationship look like? What would a satisfying life look like? And what role would the phone play in it? So it's a little unconventional, but I recommend starting with that because if you don't know why you're doing this, if you don't know why you're trying to change your habits around your phone, you're not going to change your habits around your phone. And it's not supposed to be about restriction for restriction's sake.

45:03Catherine Price:We're not trying to like put people on a diet or something. It's really about like living your life fully and feeling like you're fully present and that you're experiencing your own life and that you're connected with the people that matter to you the most. So I'd recommend starting there. In terms of training yourself to notice when you pick up your phone, I would recommend that you put a rubber band or a hair tie around your phone for a couple of days, maybe like a sticker on the screen, just something that's unusual that's going to get in the way of an automatic check where your brain's going to be like, why is there a hair tie around my phone?

45:34Catherine Price:And once you have that happen, and this is designed to kind of interrupt the cycle where you look at like you look at the clock and it's like 45 minutes have passed you don't know what just happened your phone's in your hand so you notice you pick up your phone and then I developed this mindfulness mindfulness inspired exercise called www that you can use to redirect yourself and the w's are short for what for why now and what else so you notice you picked up your phone because you've got this hair tie or whatever and you ask yourself this first question what for like what did you pick up your phone for what was your purpose you know was it actually to call a friend?

46:08Catherine Price:Was it to get that ticket to the show? Like, did you have a purpose? You might not. In many cases, you might realize, well, I don't really know. The next question is, why now? So what for? Why now? So why did you do it now? Now, in the case of that show, it's because you needed to get it into the show. So you needed the ticket, right? Or like, it's your friend's birthday, you called. In many cases, I would argue probably the majority of cases, it actually will be an emotional reason. So it'll be like, I was bored. I wanted a distraction. I felt lonely. I wanted a connection. I'm up late at night with my kid and I'm like half asleep and I wanted to like kind of self-soothe, whatever it might be.

46:43Catherine Price:Then you can ask yourself the final question, which is what else? And you can ask yourself, well, okay, well, what else could I do in that moment to get that reward that I was seeking that I just identified? So if you're lonely and you wanted the connection, like maybe use your phone to call a friend instead of scrolling on social media. Or if you wanted to take a break from a work project, maybe like get up and walk around your house or around the block or play with your dog for a minute instead of just going over to your email, right? You might also, though, just realize that you just want to do nothing.

47:10Catherine Price:You actually do want to give your brain a chance to breathe and a chance to be still. Maybe you do want to go to the bathroom without the phone and just like, you know, like 30 seconds or whatever. It's like, there's all these moments where we could pause during the day that actually can be quite refreshing to our brains. But then the final possibility is you might ask what else and you might say, no, no, I actually really do want to be looking at my phone right now. I do want to be watching this video or whatever you're doing. And I always like to stress like that's fine. Like it's not about just saying no arbitrarily.

47:39Catherine Price:It's really about just making sure that your phone checks are the results of a conscious choice. So that's what for, why now and what else. So I suggest those two things. And then just some quick practical suggestions. One would be get your phone out of your bedroom, like get an alarm clock. Actually, if you have a baby, you probably don't need an alarm clock. I don't know. I basically didn't have an alarm clock until my daughter was like 10. She just got me up. Oversleeping was not a problem. Get yourself an alarm clock and like charge your phone somewhere out of the room where you can't see it.

48:11Catherine Price:If you're worried about missing a call, turn the ringer on, you know, or have a VIP list of people or get a wireless. Like my husband and I have a VoIP phone, a voice over internet phone where it uses our internet connection. So we don't pay for a phone plan, but we can forward calls from our cell phone to that phone. And so if our parents, for example, were to call us in an emergency, we can have the calls forwarded to the house phone. There's ways to work around your anxieties, is I guess what I'm saying. And then I'd also, especially if your kids are young, it's a wonderful opportunity to set some, you create some etiquette as a family, like when your kids are young about where screens are and are not acceptable.

48:49Catherine Price:You could think about creating no phone zones, like your bedroom would definitely be one or the dining room table. Those could be some. You also could think about it as where are the phone zones? So similar to like, where are the smoking sections at the restaurant? Where are the phone zones? Is there like a particular chair that you go to where you want to like zone out and just doom scroll or whatever you're doing? You can kind of come at it either direction. And then I'd also recommend looking into app blockers because they're far more effective than the native, the features built into iPhones and Android devices.

49:18Catherine Price:So things like Opal or Brick or ScreenZen is a free one that people like. Freedom. You can actually set schedules for yourself of what you can and can't access. So those would just be some concrete suggestions. Also clean up your home screen. You probably have like your most tempting apps on your home screen. So my home screen is totally black, except I don't even have a picture of my kid because I don't want to think of my phone as being connected to my kid. But I just have an app blocker app on the home screen and nothing else. So you can decide what makes sense for you. But just be aware that because of that subconscious dopamine triggering that we discussed at the beginning.

49:53Catherine Price:If you see the Instagram colorful icon, you're probably going to touch on it without even realizing what you're doing. So get that off your home screen, ideally off your phone entirely. Okay, this, I loved those. I am curious what you've heard from people who have broken up with their iPhone and what they have done to fill their time. Well, I will say it actually can be quite unnerving. Like the first, if you free up a lot of time that you've been spending on your smartphone, like be prepared to have a little bit of an existential crisis. At least that's what happened to me because you might be like, oh my goodness, I don't know what I want to do.

50:32Catherine Price:You know, we do have the time. And so whether it's realizing that, oh, you do have the time to be more involved in your community or be more connected to the people around you, or you've got more time for hobbies. So to answer your question, I mean, for me personally, it opened up an entire world of new hobbies and communities and friendships that I didn't have before because I ended up signing I asked myself a question I asked people when I was writing how to break up with your phone which I offer to listeners as well which is what's something you say you don't have time for you supposedly don't have time for but you say you want to do right and it's exactly for the reason you just identified it's like we do have that time the average American adult was spending at that point like four hours a day on their phone it's like 60 full days a year it's a lot of time So we have the time.

51:17Catherine Price:Anyway, and in my case, it made me I now know how to play guitar because I said I want to learn to play guitar. And so I signed up for a guitar class that led me to take drum lessons that also led me to meet a whole community of adults who love music. I'm now in a band like playing keyboard. Okay, you are so cool. Well, I don't know about that, but it's like, you know, what was I doing before? I could have just stayed home and scrolled on the couch, you know? And I hear this from a lot of people. It's like, oh my goodness, I just reconnected with a hobby that I hadn't done in a long time. Or, you know, I signed up for this class or like I asked a friend out to coffee.

51:50Catherine Price:Sometimes the benefits are actually quite tiny, but deep, you know? Catherine, you are just so phenomenal. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing in this space and for coming on and spending this time with us. So can you please share how people can find you, where they can get your books, give us all the tea? Sure. Yes. I'd love if everyone would join me on my Substack. I have a newsletter called How to Feel Alive, and that is katherineprice.substack.com. Just look up my name and how to feel alive. And then I also have courses and resources and free starter kits on my website, which is katherineprice.com.

52:30Catherine Price:So I'd love for you guys to check that out. And I have a phone breakup starter kit and a fun starter kit. So that's all at katherineprice.com. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. I love that you made it to the end of this episode, mom friend. You are clearly the kind of mom who wants more than just surface level tips, which is why I think you'd love the mom club on Patreon because of the bonus episode you get every month and all of the extra interview minutes, 15 to 30 more minutes every single week that you get from the episodes. So come join me at learningtomompodcast.com slash join.

53:08I can't wait for you to finally get all the extra support and episodes.