How to Break Up With Your Phone

Catherine Price is here to save us

Friends! I have a treat for you today. I was thrilled to interview bestselling author and health and science journalist

Catherine Price

on how we can improve our relationships with our phones and reclaim our time and attention.

I’ve been increasingly concerned (horrified?) at the amount of time I spend on my phone and have been devouring Catherine’s books, which present a practical, optimistic, and realistic approach to achieving tech / life balance.

I’m loving the revised edition of her very timely book: How to Break Up With Your Phone, which offers an updated 30-day digital detox plan that will help you set smart boundaries with your phone as well as a new section on kids and phones. Ready to scroll less and live more? Catherine is here to help. Onto the interview and some fun, rapidfire questions!

Why Did You Write How to Break Up With Your Phone?

I am a health and science journalist by training, with a background in meditation and mindfulness, all of which contributed to my curiosity in the subject and my decision to write this book. However, I also had a personal inspiration: I had a baby in 2015, and one night when I was up with her, I noticed that she was looking up at me as I was looking down at my phone—and my heart sank. I realized this was not the impression I wanted her to have of a human relationship, and it was also not how I wanted to be experiencing my own life.

The more I looked at the world around me, the more I realized that this was becoming a universal problem—and the more I wanted to create something that could help.

What Does It Mean to Break up With Your Phone?

Breaking up with your phone doesn't mean getting rid of it entirely; it means creating a healthier relationship with it—one in which you keep what you love about your phone and minimize what you don’t. In other words, it's like going from an obsessive romance where you're constantly craving the person and can't bear to be apart to just being friends.

Ultimately, “breaking up” with your phone is not about spending less time on your phone. It’s about spending more time on your life.

Why Should We Consider Breaking Up With Our Phones?

I think that everyone's ideal relationship is different, so I'm not saying that this is something that everyone must do. However, I also don't think that many of us have actually considered the effects that our phone time is having on us. We're spending an average of four hours a day on our phone. That’s about 60 days a year—two full months!

If you spend that much time doing anything, it's going to change your brain. And in this case, the effects aren't good: the time we spend on our phones is reducing our attention spans and weakening our memories, damaging our relationships, lowering our self-esteem, making us less creative and productive, and actually harming our physical health (whether by keeping us up later than we'd like, or by causing repetitive strain injuries). In other words, our phones may seem innocuous, but they're not.

And more to the point: the time we spend on our phones is time we're not spending with the people we're in relationships with—or the activities and experiences that bring us joy.

How Are Phones and Apps Designed to Addict Us?

Phones and apps are packed with triggers for dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter (brain chemical) that tells our brains when something is worth doing again. Dopamine is evolutionarily essential—it’s released, for example, when we eat or have sex. It’s also a key player in addictions.

Two of the strongest dopamine triggers are novelty and unpredictability—the more unpredictable and novel something is, the more we’re going to want to do it again. When we check our phones, we usually find something new waiting for us—which makes our brains release dopamine, which teaches us that checking our phones is worth repeating, which makes us want to check our phones even more.

Conversely, once this dopamine link has been established, we begin to release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol when we can’t check our phones. We feel twitchy and irritable, and we keep reaching for our phones even if we know they’re not there. In other words, we begin to exhibit signs of withdrawal.

Indeed, the closer you look at your phone, the more similarities you’ll notice between our phones/apps and slot machines, which are widely considered to be one of the most addictive machines ever to have been invented. Essentially, our phones are like slot machines that we keep in our pockets.

Help Us, Catherine! How Can We Reclaim Control?

1. Figure out how much time you’re actually spending on it (you can use the screen-time tracking feature on your phone). Next, ask yourself whether you think your relationship is healthy. Also, ask someone who loves you (a friend, your child, your partner) what they think about how you interact with your phone, especially when you’re around them. You’re trying to get a sense of where you are now, before you try to change.

2. Get in the habit of noticing when you’re about to reach for your phone – and asking yourself whether you actually want to do so. This is what I call a “speed bump”—a small obstacle that forces you to slow down and decide whether you WANT to be checking your phone in that moment. I created free lock screen images people can download on my site. Or, if you’d prefer, you can also take your own lock screen reminder, or simply put a rubber band around your phone.

3. Figure out what you WANT to do with the time you’ll be reclaiming. Yes, there are lots of practical things you can do like turning off notifications, getting an alarm clock, charging your phone out of your bedroom and deleting problematic apps. But unless you know what you actually want to be spending your time doing, you’re going to drift right back to your phone.

Catherine has a brilliant video breaking all of this down with actionable tips as part of her phone breakup challenge - I am doing it. Join me here!

Any Advice for Those of us Navigating Teens and Phones?

I firmly believe that ideally, kids shouldn't have access to social media or full-on smartphones till they're at least 16. (If you're reading this and your kid already has these things, no judgment, though—we are in the midst of a giant recalibration when it comes to how we approach kids, smartphones, and social media.)

If your child does not yet have a smartphone or social media, my advice is to:

1. Delay smartphones for as long as possible (until at least high school, but ideally until at least 16)

2. Start with a family “loaner” phone

3. When it’s time for your kid to have their own phone, start with a smartphone alternative

4. No social media until at least 16

If you've already given your kids smartphones or social media, don't despair. First, you can always walk things back — after all, you are the one paying for the smartphone and the data plan! Dr. Becky has a great, free PDF that helps parents explain to their children why they're establishing new boundaries with smartphones and social media (and helps parents feel more comfortable setting boundaries in general). People can start with this post I just did for Jon Haidt's After Babel Substack.

The other thing I'd say is that parents worry that their kids will be left out if they don't have smartphones or social media. And that might be true . . . for now. But the only way that's going to change is if parents collectively take a stand. And I'd also recommend considering what the long-term consequences will be for our children if we don't take a stand—namely, that they'll end up in what Sean Killingsworth, a young man who founded the Reconnect movement, describes as a "social wasteland," in which no real life options are even available. I highly recommend watching his short talk — I find it extremely powerful, and I've heard from people in Gen Z that this is an accurate description of their experience (and I'd be shocked to find any parent who WANTS this for their children!).

A Highlight of Your Phone Breakup?

Now, once a week, I get together with a group of other adults to play music and learn together. There’s no goal other than to have fun. It’s the best thing I’ve done for myself in years.

Proudest accomplishment?

I'm really proud of having written How to Break Up With Your Phone. When I pitched the idea in 2016/2017, only one publisher was interested in it, and I got a very low advance—I remember my agent asking me if I really thought it would be worth the work. I knew it was a good and important idea, so I decided to write it anyway—and I now hear regularly from people around the world who say that it has changed their lives. That's a wonderful feeling.

One self-care tip you follow religiously?

I exercise—my body and mind do NOT do well if I don't get sweaty at least several times a week. I also make time to play music with friends (I play piano and guitar, and am learning the drums).

What book(s) are currently on your nightstand?

There are a lot! Right now two of the ones I'm enjoying the most are Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Surgeon General, Vivek H. Murthy, MD., and A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, which is a mind-blowing true story of an American woman who ran a spy network during World War II in occupied France. (I'm obsessed with it.)

Go-To Daily Uniform?

Workout clothes. This is not a "style choice" - it's because I've never figured out what to wear. As a result, people will often say things to me like, "Have a great workout!" when I'm actually on my way to answer emails. I was once in an elevator with someone who took a look at what I was wearing, and said, "Looks like we're going to the same place!" (meaning the gym)—and I thought, "How does this guy know that I'm on my way to the Apple store?"

How do you recharge when it's all too much?

I try to have fun. I'm obsessed with fun — to the point that I wrote a whole book about it. For me, the biggest sources of fun are dancing, playing music with friends, and spending time with people I love.

A risk you took that paid off?

My entire choice of career!

A life hack you swear by?

I charge my phone in a closet, and I do not have any news apps.

The thing you like most about yourself?

My creativity.

How Do You Fuel Your Creativity / Productivity?

I try to spend time with interesting people and have as many new experiences as I can.

Early Bird or Night Owl?

I wish I were an early bird, but I'm neither an early bird, nor an owl. What's an animal that really likes to sleep?

Favorite or most used app on your phone?

Guitar tabs — it gives me the chords to any song I could possibly want to play!

Digital or physical planner?

I use iCal because I have to, but come on now: I definitely prefer physical! (Who do you think I am!?)

Any Parting Thoughts?

The biggest thing that I’ve learned from writing the book is that our lives are what we pay attention to. We only experience what we pay attention to. We only remember what we pay attention to. When we make a decision in the moment about how to spend our attention, we are making a broader decision about how we want to spend our lives.

I’m not a person who has tattoos, but I think this is such an important that I had a bracelet made for myself that’s stamped with the words, “Pay Attention.”

Thank you, Catherine!

For more like this, make sure to check out Catherine’s books - the revised edition of How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan, as well as her excellent follow up The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. You can also explore her website and subscribe to her newsletter How to Feel Alive.

I’d love to hear: How do you set healthy boundaries with your phone and screen time in general? I’m off to turn my phone settings to black and white and hide it in a closet!

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