Welcome to the Scrolling Backlash

A lot of people are getting tired of their phone—sick of the algorithms and overwhelmed by what can feel like a loss of control. The Atlantic staff writer Julie Beck was a part of a team that dug into why and how people are trying to renegotiate their relationships with technology. They just released a five-part podcast series called “How to Touch Grass,” and in this episode, Galaxy Brain host Charlie Warzel talks to Beck about why people are nostalgic for pre-Internet days, how our brains are changing, and the good that can come from getting lost. Listen to the full “How to Touch Grass” series at The Atlantic, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:20Speaker 01

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• 0:35Charlie Warzel?

  How does the phone make you feel? Like, how does a TikTok binge make you feel? Or even just like a, you know, a before-bed scrolling session that we all have?

• 0:46Speaker 03

  Oh, like, sick.

• 0:48Charlie Warzel?

  Sick?

• 0:48Speaker 03

  Like, absolutely sick. It's like when the aliens get you, right? You know, they take you up and then they probe you or they do whatever they do. And then when you come back down, you don't know what happened. It's erased, it's lost time. So I feel like I have emerged from lost time. And like, what happened during that time is unclear. But I don't feel good.

• 1:12Charlie Warzel?

  I don't know that I have the amnesia part of it. But I, what I have is I have the like, it promotes self-loathing in a way that like truly no other activity does. Because it just, it just feels like, like a deletion of my one precious life.

• 1:35Charlie Warzel?

  I'm Charlie Warzel, and this is Galaxy Brain, a show where today we're going to answer a question. Maybe it's even the question of the online age. How can we live lives where we use tech and don't let it use us? This is the animating question of How to Touch Grass, a new podcast series by my colleagues here at The Atlantic. Over five episodes, Julie Beck and her co-host and producer Natalie Brennan explore what exactly is happening in this moment that has so many of us out there feeling like we need to renegotiate our relationships to our technology. At the beginning of this year, I made a few predictions about trends that we might see. And one of them was that there would be what I was calling a scrolling backlash. That people are just really tired of their phones, of the algorithmic internet,

• 2:20Charlie Warzel?

  of this idea that they're being manipulated all the time and that their attention is being directed towards things that don't make them feel good or whole or happy. Now, as predictions go, this is a pretty safe one. But it's really been worn out in recent months. These things are hard to measure, but you can just feel it out there in the world. In the artists who are asking that people leave their phones at home or in their pockets at concerts. In the genuine concern over whether younger generations are going to be able to read like older generations. And while the data center backlash that we're seeing right now is complicated, and it's about a lot of things, including AI, I also see that as an outgrowth of this larger frustration about the role that big tech is playing in our lives

• 3:02Charlie Warzel?

  and the way that people just feel this fuzzy loss of agency right now. It's a loss that just can't be separated from the devices that we use. How to Touch Grass digs into so many of the ideas that I've been trying to poke at here in the first year of this podcast. Our motto here at Galaxy Brain is that we pay attention to where we pay attention, which also happens to be exactly what I found so valuable about Julie and Natalie's work. And so I decided to bring Julie on here today to talk about this moment and to talk about what she's learned in this series. How badly have our attention spans actually been fractured? How has she reevaluated her relationship to all of her devices? Is the backlash that we're feeling and seeing right now justified? And crucially, where might we go from here?

• 3:47Charlie Warzel?

  Julie joins me now to talk about it all.

• 3:57Charlie Warzel?

  Julie, welcome to Galaxy Brain.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Hi, Charlie. Thanks for having me.

• 4:02Charlie Warzel?

  So let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Touch Grass moment that I think we are in, even, even the phrase itself, right? Why is touching grass? Why is this something that people are talking about? And what made you want to just dig in and report on it?

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Yes, so we had originally thought about calling the season How to Log Off. But that's not as fun. But I think it also speaks to just a sort of general like renegotiation that people are doing right now between like how much they actually want to be on their devices and how much they actually want to like be inhabiting the embodied world around you and the grass and the trees and the people and everybody around you. So yeah, we wanted to look at like the various shifts that are happening, both in like the culture of the internet itself and the technology itself, but also the shifts in like the culture of how people are thinking about their devices and how they're talking about them and how much they want to use them, so.

• 5:01Charlie Warzel?

  Why for you did you feel like this was a project you wanted to embark on?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  I have deleted and re-downloaded TikTok on my phone like roughly four to five times.

• 5:10Charlie Warzel?

  Nice.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  And it's usually like my friend ends up sending me like a Lord of the Rings meme. And then you click it and to click it to see it, you have to re-download the app. And they, they give me every time.

• 5:21Charlie Warzel?

  It's a gateway drug.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Lord of the Rings memes are the gateway drug, kids. But no, it's, I noticed something happening maybe six-ish months ago when, whenever I was on my last like round of being on TikTok, which is every time I would go on there, I would get nothing but reels of like how to be offline more, like how to live more analog, how to heal your attention span on this app where I was actively in the process of degrading my attention span. So I thought that irony was interesting. And so I think there was a shift that I was just sensing within myself, but also like in conversations that I would have with people in real life

• 6:03Speaker 03

  and in what I was seeing online of people really trying to just be on their phones less, be on social media less. And I was curious why now, when obviously we've had smartphones for a very long time. We've had the internet for a very long time. We've had social media for a long time.

• 6:21Charlie Warzel?

  What is the answer to that? Why, why now?

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Why now? I think, I think some of it is that we've had it for long enough that like the shine's off the apple, right?

• 6:34Speaker 03

  And I think some of it is a confluence of like these, these different bigger conversations. Obviously, there's like a big push by many to like get kids off of social media, right? Or there's lawsuits, you know, against Instagram and what is Instagram doing to our mental health? And so I do think that those things have leaked down in some way. But also even TikTok, right, has been pretty popular for a few years. We've had a few years of living in this sort of algorithmically optimized short-form video environment. And it's gotten to the point where maybe people have had enough experience with it that they're starting to see the effects in their own lives and like starting to question that rather than just, oh, isn't this fun? I can watch Lord of the Rings memes, you know?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  And I think combining that with the sort of arrival of AI on the scene, right? And seeing all of these, you know, extreme stories about people replacing relationships with AI, using AI as a friend or a lover or, you know, God forbid. I think there's been a sort of opposite, if not equal, reaction to valuing more sort of the, the embodied world and the, the real social relationships that we had. So I think people are reacting in part to the sort of evolution of like the internet culture and social media environment and the arrival of this new technology that's really like getting its little tendrils into every area of our lives.

• 8:04Charlie Warzel?

  So one of the episodes to pivot here explores nostalgia, which I think is a very big part of all of this hand wringing that we are all personally going through, right? Like, is this moment different from others? Does it hurt? Are we doing something uniquely awful to our brains that none of our ancestors ever did? And when you talk about nostalgia, there's particularly a focus on, on young people, you know, who weren't really around to have that pre-internet life. In that episode, though, you have this, this moment where you describe a time that you got truly and deeply lost.

• 8:44Charlie Warzel?

  And so it's, it struck me that your co-host, who's slightly younger than you, never had that experience. She'd never been an adult without a smartphone.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:54Charlie Warzel?

  And so what do you think is the value of being in a place where you don't have a phone to save you? Like, are we losing something when we don't experience that vulnerability?

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yes and no. I do look back on it with a fondness, right? Like, I would no longer, unless my phone died, I guess, I would no longer ever be in a position where like I simply had to like throw myself on the mercy of strangers and like hope that they helped me. Uh, if I were lost somewhere, I can just like follow the blue dot until I like figure it out. Um, and I don't know that I yearn to go back to that, right? Like, in some ways, like, that wasn't very safe. Um, I was like a young woman traveling alone in a country where I didn't speak the language. And I had no idea where I was and like no way to really like communicate with anyone. I'm not mad that I have Google Maps and I have like some sort of safety features to like keep

• 9:51Speaker 03

  me safe when I go places. And I do think we have lost a little bit of something of just kind of being where you are and like letting the experience be what it is. Um, and those opportunities for connection, right? Like, I would not ask someone for help. I would just use my phone. Um, so I feel ambivalent about it. And I would say that, in fact, ambivalence is the primary emotion of the season and of just like today's technology.

• 10:24Charlie Warzel?

  So there's this stat that you referenced, um, because we were talking, talking a little bit about people who haven't had access to a life without smartphones. Uh, and I, I found it honestly just racing, maybe even troubling, but it, the, the stat is essentially that 60% of Gen Z wishes that they could return to a time before everyone was quote, plugged in. And nostalgia is like a very common thing. The year, you get into this in the episode, everyone's has nostalgia for, for some period of time. But Gen Z's nostalgia for this time before they were alive, it seems like something else to me. Like, it seems like a genuine indictment of this moment that we are in. How do you read that stat? Like, what does that make you feel when you hear that?

• 11:08Speaker 03

  I take that stat as sort of like, not actually indicative of like, if you presented them with a time machine and was like, you can go live in 1985, that they would go in there and live in 1985. I don't think they actually want to give up on, you know, all of the other things that have happened since then. But it's just this sense of like, something in my life isn't working. I attribute it to this device. And it's being expressed as like, I just wish we could go back. But I don't think it actually means they wish they could go back.

• 11:41Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah. I think, I, well, one thing that I'm trying to figure out is, is it, is it just, do you feel like it's just an escapist phenomenon in that way? Or just this like coping mechanism? Or do you think it actually leads to, or has the potential to lead to a genuine like backlash or push or protest against some of this stuff? You know, like, I, I think about just the physical media boom, you know, the, like a push to do some things in a more analog way, even if it is kind of niche or hipster, or whatever you want to call it.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I feel like maybe I went into this thinking it is just kind of like an escapist fantasy. Um, in the way that, you know, somebody might be like, oh, I should have been born in the 1920s. Like, I would have made such a great flapper, you know, or whatever it may be. Um, but the, the expert who we interviewed for that episode, Clay Rutledge, he studies nostalgia and his sort of whole take on nostalgia overall is that it's about the future as much as it is about the past, right? Um, so it's not, it, it is just like, you know, warm feelings for the past and like, oh, what a, what a nice time I had doing whatever. But it's also telling you something important about the way that you want to live now and going forward. And so especially seeing like what

• 12:57Speaker 03

  you're talking about, like the sort of rise in people buying physical media again, people giving up their smartphones for dumb phones. Um, I do think it is inspiring some level of actual behavioral change. And even if you don't go so far as to like get a dumb phone and try to LARP your life like it's the 90s, I think it still tells you something important about what you value and like maybe smaller shifts that you do want to make in how you relate to technology and how you sort of set up your life.

• 13:30Charlie Warzel?

  If there's one real theme of how to touch grass, I think it's that the tools that we use change us, obviously, in these unexpected ways, right? Our habits, how we see ourselves, how we see other people, how we talk to each other, everything. And the show explores this from anxiety to body image. And I want to play you another clip from your own show here.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Please.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  I don't think anyone is supposed to see their own face as much as we do now. Like, I think about this a lot, like how our ancestors would have felt like catching a glance at themselves in a lake. And instead, we're just like front facing camera, front facing camera, front facing camera. And it's, it, it's weird. It's, it's warping our brains.

• 14:14Charlie Warzel?

  That was, uh, our fellow staff writer, Sophie Gilbert, talking to you. What strikes me a bit about being hyperconnected is that in theory, right, the access to abundant information that we have should be a good thing, I think. And it just doesn't seem to work that way in practice. Like, the way that we can learn anything, but we tend to gravitate towards information that confirms our biases, right? And pushes us deeper down whatever rabbit hole. Or how we can learn anything about our bodies. And then it pushes us to, you know, go and Google these things that, that lead to more and more anxiety. The thing that, that Sophie gets at in that clip really is like, is something that you hear a lot of people say, which is like, we, we're, we were never supposed to have

• 14:58Charlie Warzel?

  this much access to ourselves, other people, information. And yet, we hold that up as like, that, that's the beauty of the internet. That's the great thing. More, more, more, you know, abundance, the Library of Alexandria at your fingertips, whatever, right? But like, what, what do you feel like this, this access is, is, is doing to people?

• 15:18Speaker 03

  I think what I've been thinking a lot about since kind of wrapping up the interviews for that season is that there are costs to every way of living, right? Um, and what is happening is that the design of our technology, like the design of these apps, of smartphones, of honestly, the design of like society in general right now, is pushing you to accept a certain set of costs and trade-offs. And that is, uh, constant distraction and the slow degradation of your attention span and maybe some like body image problems in exchange for, um, you know, the most abundance of like entertainment, connection, communication,

• 16:03Speaker 03

  relationships, information that you could possibly imagine. Um, and that is a trade-off that you may decide is worth making, right? Like, at this moment in time, maybe I'm waiting for the bus and it is worth it to me to degrade my attention span a little and like be entertained. But are you actually consciously choosing those costs? Or are you just sort of being pushed by default into making those trade-offs? Um, and there are trade-offs to inserting more distance between yourself and your phone as well, right? Like, the phone is kind of where the people are. And so if you want to be on your phone less, then maybe you are going to be a little bit less connected to like long distance loved ones, or, or maybe you're going to have a harder time getting, you know, figuring out what is the

• 16:49Speaker 03

  weather today, or like getting that information that you need right now about how to get into concert venue. It's like, there are costs either way. However, like, all of society is kind of set up to push you towards one set of costs. And I think people are starting to question that a little bit.

• 17:04Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah. And I think, I think, you know, what, if there's a insidious part of the, the big tech experience, right? It is, it is making people feel when they're using these things, like there aren't any trade-offs, right? They are marketed as, you know, like connection is a universal good, or this thing is a universal productivity increaser, and you should feel this way about them. Some of what we're feeling in this moment, I think, is basically, you know, maybe not fully being gaslit, but you're experiencing the trade-offs, the costs. And you're sort of conditioned not to think that there are any, right? So you're like, what's wrong with me that I can't get a handle on this, right? That I can't get a handle on my attention span or feel, or feel this way. And I, I

• 17:48Charlie Warzel?

  think it's a bit of like, no, no, no, no, no. It's, you have to, like, you have to do that inventory of, of the give and take. And you also have to know that, like, it's not a fair fight. And that's okay. You just need to be armed with that information. I think, I think that we're not, you know, as much these days.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Well, I also think a lot about the way that, a lot of the response to this, right? Like, a lot of the sort of current movement to log off or do whatever is very like draconian. It's like, I'm getting rid of my phone and I'm getting a dumb phone and I'm never going to look at social media ever again. And like, because I think the, the, the reasonable alternative, unfortunately, is that like you just kind of have to manage it forever. Like you said, like they're, they're, the deck is stacked against you. These companies are not going to decide that they want less of your attention. Um, wake up one morning and decide that they've had enough. Um, and so it feels for a lot of people that like, the fantasy is like to just completely leave it behind forever and like walk into the

• 18:48Speaker 03

  sea and live like an analog existence. And if you don't want to live that way, or if it is not reasonable to live that way, which I think for most people it's not, then unfortunately, the answer is just kind of like dealing with that push and pull and like designing something. It's very DIY, right? It's like designing something for yourself with your phone, with your technology that works for you. And it requires kind of like constant upkeep, constant management, and constant like resistance of the forces that are trying to, to suck you in. And that's kind of exhausting.

• 19:20Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah, absolutely. Um, you, you devoted an episode to the ways that technology is changing the way that we learn, right? And I think that people can feel that disruption right now, especially with chatbots. Uh, I want, I want to play a clip from an interview you did with Michelle Miller, who's a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  I think that teaching another human being how to do something, that is one of the highest and best expressions of humanity that there is. It's one of the best and most positive ways that we interact with and contribute to one another. So I do think it comes back to that core, our self-agency and our connection to this great web of humanity. I mean, it comes about through learning.

• 20:11Charlie Warzel?

  I love the great web of humanity. I hope we can preserve it. So learning, what I take away from this is, you know, learning is social. And what's interesting about that is the current internet is full of other people, other people's opinions, broadcasting yourself for other people. It's social, but it's also a lot of synthetic stuff, a lot of synthetic people, a lot of people behaving in ways that they wouldn't or in antisocial ways. And it's also this medium that very clearly isolates us. And so as you're exploring this, do you feel like we're losing something fundamental here when it comes to learning?

• 20:54Charlie Warzel?

  Or is it just a different way of learning that will produce different results? Where have you come out on all that?

• 21:00Speaker 03

  I think that doing this series like also reminded me, and especially when it comes to learning, like all of the genuinely good things that I do get from technology, right? I like to knit and crochet and like, where do I go to learn how to do a new crochet stitch? I go on YouTube because they have a video and it's perfect and I can see it and I can do it. So like, I get a lot out of that, right? Or for my job, I read a lot of PDFs on the internet to obtain knowledge. And that is very useful. And I think that, like Michelle was saying, like, learning is extremely human. And at one point, you know, she mentioned that learning is sort of the way

• 21:44Speaker 03

  that you build the brain that you live in, right? It's not just going to school and like doing your multiplication tables and then growing up to calculate all of your tips on a calculator for the rest of your life. It is literally like you cannot help but experience the world through the like black box of your own mind. And so to like build your own mind is building how you perceive the world, how you interact with the world. And so to outsource that to a machine to me is just like anathema.

• 22:12Charlie Warzel?

  And too, it's, you know, I found this really, really interesting, talking to educators who, you know, as I'm covering AI. But the idea that like, yeah, no one likes writing the whatever, the five paragraph essay, right? That you, that you learn how to do.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  In this essay, I will.

• 22:31Charlie Warzel?

  But at the same time, it's actually like helping your brain understand like, when I encounter new information, like these are the programs that I can run to figure out what I think about it, right? Like it is just scaffolding in order to help yourself work through a complex idea and sort it. And I love that idea of it is, it is like related to your, your brain's perception. Like you live in the world built around your own critical thinking. To sort of expand on that, we, in the series, you, you talk a lot about attention.

• 23:12Charlie Warzel?

  You end up doing an experiment near, near the end of the series, based off of, you know, finding a baseline of where your attention is at right now. And I don't want to spoil it, but I'm wondering, what made you want to do this experience? And what was worrying you about your own attention?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  It's a lot of what I've heard from many people, right? Which is just like feeling my attention pulled in so many different directions. Or just having sort of like a baseline feeling of like buzzy stimulation and not like the calm focus on one thing that I know at some point I was capable of. And wanting to see if the phone was indeed the culprit and if I could find that again. So I did, yeah, I did an experiment, which was based on an actual study that came out like a year ago, where they blocked the internet on people's phones for two weeks and tested their attention before and after. I got in touch with one of the researchers who did that study

• 24:16Speaker 03

  and he kind of helped me do my own version of it where I took the same measures that they did and I blocked like almost everything for 23 hours a day and did that for two weeks and then took the test again. So.

• 24:29Charlie Warzel?

  So I, again, I don't want to like totally spoil things for, for people, but I think what, what we can say here is that in a short amount of time, there were, correct me if I'm wrong, like somewhat dramatic results or at least like meaningful results. I want to end here asking how your relationship to your devices has changed while exploring all of this stuff? Do you feel a little more positive about all of it? Just having had the experience of immersing yourself, you know, in this and with these experts who like, to figure it out. A big part of the challenge for a lot of people, I think, is not really knowing what to feel good or bad about, you know?

• 25:13Charlie Warzel?

  Like I, I got a sense going, going through the series that, you know, you're orienting yourself to this problem. And sometimes that's like all we need, right? When it, when it is so pervasive. But how has your relationship to, to the devices changed?

• 25:29Speaker 00

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• 26:02Speaker 01

  When was the last time you indulged your desires, felt true Range Rover refinement? When was the last time you drove in total serenity? The outside world reduced to a hush? The last time you were confident on uncertain terrain? The last journey that made you feel at home, conveniently connected at every step? In a Range Rover, pioneering innovation meets leading edge luxury to make every drive an occasion. Limitless, effortless, pureless. How far will you let it take you? Range Rover, designed for distinction.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  I think you're right. I think I have a little bit more clarity around like my values and like my ideal scenario. I'm not always living up to it, obviously, but I think, for instance, like for me, I don't really use AI. Maybe that will change, but like if it does change, I'm going to be real careful about like how I want to use it and like in what very specific scenarios. One of the things that Jenny Odell said, and we interviewed her for the attention episode, was to sort of think about things as an experiment. And then of course I went and did an experiment. But I think that that has helped me feel a little bit less like, oh,

• 27:15Speaker 03

  like a guilt and shame if I like backslide or if I do whatever. It's like, let me just try this thing and like, see how I feel about it. And so sometimes when I do end up like, oh, on Instagram for, you know, 45 minutes or whatever it may be, to just like take a moment and ask myself like, did I see anything that added value to my life in those 45 minutes? And like, sometimes I did, you know? Sometimes I saw like some cute pictures of my friends' babies and I got to see how they're doing or maybe I got an idea for a story. And sometimes I'm like, no, I saw nothing of value at all. And so that's important data for the ongoing experiment that is life.

• 27:54Charlie Warzel?

  Well, thank you for coming on the podcast, for talking about this, exploring it. And basically, I see this as, as just such an extension of, of what we've been trying to do here, which is like pick these things off in, in small ways and, and give people some, just some understanding of the stew that we're all, you know, marinating in here every day.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm always trying to understand the stew and I appreciate you having me. It's been so fun.

• 28:30Charlie Warzel?

  Thanks so much, Julie. And now, rather appropriately, we are pleased to share the final episode of How to Touch Grass's season. It's called How to Heal Your Attention Span. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Are you happy with your relationship with your phone or are you not happy with it?

• 28:49Speaker 06

  I wish I could reduce some of the Instagram reeling, particularly at night, where it kind of go down the rabbit hole and it's like, oh my God, it's midnight.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I've been there. It's like lost time, you know, when the aliens come and they get you and then like they put you back down and it's just lost time. It has impacted my attention span. I get bored after half a paragraph of reading. Do you have a sense in your mind of like, when you notice that you feel like your attention span is getting worse? Probably been like.

• 29:21Speaker 07

  Since the start of COVID, like probably in the last five years. The thing that kills me sometimes is how much I want to look stuff up in conversations. So I'm like constantly have a few books that I'm trying to read through and trying to rebuild attention, something like that.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  I'm Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  And I'm Natalie Brennan, a producer at The Atlantic.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  This is How to Touch Grass.

• 29:50Speaker 05

  Julie, attention is one of the biggest things we've heard people talk about when they are renegotiating their relationship to their phone.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Ironically, I feel like every time I go on social media these days, like I see someone talking about how they're trying to heal their attention span from technology that they're currently using.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  And it's always that word, too, like heal. It's like we're sick or we're injured and we must heal.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  Is it something that you've been worried about?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  I do worry about my attention sometimes. Like, every time I go to the gym lately, like I forget to lock the locker that they have in the locker room. I put my stuff in there, I shut the door.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  And you don't lock?

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Then I guess I simply walk away and I don't realize until I get back that, I mean, no one has taken my stuff luckily, so it's all good. Good Samaritans out there. But that has happened not once, not twice, more than twice.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I guess the way that the attention span thing comes up for me the most is when I think about the number of hours that I spend on my phone, like.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  You're pouring your attention into that phone.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I see those as very interconnected. But I've also noticed that I very actively try not to think about it. Like, I rush to swipe away the screen time notification every Sunday. Obviously, that anxiety points to the fact that I want to have a different relationship with my phone, right?

• 31:24Speaker 03

  What do you think has stopped you from actively trying to get that screen time down?

• 31:29Speaker 05

  I think it's scary to sit with ourselves when we have grown really accustomed to all the stimuli.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Love stimuli.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  We talk a lot about, you know, looking at your phone is like, it's a negative thing. And we talk about it in the negative, right? Like, I want to do less of this thing. There's this thing that I do a lot. I want to do less of it. And there's like not as much talk about what I want to do more of.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  That's Jenny Odell, the author of How to Do Nothing. When that book came out in 2019, I remember at the time, it was one of the first things I read that really raised a concern about what modern technology and social media were doing specifically to people's attention. So now it's seven years later. And I asked Jenny how her thinking has evolved and how she's doing with her own screen time habits.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm, look, I'm doing great.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  I'm so happy to hear it. I can't say the same.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  I'm OK with my relationship with my phone and screen time.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  So can you walk me through a little bit?

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would say like, part of the attention economy is the selling of quick fixes. And, you know, habits, they form over time. They're like grooves, right? Like, they need to be sort of formed over time. And so.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Like geologically?

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. And I think, you know, if you try to say like, cold turkey, it can be frustrating when you don't see immediate results.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  Or even, even within a couple of months, right? And then in that meantime, there's all this uphill struggle of like, your friends are still doing it, you know, you need to be on Instagram to see this and that. And there's just muscle memory things, like things you're used to. You get up in the morning, you look at your phone, like, these are just, that's hard, you know, like, those things are really ingrained, especially, I think, if you're younger. I'm, I'm good now, but I just want to stress that, you know, it took some time. And in that time, there's a little bit of a leap of faith.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I deleted TikTok off my phone for the third or fourth time, who's counting? But like you're saying, the muscle memory of like, the thumb going up and down, like, has just transferred to Instagram, unfortunately. So we got to work on that.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. I would say there's like, honestly, you know, I'm almost 40, actually standing like, with your very heavy head, you know, like on your neck. When you get older, you start to notice the problems from that. And it's like, that is another kind of physical limit. I can't sit at a computer for that long without injuring myself. And then I think, you know, I really had to think about my relationship to the news was a really big one that I hadn't quite figured out. When you're kind of scrolling, you're scrolling through it, you're not like really deeply engaging with any one particular issue.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  You're just seeing a list of bad things. And they're bad in all different kinds of ways. And they're terrible. Like, even just sitting with one of those things produces this paralysis. It's like, in order to do something, you need an orientation toward the future and the situation in which you feel that you have some agency. There are certain things that I have started to do in the last couple of years. One of them is volunteering at a native plant restoration project every week. I've also been going to a lot of kind of repair fairs, also kind of volunteering type things that are in person.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  Where you bring with like, a broken toaster or something and learn how to fix it, something like that?

• 34:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally. When I'm there. There is no desire to look at my phone. Like, it just, like, it's just so far from my mind. And it like, has this weird lasting effect throughout the week, actually, because I had this experience that was so direct, that was so meaningful.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  And tell me what, like, what, what is the good thing about the Repair Cafe, about the, you know, weeding the native plants? Like, what is the good thing?

• 35:16Speaker 04

  I think, you know, some of it is just recognition. I think we, as humans, you know, we want to be socially recognized, right? Like, we want to feel seen, we want to feel heard, we want to feel welcomed. You know, it's like cheers or whatever. Like, you want to walk into a room and, and have people be, you know, like, hey, it's you, I know you. Like, I'm happy to see you, right? Like, this is just kind of like a really basic thing that we want. And I, I kind of think that social media, especially early on, like, it's sort of, the evil genius of it was that it was hijacking that. And so I feel like these are in-person events. I feel incredibly recognized and acknowledged. And then it's like, when you feel, you're like, this is the real thing. It becomes

• 35:59Speaker 04

  very obvious what is not the real thing. That's a big part of it. And I think you're there, you have a shared project, you're getting some traction with something, right? Instead of just this, like, sort of constantly being washed over with information and not really having anything to grasp onto.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  For most people in this day and age, like, totally going without a smartphone just isn't possible, or at least not practical. Like, the infrastructure of society, you know, they've got the QR code menu at the restaurant, the stores are all accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay, and so many websites like, require you to receive a text and then put the code in to even get in there. So trying to resist getting sucked into your phone just feels like resisting the inevitable sometimes. Have you found a way to resolve this tension for yourself?

• 36:56Speaker 04

  I live in the same society you're describing, and I use my, you know, I just use my phone to pay for lunch before this. But then I put it away. I use the phrase standing apart as a way of kind of like, not leaving or believing in the fantasy of escape from something and just sort of being like, I kind of, I'm standing in a position from which I can see the thing.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  You're now running away from it, or?

• 37:22Speaker 04

  But I have critical distance. And I think about something like food. You know, you go to the grocery store. And, I mean, depending on the grocery store you're in, you kind of understand that 80% of the food in it is bad for you. Like, we're all, you kind of, you kind of know that, right? Like, we're, it's been that way long enough.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Stop me from getting the flaming hot Cheetos, but yes, I do know.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  But it's just this understanding that, that space is just not set up for me to thrive. And I think that it's helpful to maybe transpose that to your phone. What is a phone? A phone is a communication device. What I want from this is communication. The apps, you know, social media in particular, are not designed for you to thrive. They are designed for the opposite. These are actively bad for me, and I won't feel good. Like, for me, it's sort of a level of acceptance of like antagonism has been helpful. It's like, I'm never going to have a peaceful relationship with that universe. And I'm just going to kind of like, accept that and take what I need and leave.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  You know, recently, I hear so many people, both online and in real life, talking about healing their attention spans from the damage that they feel like technology has done. And I'm curious why, of all the things, you think people are worried about their attention specifically?

• 38:48Speaker 04

  One would hope that what you pay attention to is what is important to you. That's an ideal situation.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Not always the case.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. So if you're not paying attention to things that are important to you, there's something, I think, like deeply unsettling about that on the level of identity. Because it's like, am I even who I am? Right? Like, am I who I want to be if I am paying my attention to something that I don't feel I ever chose? I think it really deeply affects people, kind of like on the level of like, self-control and their sort of understanding of their identity.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it seems like the solution that many people have landed on for healing their attention span is just trying to be online less, however they can. So do you think that logging off is the answer or no?

• 39:38Speaker 04

  I think that the best approach personally is to just treat it as an experiment. Honestly, it makes it interesting. Like, I'm a curious person, you know, and I'm curious about myself and my own reactions to things, kind of being like, OK, I'm going to try this. I'm going to see what happens when I try this.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Natalie, immediately after this interview, I really felt the itch to do what Jenny said, to try and experiment.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  And when I was thinking about how to do that, I remembered this study I had seen from 2025, where researchers blocked the internet on people's smartphones for two weeks.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  And just doing that, they found that the improvement to people's sustained attention was equivalent to reversing 10 years of cognitive decline.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  After two weeks?

• 40:28Speaker 03

  After two weeks.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  That discrepancy feels huge.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  It's huge. So I tried the experiment on myself for two weeks. Now, I didn't perfectly replicate the conditions of the 2025 study, to be clear. They blocked mobile internet using an app called Freedom. I used instead this device called a brick.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  Huge among my friends.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Oh, your friends are all into it. Okay, so you know. So I used this device. I picked all the apps I was gonna block. And you have to physically touch your phone to the device to unlock it.

• 41:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  I tried to, you know, keep all of the things that would allow me to communicate with other people. And so I blocked all games. I blocked all social media, email, Slack, internet browsers, and most internet-connected apps.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  So I blocked all of that for 23 hours a day. I was allowed one hour of non-bricked time if I needed it or wanted it. And I could do whatever I wanted on a computer, same as in the study. It was only the phone that was restricted.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  And how were you going to test this?

• 41:32Speaker 03

  So I got in touch with someone from that 2025 study, and they shared an attention pre-test with me and a self-report questionnaire. So I took those for a baseline.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  How long was the test?

• 41:43Speaker 03

  It felt like 1,000 hours.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  I think he told me it's actually like eight minutes. I did both of those things before I started the experiment, and then I took them again at the end of the experiment. And I agreed to record a little audio diary along the way.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Captain's log, day one. My phone has been bricked pretty much all day. I've definitely been kind of low-energy. I don't know if that's like dopamine withdrawal. I've definitely been like carrying my phone around with me everywhere, even though there's not really that much for me to look at. Morning, it's day two. My husband is out of town right now, so it is daunting to have two of my biggest sources of entertainment, my husband and my phone, unavailable to me at this time. But we persevere. It is Saturday. It's my first like full weekend day.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  I ordered a big order of yarn, so I have a lot of knitting and crochet stuff to work on. Good morning, it's day five. I'm knitting right now. Don't I went birding? The one thing that I am noticing mood-wise is that I do feel pretty calm, like maybe more calm than usual.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Okay, Julie, first check-in. What off the bat did you think you were going to do more of with your time that you didn't wind up doing?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Using the phone as a phone, as a communication device, right? Actually like calling my loved ones to catch up, you know, what the phone was invented for. Shout out Alexander Graham Bell. But I think because I had blocked so much and I was getting more used to just not having my phone on me and in my hand at all times, I was just thinking about my phone less overall.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Which was the goal. But I kind of come to think that as much as the distraction of the phone like has a cost, there's also a cost to putting more distance there because the phone is where the people are.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  It's interesting how much our relationship to our phones is intertwined with our relationship to others.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  When we overuse our phones, that isn't good for our relationships.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  And the way we use our phones is definitely influenced by other people.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  I think we don't realize how much of our habits are kind of live in other people. Like, think about it. Like, when do you pick up your phone? It's when the person you're talking to picks up their phone, right? Like, the person picks up their phone. What are you gonna do? Like, sit there, stare into space? Like, that habit like lives between people.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  It's so true because my friends will, you know, text me TikTok still, even though I am trying to get off TikTok. And then if I'm like, okay, I'll just watch the like Lord of the Rings meme that they sent me, of course, my phone prompts me like, don't you want to download TikTok again? And so it is like sort of driven by like the relationship of wanting to see this meme. But I guess my bigger question is, is logging off to pay attention to something else in the real world actually better? Or is it just different?

• 45:11Speaker 04

  I always think about like, if you saw someone hiking and looking at their phone, you could be like, that's so depressing. But then it's like, what if they're looking at iNaturalist?

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  And they're like identifying a plant? There are good things on the phone. There are bad things on the phone. There are good things IRL. There are bad things IRL. Like, one thing that you can say is that the sort of quality of attention that one often experiences on the phone, the things like social media, is pretty narrow versus things, you know, off the phone. There are so many different kinds of experience, so many different scales of time, so many different scales of space. I love seeing movies in a movie theater. I'm like a movie theater junkie. I love to see horror movies in a theater.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Not me.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  So there's things like that. But then there's things like, you know, looking at a very small bird in your neighborhood or being at like a table with a group of people and sort of, and like being part of a conversation. Like, these are all just so different. Like, even if you think about your body in those spaces, it's so different. And I think it's good to have a variety of different contexts for your attention. Like, I think that's probably healthy.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  We're gonna take a quick break. But when we come back, how the way we think about our phones affects the way we use them.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  I think about it more as like, when I look at it as an object, it looks like a tool. And it did not look like a tool to me before. It looked like a black hole.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Like a portal to the underworld or something.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know, yeah. Plus, did Julie fix her attention span? The results of her experiment coming up.

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• 48:10Speaker 03

  It's day six. And wouldn't you frickin' know it? I did the exact same thing at the gym again. Sure enough, I forgot to lock it again. I'm legitimately concerned. But anyway, my attention is not fixed yet. Good morning, it's day seven of the experiment. My average screen time is down 74% from last week. I certainly haven't been like, you know, a perfect like screen abstinent person this week. I've watched plenty of TV. I have been able to, I think, focus a bit better. I read 200 pages of my book yesterday.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  I wonder how much of this could be achieved without such a draconian approach. I've been pretty surprised by how quickly I kind of like submitted. But yeah, just like the, how quickly the cravings to like check my phone all the time really receded.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  Julie, day seven was midway through your experiment. What started to shift for you by that point? Did the way you think about your phone start to change?

• 49:32Speaker 03

  I think what you learn, or at least what I learned, when you block access to almost everything on your phone, is that the phone is not just one thing. There's a lot of different stuff in there.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  You know? I think in our frustration with our attention span, sometimes people, myself included, will demonize the phone as a device. Like, smartphones are evil, smartphones are sucking our life force, and they're making us stupid. And that kind of flattens the problem, I think. What kept coming up for me is there's a lot of different things I turn to my phone for, and some of them are more problematic than others. Like, checking the weather is very helpful.

• 50:12Speaker 05

  You made a mistake in blocking that one.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  I did. Like, I realized that actually the first day. But I suppose that is the point of the experiment, right? To figure out which parts of my phone are actually adding to my life and which are taking away from it. Jenny, have you heard of these devices that block certain apps on your phone? There's like the Freedom app, the Unplug, the BRIC device.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  What do you think of the, like, recent popularity of these things?

• 50:43Speaker 04

  Honestly, I'm all for it. I don't use any. I'm not trying to brag. I don't need them. Um, I, I, I think, I, I think they're great. Um, there's one in particular that I think is called Social Focus, and it lets you kind of change the appearance of websites. Like, you could go to YouTube and not see the auto suggestions, for example.

• 51:06Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 51:06Speaker 04

  Or maybe like not see comments. Like, it kind of allows you to change what you see. And I think, like, there was a Chrome extension that came out called News Feed Eradicator. And guess what happened? I stopped going to Facebook. And it's, I didn't decide to do that. It was because the news feed is there to keep you on Facebook. So if you eradicate it, replace it with some sort of mindfulness quote, you, you go to the site, it's inert, can't grab you in that way.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  And so I just simply stopped going. It was like a totally unremarkable thing. I didn't even tell anyone, oh, I'm quitting Facebook. I just stopped going to it. And I think that's really powerful. So that's why I'm like, I'm a big fan of, of anything that can give someone sort of granular control over what, it sort of reintroduced choice in areas where people have never experienced choice, because that in and of itself will cause someone to reflect upon what it is that they want.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  All of this reminds me of a study I've been thinking about a lot lately, that found using an app that was similar to the BRIC.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  For two weeks, had such a big effect on people's attention span that it amounted to like reversing 10 years of cognitive decline.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Which seems really huge.

• 52:20Speaker 04

  Wow. That's incredible. I am surprised and not surprised.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Actually, honestly, this reminds me of like ecological restoration, because when you restore a site, there's some, some things come back quickly and some things don't, right? Like, if you restore a wetland, um, some species are gonna come back almost immediately. The nutrient cycling of the entire site might take 100 years. Maybe our attention is similar in that, or our behavior, let's say, like, it takes a long time to totally overhaul something, but at the same time, I think you might be surprised at how quickly certain things change. Like, in times when I was a little bit more like embroiled online and using my phone a lot, and then I would, you know, maybe go somewhere, put it away for a while, or whatever.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  I found that, like, after a couple of days, I would notice that my attention felt different.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  And by attention felt different, I mean, like, I would notice details or like small differences in things. It's almost like having a higher resolution image or something.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Are there other, like, seemingly small changes to your routine that you feel like might have that kind of big cognitive benefit?

• 53:29Speaker 04

  You know, I think trying to like replace habits with other habits. I meditate in the morning only, just for like 10 minutes. I kind of like calm down to a level where then it's not going to as easily occur to me to then pick up my phone. Or at least I'll have, be a little bit more reflective about it.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. My thing so far, my recent thing, has been taking up knitting and crochet. And this seems like so small, but it's like now while I'm watching TV instead of looking at my phone, I'm like, my hands are in hand jail, right? I'm doing knitting. And, uh, it doesn't seem like so virtuous when I'm like, now I'm only looking at one screen, but I feel like, you know, it's an improvement.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  I think that's great.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Maybe I'll get down to zero screens, TBD. The, the other like layer to that that I was just thinking about, um, when it comes to phones and social media and stuff, is like, a lot of times where I'm going to like learn how to do this new stitch, um, or whatever, is YouTube. So I, it's not, you know, one is totally replacing the other, but like, there is sort of a, a relationship. Like, now I am using that tool kind of like for this other thing.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. And I think that points to an important distinction, which is maybe, maybe a bit more nuanced than just like, just say, screen time as a statistic. You know, you were asking earlier about my, like, changed relationship to my phone. I think about it more, it's like, when I look at it as an object, it looks like a tool. And it did not look like a tool to me before. It looked like a black hole.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  Like a portal to the underworld or something.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. Or like, or frankly, like, I wasn't even looking at it. I'm already picking it up. Like, I'm already in there. I'm already in that world. There wasn't even a point where I perceived the phone as an object.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just skipped right ahead.

• 55:22Speaker 04

  Um, and now I feel like, you know, the things that I use it for, the Merlin app, it's like Shazam for bird songs, I use that. I use iNaturalist, I use the Constellation app, voice memos for, you know, like, recording birds. That relationship to me feels really different, because the intention and the, the purpose, I feel like I'm in control of that. I mean, on my phone, the first home screen is all what I would call observational apps. So like camera, voice memo, iNaturalist, Merlin.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 56:01Speaker 04

  I'm kind of trying to remind myself of how I want to use the phone. Like, I now associate my phone with those activities.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  You write a lot about nature.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Being inspired by nature, how being in nature helps you, you know, pay attention. A common piece of advice for those who have been brain rotted by the internet is to go touch grass. Um, so are you also telling us to touch grass?

• 56:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty much. And, I mean, the weeds that I weed at my weekly project are grass. So actually, I'm saying kill grass. No, I'm just kidding.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 56:34Speaker 04

  But the reason I think it became such a, that phrase caught on was because like, it's just so obviously true. The obvious truth of it is like why it's funny and annoying at the same time.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. What is it that you think the natural world has to teach us about attention?

• 56:51Speaker 04

  Complexity, basically. Like, I think it's like the, it's a masterclass in complexity. It is kind of an antidote to the idea of the easy answer, which I think, um, I really, I, I really blame Instagram for, for the oversimplification of political issues. Like, personally, that is just my axe to grind. And, uh, and the idea that you could sort of absolve yourself by reposting something is just like, uh, yeah. I, it's just like, it's upsetting to me. But I think there's no easy answers to anything. Like, if you are a birder and you like birds, like, guess what? You're gonna have to learn about trees, you know? And then, then you're gonna have to learn about like seasons.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  And then, I don't know, there's just all, like, everything is so tied to everything else. And there are so many things that are sort of like neither good nor bad, or sort of arguable. We need lessons in that right now. Like, we need lessons in the sort of like, let me pick a point in space to look at, and then, and then let me look at the context around that. Okay, now let me look at the context around that. And now you've like sort of widened to this whole ecosystem. Like, that, I think the opposite of that is what happens online.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  So Jenny, if someone is just starting to rethink the relationship they have with their devices, what advice would you give them?

• 58:13Speaker 04

  Try to take an outsider's perspective on yourself. I'm a big journaler, so like, I kept journals since I was a kid. So that would work for me. Like, I would look at my phone, I would look at some stuff on my phone, and then I would just write down like kind of what it was, and then how I felt about it. You know? And I would be like brutally honest.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 58:38Speaker 04

  Just, yeah, just pretend like you're a scientist and just talk to a friend about it. You could write it down, like, whatever. But like, you know, I think there needs to be that, like, every so often, you step to the side and you go, okay, what did I just do? Like, why did I do that? How did that make me feel? You can be super brief about it. Just do it for a week, you know? Like, just see what it tells you.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  Before you try to make any changes, because the danger is that a person feels shame, they feel that it's bad, they're like, okay, I need to change this. And then they try really hard to change it, and then it doesn't go the way they wanted, and then they feel more shame. And now it's just like, it's like a spiral.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think especially with attention, for whatever reason, it's just like, it does feel very shameful, this like, oh, I can't focus, like, I can't pay attention, I can't even like read a book without having the desire to pick up my phone.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, people think it means that they're a bad person. And it doesn't. You just gotta be patient and, and try a bunch of different things and like, you know, maybe it'll be more interesting than you think. Guys, huge news. Huge news.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  I locked my gym locker today. Nature is healing. I am, I am the virus. For once in my goddamn life, I locked my gym locker. It is day 13. I was on the computer all day for work because computer is where the money comes from. Still screen fatigue yourself. The old fashioned way. Captain's log, the final full day of the experiment. Over the past two weeks, I read one full novel. I started two other books. I finished an audiobook. I crocheted a little hat.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  I watched all of the first season of The Traitors. It's not like I, you know, found myself with a magical abundance of time. I think it's more like I just paid more attention and spent more time and doing the things that I already like to do. That was time mostly well spent. So attention mostly well spent.

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

  Julie, when you set out to go on this experiment, you got in touch with one of the researchers from the 2025 study, Kostadin Kouchlev from Georgetown University, who agreed to go over the results of your post-experiment attention test with us.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:16Speaker 04

  And before we call him up, are you nervous about your results? Not so nervous about these results? Will it mean less to you if your attention span didn't change on paper?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  I mean, I guess I'm a little nervous. I mean, look, like I am a nerd and I always want to get an A plus on my projects. But I, I really do feel better. And if it's just a placebo effect, well, a placebo effect is still an effect, right? Like, I'll take it.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm gonna dial Costa up.

• 1:01:56Charlie Warzel?

  Hello.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Natalie. I'm Julie's producer. I'm also gonna be sitting in on this call.

• 1:02:02Charlie Warzel?

  Hi Natalie.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Hey Costa, it's Julie. How are you?

• 1:02:05Charlie Warzel?

  Pretty good. How are you doing?

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  I'm doing okay. So can we just dive right in? And tell me, before I started the experiment, how was my baseline attention span?

• 1:02:16Charlie Warzel?

  So your score was about 3, 3.02.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Is that good? Good for average 35 year old? Good, bad?

• 1:02:25Charlie Warzel?

  That's pretty good. I mean, essentially, you did about how our participants did. It's a little closer to the level. Uh, you might see young adulthood or somebody in their 60s.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Okay, humbling, humbling, humbling.

• 1:02:41Charlie Warzel?

  Yes, yes. But, you know, but once we get to your post score.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Yes, let's do it. The big reveal.

• 1:02:48Charlie Warzel?

  Yes.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  What changed?

• 1:02:49Charlie Warzel?

  So your post score was actually hugely better. So it was 3.8. That is much bigger improvement than we saw on average in our study. So your improvement is about four to five times bigger than what the average participant in our study gained.

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  Go Julie.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Write it down Natalie, write it down.

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  I'm taking notes.

• 1:03:13Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah, so you did really well on that.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Amazing, I think. Is 3.1 to 3.8 good? Have I reversed my cognitive decline? Or how would you characterize that?

• 1:03:25Charlie Warzel?

  You're basically off the chart. But it might take a while to, uh, to reap the benefits of this, um, this improved attention.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  Right, and it'll probably go away if I just start scrolling Instagram again.

• 1:03:37Charlie Warzel?

  Right, yeah. Certainly not a, a permanent increase. But I do like to point out that, you know, just taking a two week break and not even a complete break from your phone, just sort of like reducing your use can actually improve that ability to stay in attention. Because, you know, our lives are just like so tied to these devices. So sometimes the question might be like, you know, have we like essentially permanently damaged our, you know, brains? Like, have we changed our neurobiology and so forth? And so this seems to suggest that, no, there is a way out. So, uh, it might be worth doing some of those distal detox interventions.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Thank you so much Costa, it was great chatting with you.

• 1:04:22Charlie Warzel?

  All right, thank you. Bye bye.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  Bye.

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Julie, how do you feel about that?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Um, unbearably smug. No, no, no, I'm just kidding. No, I, I feel relieved, honestly. Like, even if the true effect size isn't as big as it seemed, because I am just one person, it's not, you know, a full scientific study. It still feels really good to know that it's possible to improve so quickly.

• 1:04:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:52Speaker 03

  So it's actually kind of wild that you can do something as simple as this and like bounce back so quickly.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  Are you going to keep using the brick? Like, how are you feeling about, where's your relationship at between you and your phone right now?

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  Um, my relationship with my phone is cordial. We're not, it's not warm, but it's not cold. We're, we're cordial. We're, we're friendly acquaintances.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  That sounds like, uh, like people describe their exes.

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, well, we haven't broken up. It's really, it's a situationship that is ongoing forever. No, I'm, I'm definitely gonna continue using the brick and I, I have been still 23 hours a day. You know, maybe not.

• 1:05:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  I have been breaking my phone at a minimum like before bed. So I can't doom scroll right before I sleep and I can't look through my emails or Instagram the second that I regain consciousness.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  So that does help.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  But I would say that throughout this, I kept thinking about my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. And one thing that she wrote was, "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  That's beautiful.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  So this season, I think what I've learned is your attention is your life.

• 1:06:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  And I think on some level I knew that already, but after this experiment, I've really been feeling it.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, we started this season because we wanted to understand why so many people were feeling the pull to log off, right? We've explored a lot of the ways in which the internet can pull you into thoughtless patterns, whether it's the way Instagram makes us feel bad about our bodies or the way that AI chatbots can send us into an anxious spiral. But it seems like what we're maybe actually looking for right now is ways to be more thoughtful.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wanted to feel more thoughtful about my life. I wanted to not feel as much like I'm literally giving my life away to things I don't even care about. I wanted to stop nickel and diming the moments of my life away.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  Being intentional about where you give your attention.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  This episode was hosted by me, Julie Beck, and co-hosted and produced by Natalie Brennan with production help from Elena Schwartz. Our editors are Claudina Bade and Jocelyn Frank. Fact check by Hizela Salim-Payer. Our engineers are Rob Smersiak and Miguel Cariscal. Rob also composed some of the music for this show. The executive producer of audio is Claudina Bade and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez.

• 1:07:54Charlie Warzel?

  Thank you again to my guest, Julie Beck. If you liked what you saw here, new episodes of Galaxy Brain drop every Friday. You can subscribe at the Atlantic's YouTube channel or on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is that you're getting your podcasts these days. And if you want to support this work and the work of my colleagues like Julie and Natalie, you can subscribe to the publication at theatlantic.com/listener. That's theatlantic.com/listener. Thanks so much and I'll see you on the internet.

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

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