What is Healthy Screen Time? Reclaiming Real Connection

Foster and Cesar dive deep into our screen habits, asking the vital question: what does a healthy relationship with your phone actually look like? They share their evolving perspectives on smartphones, screen time, and social media, especially as parents who are navigating the decision of when (and how) to introduce tech to their children. They examine not just the mental health data around screen use, but also the emotional undercurrents: dopamine addiction, numbing, comparison culture, and the aching loneliness that can exist in the age of hyper-connectivity.

This is a warm, non-judgmental conversation for anyone wrestling with digital burnout, setting phone boundaries, or seeking alternatives to screen-based connection. Drawing on their own family systems and creative lives, Foster and Cesar unpack screen time as the "new fast food," exploring how to treat smartphones as tools (not lifelines) and how real-life community and mindful connection are the true antidotes to digital overwhelm. A must-listen for anyone exploring digital wellness, conscious social media use, and building meaningful relationships in a tech-saturated world.

In this episode they explore: 

• Are we living in The McSmartphone Era?
• Parenting: when is the right time to give a kid a phone?
• Are we connecting—or just numbing?
• What actually makes a phone habit healthy?
• Why boundaries and intention matter more than just deleting apps
• Dopamine vs. oxytocin: the chemistry behind phone addiction
• Transforming your digital habits—without shame

Also mentioned: 

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• Worry Over Social Media May Be Misplaced - Stanford study
• Foster’s eating disorder which is explored in The Eating Habits We Didn’t Choose
• Off the Grid with Amelia Hruby

You can also watch the episodes on YouTube!

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates

Transcript

So it begs the question, what is healthy?

What does a healthy relationship with our smartphones look like?

We are now more interconnected than we've ever been.

We have the entire world in our pocket.

And at the same time, we're seeing records of people feeling more and more lonely in the world.

So would you rather have voyeuristic connection with 300 people

or deep, real connection with five people?

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break.

I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open

and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.

We are here with you.

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.

And enjoy the show. 

The number one way to support our show is to follow.

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And most importantly, helps bring you more of these conversations that matter.

Okay, love. Back to the good stuff.

Hello, beautiful.

Thank you for being here today on Beauty in the Break.

Welcome, everybody.

Someone said, you have the greatest hair in podcasting.

About me or about you?

About you.

About me?

Yes.

Oh my goodness.

One of your guest episodes.

They said that?

The host said, you have the greatest hair in podcasting.

And I thought that was such a great note to ask people to go and watch the video version

of it because everyone's curious what your hair looks like.

Oh my God.

Stop it.

Say more of that.

Today, I'm so excited because we, well, I feel a little trepidatious talking about this

actually.

About screen time, smartphones, and our use of technology in the world today.

How we spend so much of our time on a screen.

And what does it do to us?

What does it do to us individually?

And what does it do to us as a collective?

I think a lot of people are talking about wanting to be off their screens more, wanting to be

off of social media.

But you and I have talked about it a lot recently because one of our kids in the last year has

gotten a cell phone.

It's the time.

It was the age.

It was the need.

And it sparked a really long and deep debate about what's the right time?

What's the use for a cell phone in a kid?

What are the needs?

And I personally was very much against them getting a cell phone.

I had a lot of anxiety about it.

And I really just preferred to go cold turkey.

No, we're not going to have this.

We're going to put it off even longer.

But that's not what we ended up doing.

No.

No.

We did end up getting them a phone that has a lot of features locked off.

And so it's primarily for texting and FaceTime.

And there's no social media on it.

But it's an ongoing conversation about how to use this tool and when to use this tool.

And then what am I modeling for my children about the use of this tool?

It's complicated.

Yeah.

And it's always coming up.

We're always readjusting what the boundaries are.

And it's really made both of us look, I think, at our own usage.

Right.

The use of the phone and the effects of it is still so fresh and early that there's conflicting studies on it.

So all we really have is how is it making us feel in this moment now?

And then we try to make sure we prevent the next generation from feeling those same things.

Yeah.

There's never going to be an end to it either because every time we find a way to deal with it, there'll be something new that'll show up.

That's life.

That's the way things work in life, right?

I will say they taught me a lot because we did end up saying yes to it, yes to this method of communication.

For this kid in particular, it was the timing was right for the social amplification.

There was a real need to be able to communicate with their friend groups outside of school.

That was the most compelling argument for me.

And actually, you brought that up.

Thanks.

Thanks for saying that.

I appreciate that.

This is the cosmic irony of life because we are now more interconnected than we've ever been.

We have the entire world in our pocket.

I can look up anything I want, connect with any particular person that I want to.

I'm able to rent goats to come and mow the yard.

You can do anything right now.

And at the same time, we're seeing records of people feeling more and more lonely in the world.

So how are we more interconnected while still feeling quite alone?

And that's the fear that comes up for me with kids and technology is that I'm going to lose them to the tech.

We know it's dopamine producing.

We know it can be anxiety producing.

We know it can be addictive.

And so that's my fear.

It's not about the kid.

I want them to have social interactions.

I want them to be moving away from family and into their friend circle.

Developmentally, at this age, 12, 13, this is the right time for that.

And yet I'm afraid of tech.

I'm afraid of all that we have in one little device.

Yeah.

Very often I remind myself about the times in my childhood and seeing other kids' childhood that when something was kept away from them completely, by the time they got older, they didn't have the muscle of the habit of discipline.

Right.

But when they were given that thing, whatever it is, in a small amount, by the time they got old enough and it was available to them at any time, the resistance had already died down.

Yeah.

I think this is one of those things as well.

We're also not going to be able to stop technology.

So we might as well learn how to work in accord with it as best as possible, especially for a kid.

Because otherwise they'll turn 18 years old and then all the stuff they've been holding on to is just going to explode.

Well, when you have deprivation from something that you want, then they do.

They want it more.

I mean, that's true for me when it came to depriving myself of food and certain foods when I was in the throes of my eating disorder.

The more I told myself you can't have it, the more I wanted it.

And the more I was likely to overeat when it came time to eat for me.

It's the same idea.

What is it like for you right now?

What is your relationship with it?

It's complicated.

I don't have a good answer for it because there are times I do need it as a tool and there are times that I'm absolutely using it to distract myself, to numb something, to feed it a feeling that I'm not working well with, frustration or something.

That's one of the tricky parts about having a smartphone is that it does a million things for you.

It's a Swiss Army knife of tools.

As you said, you can have anything you want on it.

And some of these things are very valuable to us.

That's the wild part about it.

I don't think there's any comparable thing in history that has been that way for us.

I think maybe books might be one of the first parts.

When books started gaining mass appeal and the printing press came out, adults were worried about kids reading books because they thought it was going to make them lazy and antisocial.

Sound familiar, right?

However, we're at a time now where we have this sort of booklet, this tablet that fits in our pocket that can do so much.

It's like a book on steroids.

My personal experience with it, I found lately, has been a couple of things.

When I pick up my phone, it's either because I'm trying to distract myself in the middle of a hard thought where I'm feeling overwhelmed or stressed, or I am legitimately doing it because it's time for a reward system for me.

That first one always makes me ask the question, when am I picking up my phone and why?

That's typically nine out of the ten times.

What am I doing here?

What am I intending to get out of having this phone right now?

Do you have any of those moments where you find yourself picking your phone for a distraction of something that is stressful to you or overwhelming?

I mean, I turn to texting actually a lot.

I would say the data on my phone will tell me that's where I spend the most time.

I think it's little tiny amounts of connection that I'm seeking.

I'm picking up my phone either for a tool.

I need a recipe.

I need to know this information about pickup.

All of the tools that we use that seem fairly healthy, although that's a big question.

What's healthy?

But I do think that I pick it up for a bid for connection with another human being.

There's somebody in my mind that I've thought of, and I thought, oh, I should reach out to them, ask them this question, see how they're doing.

It's to connect usually.

Right.

Okay.

That makes sense.

See that?

I feel like that's where it's supposed to be.

And you said the word tool as well.

And that's what a tool is.

It's the vehicle.

Like smartphones are supposed to be the vehicle that gets you to the dance.

But now we just won't get out of the car.

We're kind of stuck with it.

Yeah.

You know, we've done so much about it that it's become the thing that we don't want to leave for community.

At this juncture right now, and it's subject to change as always, little by little, we are pushing away the community, society aspect while being more and more on our phone, thinking that it's giving us the same sort of chemical response.

But it's actually not.

Yeah.

And I think I just want to hold space because I think a lot of people have guilt and shame over how much they use their phone.

Whether they use it to escape or to distract themselves or because it feels mindless or they're doom scrolling, a lot of people feel bad about it, myself included, especially if my kids, my kids will call me out.

Hey, oh, mom, look at me do this.

And if I don't look at them and I instead look at my phone, they will call me out.

You weren't looking.

You're just on your phone.

One of our kids will say, you're addicted to your phone.

Wow.

That's like, I want to be defensive about that, but there's a part of it that's probably true.

You're right.

Of course.

I wasn't looking at you.

I'm so sorry.

I think so many people feel like they should be on their phone less.

So it begs the question, what is healthy or what does a healthy relationship with our smartphones look like?

Right.

What it feels like to me is even though we are so connected, we are lonely.

How often are we seeing people in real life in any meaningful way?

We're so isolated almost in spite of or maybe because of this connected tool that we have.

Right.

We've traded FaceTime for FaceTime.

Right.

And that has separated us, which ironically feels like we're more connected because I can pick my phone up right now and I can meet somebody in Lithuania if I wanted to and have a dialogue with them.

And there's something still beneficial to that.

There's studies that show that some groups of teens and young adults are still feeling that they are connecting more.

And also at the same time, we're not getting an actual serotonin hit or an oxytocin hit.

Right.

So before 2020, depression was at about 8.3% Americans.

After 2020, it rose to 13%.

Wow.

The difference there is in the pandemic.

And this is an arguable question is we started staying home, less connected.

We also had all the external stuff going on in the world, but we were more on Zoom.

We were more on social media.

We were more on our cell phones.

Oh, yeah.

2020, I mean, it was a complete digital dependence.

We had no choice in the matter.

It allowed us to supercharge the abilities of Zoom and all this tech.

You now have a full option to take an entire coursework at a college on Zoom because of the pandemic.

And we spent 100% of our time with one or two people in person and everything else was online.

Absolutely.

I think it was a complete eye-opener, 2020.

There's a ton of bad stuff that happened.

Obviously, it's so sad that so many people died.

And also, it's an amplifier of the society that we lived in, realizing how much we overworked

ourselves, realizing how much we were dependent upon social media and the information, realizing

the cost of living, how crazy that was.

Because when we got checks from the government, it wasn't enough for most people.

They realized how important that was.

So the CDC did a study in 2023 and said 50% of Americans have felt lonely more often than not.

And that's way after the pandemic.

We also have even more ways to connect now.

Because Zoom blew up, we already had FaceTime, social media, WhatsApp.

The World Health Organization said that depression increased 25% in the last five years.

Now, the question we're talking about here is, is it about screen time?

How much of it, at least, is about screen time?

We have the book, The Anxious Generation, that came out.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a very easy thing for us to go into because we have a scarcity mentality in

this society.

We really worry about the tree that falls down, but we don't care about the trees that are

growing out in the world, right?

But what's more is that for 12 years, they did a study on 275,000 children, teens, and adults.

The most that they found from using their cell phones was it increased a tad bit of anxiety,

just a little bit of depression.

They couldn't find any other information.

This study is seldom talked about.

The question is, how much of it is affecting us, and how can we amalgamate this into our

world to make sure that we're using it for the tool that it is, the vehicle that it is,

instead of just sitting in the car?

The question I always ask my kids when they are wanting too much screen time, whether it's

an iPad or whatever, is, what is this replacing?

If they don't have access to screen time, they're going to find more imaginative play and reading

and books and things like that.

So on an adult level, when we have these tools, maybe the social media is not causing the anxiety,

but maybe it's that we have that and we didn't fill out this whole other piece, which is community

and friendship and real life connection because we got this little bit of it in our social media.

And I feel like I've seen that friend a lot lately because I've seen their stories and their reels and I feel caught up on their life.

So I don't reach out and check in on them and see how they're doing.

I don't go meet up with them for coffee necessarily because I feel like I have a handle on it.

Yeah.

This sounds to me more like that oxytocin drip rather than the actual drink.

You know, our brains, when we connect, you and I right now are having this conversation.

And because we're connecting, we're looking at each other in the eye.

We're listening to each other.

You're validating what I'm saying.

I'm validating what you're saying.

We're getting dopamine, oxytocin, and a bit of serotonin.

All three of them are kind of working together.

When you're on the screen and you see somebody, you're getting a drip of it because you're recognizing another person that you're familiar with,

but you're not getting any of that back.

So we're getting a drip of this.

We're getting a portion of this, thinking that this is good enough, but it doesn't do anything.

It's like being full from junk food.

This mixed smartphone that we have here is the way that we think we're connected,

but unfortunately not as connected as we think because we have cases of people feeling depression and feeling lonely.

You have a pretty good relationship with social media, I would say.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

I think I do too, actually.

I, for one, only go on there if I need to do some work for this show.

I do give myself a bit of a reward to it at the end of the day.

I'll take a look at it and scroll through it.

I'll give myself an endless amount of time to go through it.

But throughout the day, if I feel myself pick it up, I know it's not going to benefit me.

I ask myself, what's my intention here?

What am I trying to get out of it?

For the most part, I realize nothing.

Minimal distraction.

So I've started to put it down.

I've even had to delete my Facebook three times.

I re-download the app so I can do something like sell a bike or whatever.

But as soon as that's done, I'm done.

I found pretty quickly that it just doesn't benefit me.

So many people delete their social media and then re-download it for some particular tiny little reason.

Like I need to sell a bike or somebody messaged me or whatever it is.

And then it stays on the phone.

I've had that happen to me so many times.

I just forget to re-delete it.

For me, I, probably six months ago before this show started,

I had spent quite a long time trying to do more creative work on Instagram and making reels and

showcasing my poetry in that way.

And every time it was not fulfilling to me to do it, but I felt like I should.

I felt like this was the only avenue I had.

I didn't feel good about any time I was on, either as a consumer or as a creator.

It felt like a chore and it felt like, it just felt bad energy in my body.

And I really wanted to leave and I made the choice to kind of depart from social media

and focus my energy on this podcast because this was a long form conversation.

The types of conversations and connections I wanted to have with people were so much longer

form.

And then in creating this podcast, we realized we do need to have, or we wanted to have the

social media component as well in that we're going to share some of the bite-sized clips

and things from this show on Instagram and TikTok, which I had never been on before at all.

And suddenly it was like, how am I going to do that?

How are we going to promote the show and share the show with people, but not be on it?

Like it was confusing.

So you had posted a video to saying, I'm getting off of this thing, right?

And since then there's been lots and lots of reels of me on there.

So what I decided to do in that case was outsource all the social media to you.

Yes, you did.

Yes, that's right.

I didn't trust myself to get on the app and start posting and spend time doing captions

and all of the things that are required and then not also consume.

And also I didn't know how to feel good in my body while doing that.

So I let you do it because you seem to have a healthier grasp on it than I did.

Yeah.

And how do you feel now?

A little bit I dip in and out, but I feel much better not having any connection to it at all.

Cool.

I feel FOMO for sure.

I definitely feel like I'm missing some things, but it's been so much clearer for my brain.

Great.

Great.

And you're guaranteed some sort of broken eggshell for the omelet that you're trying to make, right?

If you want clarity, if you want to get off your phone, you'll have some FOMO, right?

If you quit doing something, you're going to grieve it a little bit.

So that comes with it, I would imagine.

There's a great podcast called Off the Grid and Amelia Ruby talks about how to stay creative

and how to run a business completely off social media.

And what I think is cool about that is that she has a list of a hundred ways you can market

your business that don't involve social media.

That's dope.

The default for businesses and for creatives is like, well, you have to be on social media.

And sometimes people just stop there.

I'm going to post on social and that's going to be the extent of my marketing.

And it's a tricky beast.

I don't think that it can be the extent of what you do to communicate with people.

So she has all these other ways.

And that's what I'm talking about.

The like, the other thing, the community part, the outreach part.

Have you ever put a flyer up on a bulletin board at the library for your services?

I mean, you could do that.

It's old school, but it works.

I would also assume that you feeling a bit better is because you're also getting out of

the circle of news information that's being shown to you.

And that works for whoever you are, however you are.

You're going to naturally get this echo chamber of whatever you believe about the world is

going to be shown back to you.

And even the things that you disagree with, the things you don't believe are going to be

shown to you in a bad light to consistently do that.

So when you go out into the physical world and you get pushback, what's the first thing

you want to do?

You're going to want to go back to that comfort zone of the echo chamber.

That separates us so much more in the society.

That's why I think the loneliness is birthed.

So the question then becomes, how do I feel when I go on my phone?

How do I feel?

Do I feel angry after doom scrolling or scrolling at all?

Do I feel inspired?

Do I feel jealous?

A common thing that comes up for a lot of people on social media.

I feel envy for these people that are seemingly doing something I'm not or seemingly having

more success than I have.

I know friends who have left social media years ago because all it brought up was feelings of

jealousy.

How do I feel when I go on there?

That's the question to ask maybe.

I ask myself that question quite often.

I personally, I get more annoyed than I should be when I see negative comments.

These people are happy.

Why are you giving them so much guff?

This is what you want to comment on, you know?

And it bugs me.

And then I notice that, oh, I'm feeling grumpy that somebody took their time out to be negative.

I pick up on that moment.

I realize, let's not look at comments then.

How about that?

Let's just stay away from that because that's pointless.

Or I'll just be sassy sometimes and tell somebody their hair looks terrible.

Different conversation, different time.

Your hair always looks great.

The thing is, when you're online, what you're finding is divisive comments.

You're finding people eliciting hate sometimes and sharing the worst of people.

But when I go out into the world, that's not what I see.

Well said.

Some of that is there, of course.

But the majority of what I see is not that.

And when I go out in the world, I don't know how that person voted.

I don't know what their political beliefs are.

I don't know how they feel about XYZ controversial topics.

They're pleasant to me.

I'm pleasant to them.

Sometimes I strike up a conversation with a stranger.

There's a disconnect there.

Those are two different realities.

Agreed.

And then how do you feel when you meet those people and you look them in the eye and you smile?

I live for that stuff.

Right.

I like to be out in the world and around people and having connections like that.

It makes me feel, I don't know, it makes me feel alive.

Right.

I'm an introvert and it's the same for me because we are social animals.

We have these chemicals I mentioned before, oxytocin.

There's also dopamine and serotonin.

Just to flush it out, dopamine is junk food, television.

There are joys, but they aren't long lasting joys.

Serotonin is the more connection, you and I.

Meeting someone, touching, hugging someone, laughing with a person.

And then serotonin, that chemical is the self-validation, the self-joy, the peace that is within you.

None of those three things are in abundance on the screen.

They're missing.

The dopamine is probably more than anything else, but it's an addictive compound.

If it's being activated from a phone, your brain stops making it.

And so once you put it down, your brain's like, wait a minute, where's the dopamine?

So where are you going to go?

We chase it.

That's the thing.

We chase it just like we would chase a drug.

Do you know where oxytocin, where it is the most prevalent?

Say it at the same time.

One, two, three.

After birth.

Well, we know my past and we know your past.

In a birthing room right after a baby is born, your body produces so much oxytocin.

It's the bonding hormone.

It bonds you and I.

It bonds mother and baby.

It's a bonding hormone.

You can walk into a room.

I mean, doulas say this all the time.

You walk into a room right after birth.

You can just feel the oxytocin in the room.

There's nothing like it.

That's cool.

I love that.

And you know what?

That room doesn't have television, screens, social media.

It's just got this bonding hormone.

So chasing the dopamine versus seeking the harder to find yet far more valuable oxytocin

that then leads to serotonin in the body.

Right.

And again, I said it before, but as an introvert, I still need that connection in the external

world.

And as an introvert who likes to be by himself, if I use my screen for too long, the next

day I will be grouchy.

I will be more tired.

I might even be depressed.

Just from screen time.

And in some cases, it's not even me being on social media.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a ton of admin work to do as a speaker.

I had to prepare for a talk.

I was on the screen for about eight hours straight, maybe even 10 hours.

I got up, took a walk, got some food, came back home, watched TV, went to sleep.

The next morning, I was grouchy as ever.

Oh my God.

That wasn't even a social media part.

I didn't even have time to do the comparing of like, that person's life looks better than

my life.

I didn't even have that there, which is obviously way worse because compare culture has went so

far that you have forgotten how wonderful you are.

In the meantime, what you have remembered is the lack that you're feeling.

For whatever narrative you're giving yourself, you're being reminded of it every single moment

because of the news, because of social media, because of whatever input, anything you want,

telling you, you don't have enough.

Stay on this phone.

I'll give you what you need.

And what we have in social media being on our phone is this kind of voyeuristic connection

with hundreds of people that feels like connection.

It feels like more.

It's a lot.

It's an abundance of connection.

However, it's not deep or authentic.

So would you rather have voyeuristic connection with 300 people or deep, real connection with

five people?

Well said.

I love that.

So maybe it's time to pivot into the depths of connection.

How deep can my relationships be as opposed to how many can I have?

Screen time is the new fast food.

Quick, easy, reliable, unhealthy.

Yeah.

This mic smartphone is the way into understanding why we feel a little more isolated and lonely

because it's fluff.

It's sugar for our brain.

It's not satisfying for our emotional self.

Right.

It's emotionally unsatisfying.

There's another reason we go to our phones.

I go to my phone sometimes when I'm feeling sad, when I'm feeling grief, when I'm feeling

overwhelmed.

I think it's looking for that dopamine hit, but it's also a masking of whatever emotion

I've got going on that I, for whatever reason, I'm not ready to deal with.

And so we mask our stress.

We mask our worry by going to the phone and distracting ourselves and finding something else

to think about.

Right.

That's another reason we turn to it that's worthy of asking ourselves, how am I feeling

right now?

And what do I need?

Why am I getting on here?

Yeah.

Social media, like you said, it masks that information.

We kind of mask some of our feelings.

The word mask is Greek definition for the word personality, persona.

So you take that and that information that you're trying to mask is now what you're going to go

out into the world with.

That's what you feel your personality is because you have that echo chamber that explains to

you what you believe, what you're supposed to believe, who you're supposed to follow,

who you're supposed to listen to.

And then you go out into the world and now it's amplified.

Social media, smartphones are a mask to cover you from the outside, but then amplify some

of the worst fears that you have out into the world.

Yeah.

We avoid our feelings and we don't do it just with screen time because we do it with alcohol.

We do it with work, overworking ourselves.

I'm so busy.

I'm so busy in the busy cycle.

I don't have time to actually feel my feelings.

Right.

We have lots of different ways we can do it.

We can avoid those hard feelings.

Social media and screen time is just one of them.

Teaching mindfulness makes me always aware of my thought process and what's going on.

So after trial and error, trial and error, I've found some things that have worked for

me.

And then you have found some things that work as well.

So I think we have a good framework that if it could help even one person listening,

I think that would be worth having this entire conversation on this show.

Yeah.

The number one thing for me is intention.

Before I go to my phone, what is my intention?

That can be anything.

I need to text my partner about the grocery list.

I need to check and see if my kid's ready to be picked up from school.

My intention for getting on right now is because I had a really hard thing that just happened

and I'd rather not deal with it.

Or I'm feeling overwhelmed and I don't want to have to work.

Right before you pick that phone up, you can even say to yourself, why am I picking up

this phone?

And then boundaries.

So I hear so many people say right now, I need to delete the apps.

I need to be on my screen time less.

I need to figure out ways to do it.

Some people are putting their phones in their freezer.

Some people are reverting back to a dumb phone, getting a flip phone.

Dumb phone.

A dumb phone.

I mean, it was something we considered also for our kids.

Side note, can a smartphone survive in the freezer?

Don't try it.

I just know that people do it.

We do not recommend trying that.

We do not recommend that whatsoever.

Don't leave it in the sun.

Don't leave it in the freezer.

But the boundaries are important, I think, for breaking a habit.

But they're not the end all be all.

Limiting my phone usage to three hours a day, it's not going to fix it.

It's just breaking the habit of whatever we've been doing that we want to do differently.

Right.

And I think intention comes along with it.

There's something I've been thinking about with my friends and the level of connection that we have.

So you can reach your friend or your loved one via text, via voice note, via phone call, FaceTime, or in-person connection.

Right?

And the further up you go on that ladder, the more connection is available to you.

And the cost is your time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But isn't that time well spent?

Right.

Right?

So sometimes I want to up-level whatever the relationship is and move to the next level with that friend.

Even if I have met them in person many times before, but we just now only text.

I'm going to send a voice note.

Because I want them to hear.

You know how much we love voice notes.

Yes.

I want them to hear my intention and my tone.

And it really, I think, connects us at a more deeper level if we do not have time to have an actual phone call or an in-person meetup.

So where can we up-level our connection to the people that we love?

Right.

Because time is currency.

But if you stay at the bottom, you'll now just be time rich, but connection poor.

Bankrupt.

Yeah.

You'll be socially bankrupt.

And we are social animals.

We need that more than we need anything else outside of food and air.

So, you know, going back to why I'm on my phone only one particular time at the end of the day.

Because there is a reward system there, right?

It's a little bit of dopamine.

So I'm actually going to look at it like reward then.

Do you just walk around all day eating chocolate?

I mean, most of us wish we could, obviously, but you see it as a reward.

So I give myself that.

I treat it like it's dessert.

Something minimal.

What I also found is because at the end of the day, which I'm going to go to sleep soon, it shortens the amount of time I'm going to be on there.

Which makes me have to be more choosy about what I want to look at.

And for me personally, I tend to look at things that are like wholesome masculinity or like there's that great Reddit thread that says this made me smile.

And it's all these cool videos of things that happen that are just adorable, make you happy, make you smile.

That's a good intention.

That's a good intention.

Right.

To go into it.

It makes me think of the deprivation idea where if we take it all the way and you can never be on social media again, you're going to go right back to it at some point.

Yeah.

But you give yourself a little bit at the end of the day and that satisfies you in whatever way it does until it doesn't anymore.

That's right.

That's right.

I saw these two families once.

It was during Halloween.

And one set of kids whose parents never gave them candy were going crazy in that bag.

The other kid who had been given candy picked one up, ate it, walked away, grabbed an apple.

Like if you want personification of addictive behavior or dopamine release exemplified right in front of you, that's one of them.

The third thing I have figured out is that everything has a trade-off, right?

If my kids are watching TV, they're not reading.

And if they're reading, they're not with their friends.

We always have a trade-off here in how we spend our time.

So I want to ask myself, what am I doing on my phone that could be done in person?

I could have a text with this person or I could invite them out to coffee.

Or I'm going to go for a walk later, I know.

I could invite them to go on a walk with me.

I could trade up some of these screen-related connections for an in-person connection.

We know that the phones are more convenient for sure.

It's a digital convenience.

We know that.

But out in the real world, we get nourishment.

And so that to me is very valuable.

And I always want to ask myself if I could up-level any of those connections that way.

Right.

We're looking at Cardona's Law of Convenience coming right in.

Side note, I have a thing called Cardona's Law of Convenience.

Don't Google it yet because it's not going to show up.

But soon enough, don't worry.

It'll be there.

What is Cardona's Law of Convenience?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

Cardona's Law of Convenience states that society on average will do the thing that is quick,

that is easy, while knowing that it's going to be more harmful in the long run.

They're doing the concept of short-term gain, long-term pain.

Yeah.

In my life, and I think in general lives, we should be doing the short-term pain, long-term

gain.

Different conversation.

Cardona's Law of Convenience.

Check it out.

I love, though, that you are acknowledging that because from a meditative standpoint, from a

Buddhist standpoint, one of the best things we can do is be aware of something.

Not necessarily push it away or get rid of it or fight it or just be aware of it.

Once you have the awareness of it, then you can kind of get your hand around it and see

how you want to choose to use it, how you want to joust and spar with it, if at all.

And one of the pieces of awareness that I've had, somebody told me this, and I just never

thought of it this way.

We have a physical world and we have a digital world.

And you really can only be in one at a time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if I'm cooking dinner and I pick up my phone because I need to check a text message

and I start texting somebody and my kid comes in and says, Hey mom, look at this.

Can you look at this thing that I need right now?

I'm not actually in the world with my kid.

I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Hold on one second.

I'm fully in the digital world.

And then I put it down and I go, what did you say?

Because I can only be in one place at a time.

And just the acknowledgement and the awareness that they are two different worlds.

One is not better than the other, but we choose how we spend our time in which of those worlds.

That was huge for me.

That's massive.

Awareness is one of the biggest things that I can ever help anybody learn because it's

just a real power.

You by default chose to not leave the car on the way to the dance in that one moment, right?

We said this already.

The technology and smartphone is the vehicle to the dance, but we're not getting out of the

car.

So get out of the car, go to the dance.

You also can't drive that car into the dance because you're walking in there with your

phone and you're not paying attention and you're not getting that connection that you

needed.

Vehicle gets you there.

Park that thing.

Get out of the car, go to the dance, be with the people.

Be with the people.

That's it.

And then lastly, I think I want to invite us to lose the shoulds.

I hear so many people who say they should be on their phone less.

I should do this.

I should do this differently.

There's some right way to do it.

We don't know.

We have no right or wrong answers.

But lose the should and just ask yourself, how do I feel when I'm doing this?

How do I feel when I'm on social media?

Just like how I analyzed my own relationship to alcohol.

I ended up in the zero zone, right?

But there's gray area too.

I pop into social media every once in a while, but I don't have the apps on my phone.

That was the gray area that felt okay to me.

How do I feel when I'm doing this?

End of sentence.

And then that will inform so much.

So let's recap what we just broke down.

We've got intention and boundaries.

We've got using it as a reward system, a little treat.

Ask yourself what the trade-off is.

Acknowledge both of the realities.

Awareness of the digital world and the physical world.

Get out of the car when you get to the dance.

Leave the car behind and go have a good time.

And lose the shoulds.

I think how I want to wrap up all of this is to say that when we actually evaluate our

relationship with our phone, we start to become more intentional.

We have more awareness around it.

We start to use it in the ways that feel healthy to us as the tool that it's meant to be because

it's not going anywhere, but we can have wisdom around how we use it.

I believe this is going to free us up to have space for community, which is the thing I believe

is lacking in our world right now.

We don't gather in community very often.

And I think it will actually provide that oxytocin and serotonin hits that we are desiring, the

nourishment we need in our bodies and our souls to come back together as human beings just

interacting with each other.

Yeah.

Once we start washing away that dream of like the phone has all the answers and it's the genie.

And then two, we recognize that you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Then we learn that we can just use the genie to grant some wishes, but we don't have to worship

that genie, right?

We go back out into the world.

The reason why our communities are going to become more robust via technology is because

we use this smartphone to build the community.

For so long, we've been using the smartphone as the thing and that's it.

That's the end all be all.

The community exists on the phone.

It exists in the Facebook group.

That's it.

End of story.

But when we can use the technology to then gather the people and then have the real world

connection, that's where it all comes together.

I think that is the most beautiful version of integration of the technology piece with the

community human piece.

I get chills actually thinking about it.

I agree.

Society works a lot slower than one individual does, but they still do the same things.

You get a toy, you can't put it down for a little while.

Society has done the same thing with smartphones.

We just couldn't put it down.

But the fact that we can have this conversation right now on this podcast and we have stats

about it to support what we're saying lets us know that society is trying to do the best

they can to leave the drive-through of a mixed smartphone company.

And the best we can do with it is by learning that it's a tool.

I teach a class on how to use AI.

Instead of seeing it as an opponent, I see it as a thought partner where I have the idea

this helps me clear it up and I'm the CEO as well.

There's your tool right then and there, right in the moment.

Yeah.

And it gets us to being more and more connected with every individual regardless of what that

actual tool tells you.

They think like, they look like, they live like what they believe, whatever.

Being human to human is going to get you further than any sort of device in your pocket

ever will.

So today, let's just mull on this idea of how can I nourish real connection in my life?

If we put our focus on that, that I think the cell phone sort of falls away.

The smartphone becomes less important.

How am I nourishing real connection today?

Beautiful.

And we do acknowledge that everyone's listening to this episode on their smartphone.

So thank you, smartphone.

And it's so good.

Thank you all so much for being here.

We appreciate you.

We value you so much.

We hope your day and week is spectacular.

And of course, as always, be kind to yourself.

Bye now.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever

you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar + the Clew.