Good Inside with Dr. Becky Screens without Shame: Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price
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Jan 27, 2026 
Catherine Price, journalist and author of How to Break Up With Your Phone, offers practical strategies to reclaim attention. Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, explores youth mental health and tech’s harms. They discuss phones as attention traps, why systems beat willpower, morning habits that hand attention to algorithms, and simple family rules to restore presence and independence.
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Attention Restores Real-Life Engagement
- Heavy social media use shrinks real-world engagement and focus, and removing it can restore students' time and joy.
- Jonathan Haidt saw students reclaim homework, friendships, and exploration when they reduced scrolling.
NYU Students Reclaimed Their Lives
- Jonathan Haidt described a quarter of his NYU students spending four+ hours daily on social media.
- He observed those who cut back blossom into attending plays, parks, and richer campus life.
Build Phone-Free Start And End Routines
- Create deliberate morning and evening routines that avoid phones to protect focus and sleep.
- Jonathan Haidt asks students to carve out phone-free starts and endings to regain control of their day.
