Speaker 1: One easy way to put down your smartphone. I'm Rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: This is Rich on Tech Daily.
Speaker 2: I know the irony of a podcast telling you to
Speaker 2: put down your phone, but here's the deal. We all
Speaker 2: understand that we love our phones, but sometimes they can
Speaker 2: be a bit much. And if you already know how
Speaker 2: to manage your phone and put it down and not
Speaker 2: look at it for a long period of time and
Speaker 2: not really care, then congrats.
Speaker 1: But for the rest of us, it is really tough.
Speaker 2: We love our notifications, we love checking social media.
Speaker 1: We just want to overall be on our phone.
Speaker 2: Look no further than any line anywhere, Like when you're
Speaker 2: at Starbucks. Just look at every person just kind of
Speaker 2: looking down at their phone, not really interacting with each other.
Speaker 2: It's a scene that we see over and over. Recently,
Speaker 2: we visited the milk in community schools and we talked
Speaker 2: to a bunch of teenagers on the National Day of Unplugging,
Speaker 2: which was last week, and a bunch of them told
Speaker 2: us that they can't get off their phones. In fact,
Speaker 2: some of them leave their phones on while they sleep. Yes,
Speaker 2: notifications going off all night long, but what are they
Speaker 2: doing on their phones? Snapchat, Instagram, texting, social media, talking
Speaker 2: to their friends, basically a lot of the same stuff
Speaker 2: that adults do on their phones. And we talked to
Speaker 2: this woman, Kim Annenberg Cavallo. She created a new app
Speaker 2: called Lil Space, and basically she said that, you know what,
Speaker 2: I realized that I was on my phone just as
Speaker 2: much as everyone else out there, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: figure out what can I do to get people off
Speaker 2: of their phones. And she came up with this app
Speaker 2: called Lil Space, And what it does is it's kind
Speaker 2: of like a timer and it urges you to disconnect.
Speaker 1: But your disconnection is tied to a cause.
Speaker 2: So maybe the longer that you are off your phone,
Speaker 2: the more that some business they basically partner with businesses
Speaker 2: to donate stuff or maybe give you some sort of
Speaker 2: reward like a dessert at dinner.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is.
Speaker 2: But really she wanted to find ways to motivate people
Speaker 2: to get a little space, as she said it, So
Speaker 2: the app encourages you to put your phone away during dinner, workouts,
Speaker 2: quality time with your kids, all that good stuff. There's
Speaker 2: an interesting thing that happens when we put down our phones.
Speaker 2: According to the counselor at this Whitney Fish, she said
Speaker 2: there's a constant fear, a constant anxiety of what if
Speaker 2: something happens and I need my phone?
Speaker 1: And for adults, that could be maybe you want to
Speaker 1: take a picture when I'm on a hike.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't necessarily need my phone, but I
Speaker 2: sometimes want to take a picture. Or if you're out
Speaker 2: and about, you think, well, what if someone needs to
Speaker 2: get in touch with me? What if I get an
Speaker 2: email from work that's really important. All these things that
Speaker 2: we kind of put in our mind that don't necessarily matter,
Speaker 2: but sometimes they do. Now that same counselor told us
Speaker 2: that parents are often telling their kids to disconnect, but
Speaker 2: there's something that parents don't realize. It's not going to
Speaker 2: work if you're constantly on the phone. So you kind
Speaker 2: of have to be a role model and set your
Speaker 2: own boundaries. And I see this in my house. You know,
Speaker 2: I tell my kids I don't want them on their
Speaker 2: iPad or watching TV.
Speaker 1: And what am I on doing? What am I doing?
Speaker 2: I'm sneaking away to check my phone every couple of minutes.
Speaker 2: Bottom line, how do we put down our phones? Well,
Speaker 2: I thought the creator of this app and Cavallo, had a.
Speaker 1: Really good solution. Some really good insight. She said this.
Speaker 2: She said, to find some activities that make you forget
Speaker 2: about your phone in the first place. So if you
Speaker 2: have something that you're already in interested in and your
Speaker 2: phone is kind of interrupting that, take those opportunities to
Speaker 2: start unplugging just.
Speaker 1: A little bit every day. And I thought this was brilliant.
Speaker 2: It's not something that's totally mind boggling that we've never
Speaker 2: thought of before. But when you really hear it put
Speaker 2: like that, you realize, Yeah, let me find those activities that.
Speaker 1: Make me forget about my phone.
Speaker 2: Maybe I go for a run for forty five minutes,
Speaker 2: maybe I go for a swim, maybe a.
Speaker 1: Hike, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Find those activities where your phone becomes secondary, and then
Speaker 2: you'll sort of forget about it. In fact, this is
Speaker 2: how Cavallo came up with the idea for a little space.
Speaker 1: She started taking a spin.
Speaker 2: Class and realized that she wasn't thinking about her phone
Speaker 2: during that forty five minute class. I love this advice,
Speaker 2: but I do find there is one tiny flaw in
Speaker 2: this whole thing of finding an activity that's bigger than
Speaker 2: your phone, and that's the camera on our phone. Because
Speaker 2: what keeps us coming back to our phone. What makes
Speaker 2: us carry our phone during an activity that's really fun?
Speaker 2: We want to take pictures, and I think that's the
Speaker 2: problem is that our phone and our camera are now
Speaker 2: linked together and you can't ditch one without ditching the other.
Speaker 2: So other than wearing a smart watch with cellular, which
Speaker 2: gets kind of expensive, or taking along a separate camera,
Speaker 2: which is kind of unrealistic these days, that's the problem
Speaker 2: I find is that, Yeah, I can go on a
Speaker 2: hike with my entire family and not really care about
Speaker 2: my phone, but I want to take pictures during that hike.
Speaker 1: And then what do I end up doing.
Speaker 2: I end up taking a picture and then I kind
Speaker 2: of sneak a look at my notifications.
Speaker 1: So my bottom line, if.
Speaker 2: You want to get off your phone, get into something
Speaker 2: that's more exciting than what's on screen, that's gonna do it.
Speaker 2: For this episode, thanks so much for listening. I'm Richdemiro
Speaker 2: rich on tech dot tv. For links to everything I
Speaker 2: mentioned here, and don't forget you can now add this
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Speaker 1: I do appreciate you guys listening. I'm rich Demiro. Talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.