Get De-addicted
Reclaim your attention from screens, phones and infinite scroll. Get De-addicted is a practical, science-backed podcast about breaking digital addiction — a 40-part recovery playbook for adults plus a 30-part series on protecting kids' developing brains from screens. Short, actionable episodes you can apply today.
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All episodes
The series finale on maintaining recovery, grieving lost years, modeling for the next generation, and the life waiting on the other side.
What it looks like when every practice has become habit: a small, intentional phone and a life lived in presence and depth.
- #686:11
Cancel One Platform Forever
Making a permanent change by fully deleting one social media account — saving your data, moving real relationships off it, and never returning.
Reorganizing your working life around protected, distraction-free deep work blocks for a full quarter.
- #666:31
The Solo Phone-Free Retreat
Taking yourself away alone and unconnected for a few days, letting solitude and quiet do work no shorter practice can.
- #656:08
A Flip Phone Week
Living seven full days on a feature phone, a structural rather than disciplinary change that forces a week of analog life.
- #646:06
The Thirty-Day Reset
A full month off social media, long enough to rewire reward circuitry, followed by a deliberate, rules-based reintroduction.
A week off all social platforms while keeping the basic phone, targeting the deepest driver of anxiety and lost time.
- #626:36
The Seventy-Two-Hour Detox
Extending the fast to three unconnected days, long enough for cravings to crash and a deeper rhythm and clarity to return.
- #616:44
The Twenty-Four-Hour Fast
Powering the smartphone fully off for a single deliberate day to recalibrate the nervous system and prove the fear of missing out wrong.
- #606:40
No Phone in Social Settings
Closing phase three by making every interaction with another person phone-free, protecting the relationships that decide your happiness.
A seven-day removal of your single most-used app to surface exactly what it was doing for you and what it was hiding.
- #586:25
Walk Without Your Phone
Reclaiming the daily phone-free, input-free walk as one of the most reliable sources of clarity, mood, and creativity.
- #576:56
Batch Your Messages
Opting out of constant responsiveness by checking and answering all messages in a few defined windows each day.
- #566:32
Unfollow Ruthlessly
Auditing every account you follow and cutting everything that feeds comparison, outrage, envy, or empty consumption.
- #555:47
A Dumb Phone on Weekends
Swapping the smartphone for a basic feature phone two days a week, removing temptation at the hardware level.
- #546:14
Sit With Boredom on Purpose
Deliberately doing nothing for ten minutes a day to reactivate the default mode network and rebuild your tolerance for stillness.
- #536:22
Take Up a Real-World Hobby
Putting something into the space the phone left by committing to one slow, hands-on, analog pursuit for twenty minutes a day.
- #526:30
The Weekly Digital Sabbath
Adopting one fully screen-free day each week, an ancient idea of contrast and rest applied to modern technology.
- #516:17
Two Social Windows a Day
Replacing endless drift with two scheduled, timed social-media windows totaling forty minutes, and nothing outside them.
- #506:16
Wear a Real Watch
Closing the habits phase by replacing the time-check gateway to compulsive use with a simple, single-purpose wristwatch.
- #495:43
Phone Face Down, Always
Making screen-down the permanent default to erase the hundreds of daily micro-cues that pull your attention back.
- #486:04
Do One Thing at a Time
Abandoning the myth of multitasking and rebuilding the capacity to give a single activity your full, undivided attention.
- #476:04
Designate Phone-Free Zones
Declaring entire areas of life — bedroom, table, bathroom, the walk, the car — absolutely off-limits to the phone.
Creating a single designated home for the phone, out of sight and out of reach, so picking it up becomes a decision.
- #456:07
Replace, Don't Just Remove
Identifying the gaps the phone was filling — boredom, anxiety, loneliness — and pre-loading better, easier alternatives.
- #445:44
Meals Are Sacred
Removing the phone from every meal to protect both your body's fullness signals and your most reliable time for connection.
- #435:57
Protect the First Hour
Keeping the phone away for the first hour after waking so the most cognitively fertile window of the day belongs to you.
Reclaiming sleep, mornings, and intimacy by moving the phone out of the bedroom and onto a cheap alarm clock.
- #415:49
The Sixty-Second Pause
Inserting one minute of consciousness before opening any app, letting the craving wave crest and fall before you act.
- #405:32
A Boring Wallpaper as a Tool
Wrapping the device phase with the smallest intervention: a sober wallpaper and stripped lock screen that make the phone feel like a tool.
Turning off read receipts, last-seen, and online indicators to dissolve the manufactured anxiety baked into messaging.
- #385:43
Kill Autoplay Everywhere
Restoring the natural pause at the end of every video and episode so your conscious choice gets a vote again.
The single highest-leverage move: removing social apps entirely and using those platforms only deliberately from a desktop.
- #365:37
Make Silence the Default
Flipping the phone to Do Not Disturb permanently, letting only the people who matter break through the quiet.
Setting genuinely constraining app limits, locking yourself out, and scheduling Downtime so the rules actually hold.
Using placement and friction instead of willpower by burying social and entertainment apps screens deep, out of reflex range.
- #335:08
Delete the App You Fear Most
Identifying the one app that consistently leaves you worse off and deleting it today, then riding out the three phases that follow.
A thirty-second settings change that strips the candy-bright design from your phone and weakens its visual pull almost instantly.
The first and smallest step: auditing every app's notifications and silencing everything that was never entitled to interrupt you.
- #309:42
The Attention Economy War
A systemic view of how tech platforms commodify human attention, why individual willpower isn't a fair fight, and what reclaiming cognitive freedom requires.
How FOMO evolves into existential distraction — a chronic inability to be present in your actual life because you're monitoring elsewhere.
- #289:27
Kids Competing with Screens
How children losing the competition for parental attention develop insecure attachment, language delays, and lasting emotional consequences.
- #278:58
Digital Status Anxiety
The psychological toll of the follower economy — quantified social worth, perpetual comparison, and self-esteem tied to fluctuating metrics.
How social substitution theory explains the loneliness epidemic — digital connection crowding out the face-to-face bonding humans actually need.
The cognitive cost of constant context switching — attention residue, switching costs, and how phones prevent the deep work that drives real output.
- #248:50
Couples and Screen Distance
How micro-disconnects from phone use erode intimacy, communication, and sexual connection in romantic relationships over time.
How parental phone addiction affects children through modeling, technoference, and disrupted attachment — and why fixing yourself comes first.
How social media platforms function as narcissism training programs through self-branding, quantified status, and validation-seeking behaviors.
The disruption of neural synchronization, empathy signaling, and conversational turn-taking when phones are present during human interaction.
- #2011:34
Brain Fog in the Digital Age
How cognitive overload, constant task-switching, and depleted working memory produce the mental cloudiness so many people now accept as normal.
How early, unrestricted access to pornography and sexualized content distorts arousal patterns, expectations, and understanding of healthy intimacy.
Eye strain, dry eye disease, accommodation stress, and the global rise in myopia driven by excessive close-range screen use.
- #1711:50
Posture Collapse from Screens
Text neck, spinal loading, and the physical biomechanics of how smartphone use is causing epidemic chronic pain in increasingly younger people.
Why digital pseudo-connection fails to produce oxytocin-based bonding, leaving users more lonely and depressed despite constant contact.
The chronic micro-cortisol spikes triggered by constant notifications, and the anticipatory anxiety that keeps the nervous system perpetually activated.
How hours of sedentary screen use drive insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and rising rates of type 2 diabetes in children and adults.
The behavioral overlap between phone addiction and disordered eating — mindless snacking, binge loops, and the breakdown of hunger and satiety cues.
How disrupted sleep architecture from nighttime phone use sabotages the deep sleep and REM cycles required for memory consolidation.
- #1111:04
Sleep Destruction by Smartphones
The double mechanism — blue light melatonin suppression plus nervous system hyperarousal — by which phones systematically wreck sleep.
How well-intentioned use of screens as emotional pacifiers trains children to outsource emotional regulation rather than build it themselves.
Brain imaging research showing how smartphone addiction mirrors substance addiction — tolerance, withdrawal, loss of control — in the adolescent brain.
How peer validation loops, quantified social feedback, and constant comparison drive the post-2010 explosion in teenage anxiety and depression.
The collision between school's delayed-gratification rewards and the instant-gratification reward systems screens have trained kids' brains to expect.
How modern games and short-form video apps engineer hyper-reactive dopamine systems through variable reinforcement and supernormal stimuli.
The emerging science linking smartphone use, blue light, melatonin suppression, and disruptions to puberty and the broader endocrine system.
How using screens as emotional pacifiers prevents children from developing frustration tolerance and the internal capacity to manage uncomfortable feelings.
Why screen exposure in early childhood quietly disrupts language acquisition, imaginative play, and the foundational cognitive architecture children need.
A neuroscience deep-dive into synaptic pruning and overstimulation, and how excessive screen time literally rewires which neural pathways survive adolescence.
How smartphones disrupt the development of executive function — impulse control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility — during the critical childhood years.