How To Stop Doomscrolling & Take Back Control of Your Phone | Catherine Price

How To Stop Doomscrolling & Take Back Control of Your Phone | Catherine Price

From The Adversity Advantage with Doug Bopst by Doug Bopst

June 8, 2026 · 1h 4m

About this episode

Catherine Price discusses the impact of phone addiction and offers strategies to regain control over smartphone use.

Catherine Price is an award-winning health and science journalist, speaker, and #1 New York Times bestselling author best known for her work on screen/life balance and phone addiction. She's the founder of Screen/Life Balance® and has written several major books including How to Break Up With Your Phone®, The Power of Fun, Vitamania, and The Amazing Generation (co-authored with Jonathan Haidt). She also writes the Substack newsletter "How to Feel Alive" and her TED talk on fun has surpassed 5 million views. Her work has been featured in outlets like NPR, The New York Times, Good Morning America, CNN, The Today Show, TIME Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, among many others. Today on the show we discuss: how social media apps are engineered to keep us hooked, why your phone can feel so hard to put down even when it’s hurting your life, how dopamine triggers like novelty, likes, comments, streaks, and endless scrolling hijack attention, why Snapchat may be especially dangerous for kids, how excessive phone use impacts anxiety, focus, sleep, relationships, and real-life connection, and the simple steps Catherine Price recommends to break the cycle and build a healthier…

People in this episode

Host: Doug Bopst

Guest: Catherine Price

Topics covered

  • phone addiction
  • screen/life balance
  • social media impact
  • mental health
  • dopamine triggers
  • anxiety
  • real-life connection

Keywords

  • doomscrolling
  • phone addiction
  • social media
  • mental health
  • screen time
  • dopamine
  • anxiety
  • focus
  • relationships
  • Catherine Price

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Screen/Life Balance, NPR, The New York Times, Good Morning America, CNN, The Today Show, TIME Magazine, The Wall Street Journal

Books & works: How to Break Up With Your Phone, The Power of Fun, Vitamania, The Amazing Generation

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