--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you hit play because today's conversation is going to blow your mind.
--:-- Mel Robbins: See, right now, you and I are part of this game that's going on, and you don't even know about the game. This game that you and I are playing, it's changing how your brain works. It's changing how you live your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's what I want to ask you. Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gosh, I wish I wasn't on my phone so much. I wish I wasn't constantly wasting time scrolling. I wish I had more time to do the things that I really want to do and to be present with the people that I love, and I wish they were present for me"?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I got news for you. You're not alone. The average person is spending 59 hours a week consuming media. 59 hours. That's more than your full-time job.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Today, I'm going to show you that without even knowing it, you are losing this game that has been created by the big tech companies. You have actually become a tool—a tool for them to make money. After listening to this, you're going to leave with a huge epiphany.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's this quote that I love. Wayne Dyer said, "When you change the way you look at the world, the world you look at changes." Here's what's going to change today. Number one, you're going to have more time. I'm going to give you your time back. Number two, when you change the way you look at the world, you're going to get energy back. Number three, when you change the way you look at the world, you're going to get your ability to enjoy your life back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because here's what's going to change. You're not going to be wasting all your dopamine on your phone. Once you learn how big tech is using you, you, my friend, are going to stop losing this game. You're going to turn the tables and you're going to win it. Instead of being a tool for big tech to make money, you're going to learn how to have boundaries with your phone and how to use technology as a tool to help you achieve your goals and make your life better.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is one of those conversations. I get so fired up about this. I think you can tell. You're going to want to share this with absolutely everybody that you care about who has a smartphone—which is everybody that you care about. So if you're ready to stop letting your brain be hijacked by big tech and by your phone, then you are in the right place, because I'm about to change the way you see the world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here, and I'm also so excited about the conversation today. This is a topic I am absolutely passionate about. I have so much to share with you, to teach you. It's the kind of conversation that just makes you look at the world and what's possible differently.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me just start by saying thank you for being here. It is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. If you are a new listener, I also want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I am glad that you're here.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what I know about you. Even though we may not have met in real life yet, I know that you're the kind of person who probably doesn't have a lot of free time, but you've made time to listen to this because you value how you spend your time. That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about time, and we're going to talk about a particular kind of lane on it that's really important.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You and I and every single person that you know is screwing themselves over right now when it comes to time, when it comes to energy, when it comes to attention. There's a reason why we keep doing this to ourselves. It's because you don't realize that the world that you now live in—and big tech, and in particular, let me grab my phone right now—your phone is now designed for a singular purpose. You ready? It is designed to steal your time and attention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody can market everything about connection and all the wonderful things about your phone and the internet and social media. And it's true. There's a lot of wonderful things about your phone. But the number one thing that this phone is designed to do is to steal your time and attention. This is a really big deal.
--:-- Mel Robbins: By the time you and I are done talking today, you will never look at your phone the same way again. This is important because you do need to change the way that you look at your phone. I'm going to explain that the world, tech, the phone, and social media—holy cow—in the last five years, it has completely changed. You and I need to have a huge wake-up call. When I paint the picture of what this phone is actually designed to do, it's going to change your motivation for how you use it and when you use it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I've been talking about this topic—it's called the attention economy—for years. I spent most of my career traveling around the world and speaking at huge events, put on by some of the biggest brands in the world, talking about all kinds of things from behavior change to motivation. A really big topic has been understanding the way that technology and the phone in particular is designed to steal your attention and your focus.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You and I now live in what's called the attention economy. This is important for you to understand. It's important for your middle schoolers to understand, for your high schoolers, for the 20-somethings. Heck, if you've got aging parents that are now addicted to their iPad or their phone, it's important for them to understand. We live in a whole new world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does that mean? It means your attention is for sale. The time that you spend watching media, scrolling through your phone, tapping on certain things, buying things that you don't need—everybody is making money off of your attention and your time. You don't have to get on your phone and buy something for people to make money. You simply sitting on your phone and mindlessly scrolling and having it on—people have figured out how to make money with you simply having the phone on.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Takeaway number one: your phone is designed to steal your attention for one reason and one reason only—because people are making money on you. It's that simple. They're making money on you. I'm going to unpack this in detail so that you really understand what your phone is and what it isn't. From this point forward, even if you're in middle school and you're listening to me, or you're 80 years old, or you're 50 years old and frustrated because you can't get your family to connect over dinner because everybody's on their phone—the reason why this is true is because the phone is designed to keep you on it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The rules have fundamentally changed, and not enough of us are talking about it. I didn't figure this out until a couple years ago when I started looking into the research around focus and attention. I started folding in information about the attention economy and the way that the phones are designed because I started to feel concerned about my own use of the phone. I started to be frustrated with the fact that my kids were on their phones all the time. I thought, "What's going on with this generation?" Then I started to feel frustrated about the fact that everybody around me is constantly on their phones, myself included.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think you've had that experience, haven't you? Where you know it's not good for you. You know you don't want to spend as much time on it. You know that when you're off your phone, you feel better, you're happier, you're more well-rested. We also know the simple, stupid advice for how to stop using it so much, and yet none of us do it. I started to wonder, "Why? Why is it so hard? There must be something going on."
--:-- Mel Robbins: The truth is, yeah, there is something going on. This is going to be a huge thing. You've already learned one takeaway so far: you now live in the attention economy. Your phone is designed to keep you on it because even if it's just open, people have figured out how to make money with you just turning this thing on and having it in your hand. This is no joke.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're going to unpack the way that the world has changed, what's happened with the phone, how tech is designed, how social media is designed, how ads are designed, and how headlines are written. They are specifically designed to screw you over, to have you casually turn over your most precious thing in life: your time and your attention. Where you put your time is what your life is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You probably don't know this. Your kids don't know this. The young adults in your life don't know this. Your parents don't know this. That's why you're frustrated. I was frustrated too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The research around this is kind of crazy. Did you realize that you're probably spending seven hours a day consuming media on your phone? If you're thinking, "No, I'm not," yeah, you are. Is your phone on you? Do you look at it throughout the day? Every time you turn it on, you're activating the phone's ability to make money on you. Even simply if it's tracking you, guess what? There are companies making money on the data that's tracking you and listening to you as you have it near you, even if you're not directly consuming media. That's what I'm talking about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you've ever had that thought, "Boy, I wish I would just spend less time on my phone," or "I wish I wasn't wasting hours scrolling on social media," or how about this: Do you feel like you're constantly buying things that you didn't actually mean to buy? The thing that's laying around downstairs that I can't find the company to return—I bought a bunch of those bird feeders that have the little camera in them. They were all over my Instagram feed. Oh my God, I've got like two extra ones here. I don't even remember buying them, probably because I bought it one night while I was scrolling through Instagram and the phone was on. I even know that it is the attention economy, and I still succumb to it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The reason why I wanted to talk to you about this is because this is a really big deal. The research shows that the average person in the United States, based on the devices themselves, is spending seven hours a day consuming media on your phone. Seven hours a day. That's 59 hours a week. 59 hours. Just looking at your TV and your phone, you've got to be very careful about the addictive nature of this device and how people are using you. When you wake up and think, "Wait a minute, I'm getting used?" Then I think you're going to have a different level of motivation around your boundaries with this phone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: First things first, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about what the attention economy is and how this thing is designed. What has changed? What do you need to know? Because when you look at the world differently, I think you show up to the world differently.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you find that you keep thinking, "God, I wish I would spend less time on my phone," or your kids say, "I wish I spent less time on my phone," but you just can't—for example, have you ever deleted TikTok and then you just download YouTube? Or then you delete YouTube and then you download TikTok again? Have you ever set limits on your apps, and then you just tap out of the notification? Guilty. Or if you can't watch TV without also scrolling on Instagram—this is something we're all struggling with.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're struggling with it not because you're weak. You're struggling with it because that's a sign that the phone is winning. The phone is winning the game. The phone is changing your brain. The phone is getting you to step right into the trap so that it can make money on you mindlessly. If you can't stand in a line at a grocery store, do chores, take a walk, or even go to the bathroom without watching a video or listening to something or reading something on your phone, then you're in the right place.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to ask you five questions. Five questions that reveal the truth that technology has won this round of the game. The way that the phone and social media is engineered and the way that people make money on your attention—it has changed you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Number one: Is your phone the first thing you reach for every day? Number two: Do you ever find yourself checking the same apps over and over and over again for notifications, even though there aren't any? Number three: Are you unable to sit, take a walk, do chores, or even exist without consuming content—watching a video, checking a text, looking for something? Number four: Does the idea of going somewhere without your phone make you anxious or uncomfortable? Number five: Do you find yourself getting to the end of a long day using doom scrolling as a way to unwind and relax, only to find that you feel exhausted, depressed, or empty afterwards?
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you answered yes to any of these five questions, this is a sign that the phone, social media, and big tech have actually won this round of the game.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to be very clear about something. This isn't your fault. It's not your fault. If you're frustrated, like I was frustrated with my family—"Why are you guys always on your phone? Look at me when you're talking to me. What's wrong with this generation?"—if you've ever felt that way, it's not their fault either. It's not your teenager's fault that they're constantly online. They need to be on social media, they're constantly wanting to do something. It's not your fault if all you want to be in life is an influencer, because that's what you see other people doing online, and you see them making money and going on trips. Heck, even your aging parents are now addicted to their phones and their iPads, and it's not their fault either. Not at all.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We have all been duped by the big tech programming and the attention economy that we live in. Your phone, social media, the news cycle—everything about the role that technology is playing in your life right now—it has not been designed for an altruistic reason. It has been designed to hijack your brain. It is designed to steal your attention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The reality is that you and I have been tricked into participating in and being used for a game that we didn't even know we were playing. You look at the phone and think, "Oh, this is great. I love this. I can connect with people and I post." And it is great. But if you don't realize that you've been lured into something for the sole purpose that you might buy something or that you might stay a little longer so that somebody can make money on you, then you are stepping into a game and you will always lose.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to give you a couple examples. Have you ever gotten off an airplane, especially if you land in a new country or you're going somewhere like Orlando to go to Disney World? When you get off that plane, they purposefully move you through a section of the airport where there's all kinds of stuff to buy. The hallways are really little, so all you do is see stuff to buy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's another example. Have you ever been to a museum? When you get out of the exhibit, where do they put you? They put you in the gift store. They don't just put you by the exit—they force you to walk through the whole thing and see all this kind of stuff. Why are they doing that? They are trapping you in a place where they have your attention, in the hopes that if they put stuff in front of you, you're going to buy it. The longer that you stay in there, which is why it takes a long time to walk through it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know who else does this? IKEA. Have you ever tried to get out of an IKEA store quickly? You can't. They make you literally walk two miles through every single display. Why? Because they're trying to hold your attention. The longer that you're in there, the more likely you're going to see something that you buy. The more time that you spend in there, the more money they make. They're not doing this because they're mean. They're doing this because they're a for-profit company.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The same thing is true about the phone. My number one goal today—there are a number of things I want to teach you—is I want you to wake up and understand that if you don't see the game, you don't understand the rules, you're going to lose the game. Full stop. That's why you're screwing yourself over. It's because you don't understand the larger context of your phone and headlines. That's why they're sensational. That's why the news reads like the world is falling apart. Because if you think it's scary, if you're worried and your emotions start to get all jacked up, you're more likely to click.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The world, the internet, and social media are designed on purpose to steal your attention. That's why we have gotten to a point in the world where we are all losing the game of attention. You lose first and foremost by not even realizing that you're actually playing a big game.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I should say right off the bat, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I do believe that the phone, internet, and social media are extraordinary tools. They are extraordinary tools to connect, to share your art, to market your business, to be self-expressed. They're extraordinary tools to get information, to learn, to grow. You can connect with people all around the world. The reason why I can connect with you right now from above my garage in Southern Vermont, while you're maybe halfway around the world, is because of technology, because of the phone, because of the internet, because of social media. Yes, they are extraordinary tools—but only if you use them as a tool.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's a great tool if every time you reach for this, you recognize you're the one who's using it intentionally as a tool. Here's the problem: you and I became the tool. We weren't paying attention. We were busy living our lives. We were enjoying laughing about the things that we saw on the internet. Slowly, what started to happen is we started spending more and more time on our phones.
--:-- Mel Robbins: To put this in perspective, the first iPhone was released in 2007. So we're talking almost 20 years ago. Over the years, when this first started and we all had it for the first five, ten years, it wasn't on your person all the time. You weren't texting all the time. You weren't on social media all the time. But something kind of creepy has happened over the last couple years. Absolutely everybody is on their phone all the time. It's like some sort of addictive substance has been pumped into the oxygen that we're all breathing. Now we're all like, "Oh, wake up, look at the phone, always look at the phone, I gotta have the phone on me." We're all doing it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Today, I really want to share all this information with you. You can tell that I'm very passionate about this. I'm passionate about it because everybody is quick to say, "Social media sucks, the internet sucks, big tech sucks." On some level, you're right, it does. But part of the problem is simply blaming social media, blaming the internet, blaming the phone. It doesn't highlight what's actually going on.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I said that I had mixed feelings about this because I do see the good. I see the good that the phone, the internet, connection, social media, videos, information, and tools powered by AI can bring. But here's the problem: if you don't understand that you're supposed to use this as a tool, you become the tool. You become a tool in a larger game that big tech built, that the internet is fueling. It is a game that is built, designed, and engineered to make you lose.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I literally look at the phone and think, "Okay, it's like the Hunger Games, and I'm the tribute that's volunteered. I'm stepping into the arena anytime I pick this up, and it's a fight for my life." If you don't understand this, you're literally screwing yourself over. It's like walking into the Hunger Games arena thinking that you're just going on a camping trip. No, you're not. Seeing what it is is the most important way to protect yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want you to look at your phone and go, "Oh my gosh, I'm stepping into the Hunger Games arena right here. Only one person is going to get out alive. It's either me or the billion people that are inside this arena trying to claw for my attention." I want to paint it in such dramatic ways because have you ever stopped and considered that this device is using you? That it is a device that uses you? It listens to you. It follows you. It dynamically changes what it shows you. It is constantly pushing stuff in your face to click on, to purchase, or to watch. Why is it doing that? Because there's money to be made on you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want you to be very clear that every time you pick this thing up, you are stepping into the Hunger Games ring. That's what's happening. If you pick up the device with eyes wide open, guess what happens? You're no longer the tool. You're no longer the one that is going to lose. You are picking up this device knowing full well what you're walking into, and you're going to be smart about what you use this for, rather than allowing it to use you—which is what's happened.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think this is why when we look at everybody around us, we get so frustrated. You can see that your kids, your partner, your roommates—they've all turned into zombies. How many times have you been sitting around with your friends from college and everybody's on their phone, and you're thinking, "Why did we even get together this weekend if we're all just going to sit around on our phones?" That can end now. It can end now because what you're seeing when you see people zoning out is you're seeing that the attention economy has won. You're seeing that they've stepped into the arena and they're losing the game. You're seeing that the intentional design of the phone is actually winning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's one of the reasons why I think it's so important to call out the fact that this is all by design and it's all based on money. That's what it's for. The reason why this is important is because I think it's easy to aim your frustration at your kids, at other people, or at your partner. You're frustrated that they're always on their phone and they're never present with you. The fact is, they're losing a game that they don't even realize they're playing. I want you to start there. Blaming other people and being upset with them isn't going to solve the problem. Understanding the larger context is the first step to looking at your phone and being like, "Ugh, ick." How cool would it be if you had the ick about your phone?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. But don't go anywhere, because you and I have so much more to unpack when we return. So stay with me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are talking about changing the game we're playing when it comes to our phone and being a part of the attention economy. It's time for you to stop losing the game and start winning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The first key to winning is actually understanding that you're in a game at all, understanding the rules of the game, understanding the cost of playing this game, and having a really important strategy in place. That brings me to the next thing I want to talk to you about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Technology, social media, the phone, the internet, AI—all this stuff is a wonderful thing if you understand it's meant to be used as a tool. But if you don't understand the larger context that I'm painting for you—that your phone is designed to make money off of you, and it makes more money off of you the longer you spend on it—if you don't understand that, then you are going to lose.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This isn't just social media. This is happening with AI too. What's kind of crazy about this is, let me tell you some of the lies that are happening with AI right now. I think this is kind of scary. I was talking with my team the other day, and I don't even remember what we were talking about. If you Google my name—which I don't do—but if you Google "Is Mel Robbins divorced?" Go to Google and type, "Is Mel Robbins divorced?" You know how when you Google something now, AI generates an answer? What's scary about AI is that it's generating answers from stuff that's out on the internet. Since there's no internet police, the amount of random, disgusting, horrible lies that are out on the internet about everybody and everything is terrifying.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now we're stepping into a world where we think ChatGPT is right. We think OpenAI is giving us the best answer. No, no, no, no. They're just aggregating what's out there and serving up something. So if you type in "Is Mel Robbins divorced?" AI is going to tell you I'm divorced. It literally says Mel Robbins is divorced. Then you want to know what it does? It serves up a link to a podcast episode of my podcast where I am giving someone advice who is going through a divorce. So AI has aggregated information that's out there, randomly assembled it, and served it up as the truth about me. It's not true. Anybody can make up anything about anybody, and it's now out there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I say this because you have to understand—and I have very mixed feelings about technology and the internet. One of the reasons why I'm so successful is because I understand technology. I use it as a tool. I have also become more successful in having boundaries with my phone, not because I'm reading research reports and not because I'm doing the things that the experts tell us to do. I have better boundaries with my phone because I understand the manipulative nature of the attention economy and the way that this phone and the internet is programmed to keep you sucked into it. Because the longer you spend on it, the more money some stranger makes off of you. It's true. It's absolutely true.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you want to spend seven hours a day consuming things on your device, just be clear: somebody is making a ton of money on you. You're telling yourself that you're just wasting time. Nope. You're not just wasting time. You're actually making people money. That's what this is really about. The more time you spend on social media, the more money big tech and influencers make.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to tell you something else. It's not your fault. This is sort of like saying to somebody, "It's your fault that you're addicted to cigarettes." No, it's not. You had an addictive substance marketed to you as if it was going to improve your life because it looks like fun. Now you feel bad because you can't stop smoking, even though you don't really enjoy it and you've got this horrible cough and all these people judging you because you're still doing it. You feel ashamed of it. But it's not your fault. It's designed to be addictive.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Same thing with alcohol. Alcohol is marketed to you and me as if it's required for a celebration, as if it does make your life better. If you have trouble cutting back, having just one drink, or drinking less, that's not your fault. The substance and the industry have designed it that way so that you keep doing it. When you start from that level—that it's actually not your fault—now you have a fighting chance to look at this device and the way that you consume media with very black and white eyes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The more time you spend on social media, the more money big tech and influencers make. Let me ask you a couple of questions. When's the last time you saw posts that were of your friends on Instagram? For real, when's the last time? If you're like me, I never see my friends or my kids online, ever. I've even gone and clicked them as my close friends, which I thought meant I would see them more. No. You know what I see? I see ads. Almost every other thing that comes in my feed is a "suggested for you." It's something getting served up, or it's a "shop now."
--:-- Mel Robbins: What ends up happening—and it might happen to you because you're listening to this podcast and you may follow me online—if you do follow me and you happen to watch one reel, you know what's going to happen? They're going to keep serving up my content to you. Why?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because the machines that are trying to keep you on it—remember, you're in the Hunger Games. Remember, you're in the arena. They're going to serve up more of the things that I make to you because they now think you like it. And within a week, you're going to start going, "God, does Mel ever sleep?" I mean, it's like all I see is her all over. That is the arena because it's trying to keep you on it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This to me is manipulation. If this were an altruistic platform, you know what social media would do? It would just show you what people post in a linear timeline when they post it. And it would show you just as many posts from The Rock as it shows you your friends and family. But see, that's why I'm trying to tell you: you're the tool. You and I go onto the phone and we think, "Oh, I'm going to go on social media and just pass a little bit of time and I'm going to have some fun." Be careful. You can certainly do that. But this is going to try to manipulate you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's just like being in Vegas. If you've ever been in a casino, in order to get to any of the restaurants or to get to the elevators, what do you have to do? You have to walk through the casino. And what is in the casino? Bright lights, bells, whistles, all this stuff trying to manipulate you so that you engage with it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: See, whenever you're bored now, you pick up your phone. Whenever the movie's not that interesting, you pick up your phone. Whenever the teacher in front of the class isn't saying something that interesting, you look at your phone. When you're lying in bed and you're having trouble going to sleep, you look at your phone. If you're sitting at a stoplight, you're looking at your phone. Heck, if you're honest with yourself, you're probably looking at it as you're driving. As you're sitting on an airplane, you're looking at the phone. As you're sitting in a meeting, you've got your phone kind of beneath the table and you're checking it out every once in a while.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It has snuck up on you, and it did it on purpose. That's why I need you and me and everybody that you care about that you're going to send this to to actually wake up and recognize that this is not here because it wants to help you. It's here to make money on you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, the sad thing about the time that we live in right now is I feel like everything's that way. Politics is now entertainment. Headlines, same way. The scarier it is, the more you're going to keep checking them. And if you want to see how much of a tool you become, just check your screen time. Not even as a way to make you wrong, but I don't think any of us realize how this has crept up on us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: After considering that you live in the attention economy and that everything is designed to keep you on it so that they make money, you have to recognize that because the rules have changed, you have to change your rules with how you play the game. You have to see it for what it is. You have to take your power back and go, "Ick, I'm not going to be an idiot. I'm not going to allow them to keep me trapped in this stuff so they make money. I'm going to get in and then I'm going to get out."
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's how I think about this. How can I use this device and social media and the internet to actually help me achieve my goals? How can I use this as a tool, as it's designed to be used to benefit me, instead of me being the tool and my use of it benefiting them? Do you see what I'm saying? Being smarter about it allows you to change how you engage with it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That brings me to the second really important thing about understanding that you live in the attention economy. Your attention and time is for sale, and the world is designed to steal it from you. That's why you're tired. That's why you spend too much time on your phone. That's why you spend too many evenings just mindlessly watching one thing after the other. The game is designed for you to lose.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So now that you accept that, and I hopefully have given you the "ick" factor and woken you up to the fact that you do have power—these are amazing tools—you have to step into the arena, get what you need, and then get out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The second thing I really want to highlight for you and for everybody that you're going to share this with is that there's a huge cost to playing the game. A huge cost. The thing you're about to hear, I wanted an expert to explain it to you. When I heard this from a guy by the name of Dr. K, he goes by The Healthy Gamer online. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specializes in gaming addiction. He's also a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who has taught me more about the circuitry in the brain and motivation in a way that I truly understand better than anybody else I have ever met or read or studied in my entire life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're going to hear from Dr. K right after the break. So don't go anywhere. This is literally one of the best parts of our conversation today, what he's about to teach you. While you're listening to our sponsors, make sure you share this with everyone that you know, because everyone needs to understand how to win the game and how not to be the tool, but to flip the game on its head and start winning and using it as a tool. All righty. Don't go anywhere. Dr. K is coming up next. Stay with me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are talking about the phone, how it's designed to steal your time. You are learning that you're in the attention economy, and you and I are single-handedly going, "Nope, nope, I'm not losing this game. I'm understanding the game, and I am going to learn how to play it and how to win."
--:-- Mel Robbins: One of the things that's going to motivate you to win this game and to change how you show up and to change why you need to show up is understanding the true cost of what it's costing you. We've already talked about time. We've already talked about energy. We've already talked about how you're being used and manipulated. Now, I want to talk about a really important cost, and that's dopamine.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dopamine is just a fancy word. You hear it all the time, but it has a very important function in your life. According to the experts that I've been talking to on The Mel Robbins Podcast and the research that I do, dopamine is essential for your mood, for motivation, for drive. One person that has taught me more about dopamine, what it is, why it's important, the connection to mood and motivation, is Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia. You may know him as Dr. K. He goes by The Healthy Gamer online. He has millions of followers on YouTube. His specialty is in how the brain works, addiction, motivation, changing behavior. He's an absolute genius.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When he shared with me what's happening to your brain when you are just handing your time right over to the phone, particularly in the morning, this was the information that truly motivated me to completely change my relationship with my phone. So I want you to take a listen to the extraordinary Dr. K.
--:-- [Begin clip of Dr. K]
--:-- Dr. K: What a lot of people don't realize is that you have a certain capacity for pleasure and behavioral reinforcement when you wake up in the morning. You have only a certain number of units of pleasure and behavioral reinforcement.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it. So if I have a cup of capacity for both pleasure and behavioral reinforcement, you're saying that when you wake up, that one cup is already full?
--:-- Dr. K: Our dopaminergic circuitry in the brain, in this part called the nucleus accumbens, basically gives us a sense of pleasure and also reinforces our behavior. The problem with dopamine is we wake up in the morning and our dopaminergic stores are full. We have a reserve of dopamine. If you want something with delayed gratification and your dopamine stores are high, you can work a lot. Then when you get the payoff, since you have a bunch of dopamine, you get a strong dopamine release and you feel really good.
--:-- Dr. K: The way this works, I want you all to think about this. Let's say I wake up first thing in the morning and then I work for four hours. What is the subjective reward that I feel after four hours of work? It's really positive.
--:-- Dr. K: Then if I use technology for four hours, it's kind of whatever. But if I use technology for the first four hours of the day and then I try to go and do work, you're not going to. You're not going to. And even if you finish the same amount of work, you will not experience the same level of pleasure because your dopamine has literally been depleted.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Dr. K: The way I describe this is imagine that you have a lemon that is full of juice. At the very beginning, when it's full of juice, a small squeeze gets you a lot of juice. But by the end, you have to squeeze a lot to get very little juice. This is how dopamine is in our brain.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So in other words, if you tap into technology and it invades your circuitry and your brain, it literally is like squeezing most of the juice out of the lemon first thing in the morning.
--:-- Dr. K: First thing in the morning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then that means that it's also going to impact your ability to do the work or to focus or to feel joy and all those things that normally, if you did those things first, you'd feel a sense of reward and joy for.
--:-- Dr. K: Yes. Technology is like a hard squeeze. So if we use it first thing in the morning, we squeeze the lemon really hard and we get all the juice out. And then you have nothing left to feel good about because all of your dopamine stores have been depleted.
--:-- [End clip of Dr. K]
--:-- Mel Robbins: All righty. I want to make sure that you really understand the weight of what Dr. K is trying to teach you and me. When he shared that with me, it was such an enormous wake-up call that really helped me connect the dots. The whole purpose of our conversation today is to give you a reason why you need better boundaries with your phone and tech, that you have to use it as a tool and you've got to stop allowing big tech and social and the phone to turn you into the tool.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What Dr. K just said is that you've got all of this dopamine reserve and dopamine circuitry in your brain. You've probably heard that word, but I don't know if you're like me, I'm constantly forgetting what these big words mean. Dopamine is related to your drive, it's related to motivation, it's related to pleasure. What Dr. K is saying is that when you wake up first thing in the morning, you're ready to go. The gas tank in the brain, in terms of dopamine, it's full. The circuitry is ready to go. It is primed and there to help you experience pleasure, to help you move toward things that give you meaning in your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Then you and I make a really dumb mistake because we don't recognize the game that we're in. We make this mistake first thing in the morning of picking up the phone, getting on social media, reading the headlines. When you step into that arena, in the words of Dr. K, technology and the phone and social media, it's like taking the lemon that represents the dopamine and squeezing all the juice out. By the time you start your day, if you spent too long on your phone, you've literally drained the dopamine tank simply by stepping into the arena and allowing yourself to be turned into a tool.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now for the rest of the day, you're playing catch up. This is why everything seems dull. This is why you don't really feel the drive. This is why your mood is kind of low and you're a little numb. This also means that at the end of the day, when you're done at school or you're done at work and you get home and you're done feeding the dogs and making dinner and you collapse on the couch, all you want to do because you've got no dopamine left and you're not really feeling much of anything and you're exhausted is what? Pick this thing up again. And you enter the arena and you make people more money and then you just feel worse.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to give you a little test to really highlight why the phone is designed the way it's designed. Have you ever turned your phone to the grayscale feature? It's pretty unbelievable. When you move your phone to grayscale, it is going to be so startling that you don't even need to hear research about this, but I do have research and this research is unbelievable.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There was a study done between Cornell and researchers at IE University in Madrid all about grayscale. When people like you and me just switch the phone to black and white and grayscale, it reduces your daily screen time by 50 minutes. 50 minutes. And you could use those 50 minutes, right? I know I could use those 50 minutes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want you to intentionally try to turn your phone to grayscale. I'm not even going to ask that you leave it on grayscale. I'm going to ask that you just try to find it, which even as I'm talking to you, I can't freaking find it on my phone. That's how they've hidden this. But when you ultimately get your phone to grayscale, you're going to look at it and be like, "Well, that's not fun to look at." All those influencers don't look so tan and amazing and fabulous when it's on grayscale. This isn't that neat to be in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's sort of like the same way a casino is bright and shiny and loud, and you have to walk through it and you can't find the elevators, which means you stay in it long enough. When you strip away the colors, your phone is very boring. It's literally the difference between watching a movie that is 100% AI driven, where somebody's arm twists into a snake and then it morphs into a cheetah, just absolutely unbelievable visual craziness, versus thinking about the original Frankenstein movie that was black and white and amazing at the time, but you're just now looking at it like, "Is that my uncle dressed up in a suit for my party?" I mean, that's pretty terrible. You can barely even watch it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The reason I'm saying this is because when you strip away the colors on your phone, you're going to get the chills. Beautiful design is something that's exciting to see. But when you strip away all the bells and whistles, you'll now see your phone for what it should be, which is a tool. A tool you can use to get work done, a tool you can use to connect with people you care about, a tool you can use to search for information that you need that makes you smarter, a tool you can use to market. But does it not make you want to stay on this thing because it's super boring.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The reason I'm telling you this now is because if it's super boring and sort of like, "Why would I want to use that? I don't want to hang out with an Excel spreadsheet all day," you'll also realize what Dr. K is saying. All the pretty colors and the moving things and the pop-ups here and the thing over there and the scrolling that you're doing, it's very stimulating. And it's also draining your dopamine, which is keeping you on there. And that means it's draining the reserves that you need for motivation and pleasure for the important things in your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That brings me to another thing that I want to add to this conversation. We've already talked about the fact that you've got to wake up and recognize that you live in the attention economy and that tech is designed to steal your attention and that you've become unknowingly and without consent a tool in someone else's game, and the game is "let's make money on you." So that's ick number one.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Ick number two is that it's not just making other people money. It's actually costing you something important. It's costing you your dopamine reserves. First thing in the morning when you look at this stuff and you expose yourself to this arena that you're stepping into where it's designed to make you lose, you're not just losing time and attention and energy, you're also losing your dopamine. It's like that lemon, hard squeeze, gone. And it's not your fault. The whole game is rigged, and that's why you feel how you feel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know the really awful part about all this? It keeps you on it and addicted to it. If you're getting that hard squeeze on the lemon by looking at bright and shiny things, guess what? You're going to keep going back to it, just like people keep going back to cigarettes, and they keep going back to slot machines, and they keep going back to alcohol. The game itself and the device and substance itself is designed to do this to you. That's why it's not your kid's fault. It's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But we have a responsibility to ourselves to wake up and recognize what's happening so that when the world that you see changes, you change the way you see the world and you change the way that you show up. Wayne Dyer said that. And it's time to change the way that you show up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The third thing I want to tell you is that it's actually already changed your brain. This is not just a problem for the kids and the high schoolers and the college kids in your life. Most of us just don't realize that it's happened to us too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: For me personally, this really started to hit me a couple of years ago when I started to practice being in line at a grocery store and not checking my phone. It's a very hard thing to do. I want you to try this. Just like you tried the grayscale, the next time you're standing in line at a hardware store or a checkout line at a little corner store, I want you to not look at your phone. Keep it in your pocket or in your back pocket or in your purse. Here's what you're going to notice: you get fidgety. You feel this sense that you need to look at it. You're going to feel yourself looking around, and you're going to notice everybody else that's standing in line, unless they're talking to a child, they literally are looking at their phones. When you see other people looking at their phones, you are going to start to really feel like you need to be looking at your phone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is a sign that all of this intentional programming and engineering is working because it's changed the wiring in your brain and it's made you want and crave something that you don't need.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Another example: can you watch television without having your phone nearby? How quickly when the series that you're watching gets slow do you reach for your phone? I'll give you one more. This is the big one. Do you lay in bed and look at your phone? Does the idea of even going to bed without your phone nearby make you feel agitated?
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is not just a problem for teenagers. I have a really close friend of mine who was telling me that they are very worried about their father because since retiring, he has become addicted to his iPad. He literally sits with it and rocks as he's watching it all day. He goes to bed with it. The man is 80 years old. It is creating huge problems in his marriage of 45 years. Everybody's kind of relating to it like he's got a problem, he's addicted to a thing that's actually designed to be addictive. You're watching your father pull away from life while other people make more and more and more money on him. That's what's happening.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you can't see that for yourself, that the game is rigged to keep you playing, that's why you feel these things. That's why you and I stay longer on our phones than we intend to. That's why eventually you open up your wallet and you're clicking "shop now" and you're buying all this stuff that you didn't intend to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: While this is not good news—that it's engineered to change you and keep you addicted, and these small examples that I'm pointing out are evidence that it's true—the good news is that your brain has something called neuroplasticity. It's just a fancy word that means your brain can change. It's bendy. It can create new connections. Just like your brain learned that it needs the phone to go to bed, it can learn that it doesn't go to bed with the phone. You can retrain your brain. You can train your brain to see the phone and go, "Ick," just like an old boyfriend or girlfriend.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Have you ever had a relationship in the past or a friend that you were super, super close with, and then you started to kind of feel like, "Oh, I've spent a little bit too much time with them," but you keep spending time with them, and then all of a sudden something happens and you're like, "Ick, ick, ick." That's what I want you to feel about the phone. That's what I want you to feel every time you play the Hunger Games and you step into the arena that is social media, AI, or the internet. I want you to see it for what it is. When you see the game for what it is, you can actually now play the game and win.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That brings me to the final thing: what to do. What do you do now that you hopefully have the ick? If you're younger and you're listening to this and you still have aspirations of having an online business and you still have aspirations of becoming an influencer or a YouTuber, that's great. You can do whatever you want with your life. But you will make more money and be more successful if you go into those professions understanding that this is a tool, that your phone is a device, and that you don't collapse who you are and the meaning in your life with your ambition and job and wanting to use the tool for marketing or learning how to make money online. It's an incredible thing to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're listening to me and you're a realtor or you have a side hustle, you should be using the phone and the internet and social media as a tool. But what's going to make you wildly successful is understanding that you're the one in charge.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's what you're going to do. I'm almost embarrassed to give you the advice right because you already know the advice. But the thing about advice is it's easy to know what to do. We've all been told you have to have less screen time, right? You have to spend less time on the phone. Okay. Thanks, Sherlock. I think I'm aware of that. But now that Mel has explained attention economy and the fact that I've been losing the game and the fact that this is designed to steal my time and the fact that I'm losing dopamine and that my brain has been rewired, now I have a reason why I actually want to do something.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm just going to give you the things that have mattered to me. There's lots of things that you can do, but there's really one major thing that I think is super important, and that is boundaries. I want you to have very clear boundaries with your phone. The only thing that has helped me is physical separation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I've tried to limit the screen time and to put the timers on. I just suspend the notifications. I have moved my apps from the home screen to pages in. It just ends up making me scroll more. For real. The grayscale and going black and white, that's a big deal because it's not that fun to be on the phone and it reminds you that this is utility rather than addiction and a time waster. But the biggest boundary that's really worked for me is physical separation, not having the phone on your body. I'm just like you are. I have a need for the phone. I'm addicted to the phone. I recognize that. So if it's in my hand or on my body, I will look at it. Physical acts of separation have made a big difference in my ability to establish boundaries and not casually enter the arena.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does that look like? The biggest boundary that I have, I talk about it a lot. You may have heard me say this, but this is a daily boundary I have to set. I don't take the phone into bed. At night, as hard as it is, I charge my phone in the bathroom because if this phone were next to me, I would reach for it. Full stop. I would. So I make it very difficult to reach for it by having it separated from me. That's number one.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Number two, I leave my phone typically on my desk. Now, I have my phone in my hand. If you're watching on YouTube, you've seen me holding this thing. It's got a bright pink case all day long. If I'm during work hours, I keep my phone on my desk. I try not to have it on my person because if it's at my desk and then I go to a meeting, I'm not checking it. If it's at my desk and I'm doing some work, I'm not really looking at it. If it's on my body, I'm looking at it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Another thing that I do, here's another physical boundary. When I'm out taking a morning walk in particular, my phone is zipped in my fanny pack. Yes, I have a fanny pack. The dog treats are in there, but it's in my fanny pack or it's in a back pocket if I don't have that on me, or it's in a zipped pocket so that I'm not engaged with it. I'm actually present with my surroundings. I don't walk and hold it because why? I'll look at it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Another boundary that's been a really important one for our family is we do not allow phones at the dinner table, period. Whether we're at home, whether we're at a restaurant, they're not allowed even resting on the table. They are on your person, like in a pocket, or they are in your bag. It's made a big difference in just encouraging meaningful conversations and connections. The more you do that, the more you're going to dedicate time to hobbies, to interests, to actually building the business, to doing the art, to marketing what you're working on, instead of being the one that's being marketed to. That's what's available to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's time for you and I to wake up and be smart about what's actually happening. Instead of being used by them, how about you and I turn the tables and we use them to achieve our goals and to make our lives a little bit better?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Go look at everybody that you follow, all the accounts. I promise you, you're going to realize you only see the same five accounts over and over and over again because they're the ones that the social media platforms are serving to you because they think you're going to stay on longer and that means they're going to make more money. If you are following somebody, you're giving them access to your brain and your attention, and that has value. So what I want you to do is audit who has access to that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If the accounts that you're following do not give positive input, they don't make you laugh, they don't make you a better person, they don't make you feel good, delete, unfollow. It is a privilege for that account to be able to show up in your feed. When you start treating the input as a tool—"Who can I follow that's going to make me better? What accounts can I follow in order to grow and achieve my goals?"—when you use it proactively that way, you're not actually stepping into the arena waiting to be killed by everybody and waiting to be a tool in everybody else's game to make money. You're actually stepping into the arena and selectively seeking out allies that now can help you achieve your goals and win the game.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's going to change all the time. And look, if you follow me and I'm not lifting you up, do not follow me. That's how much I want you to truly honor your attention. I want you to really look at it like a gift. The way that you win is by putting up a gate between you and who's allowed to put input into your brain. That's how I think about the accounts that I follow. Are you actually making me better? Are you lifting me up? Are you teaching me things? Or am I following you out of guilt or just because I followed you 10 years ago or because we went to college together? That's not what I'm doing in this arena. I'm looking for allies that make me better. That's what I want you doing too. You can curate your social media feed to uplift you rather than just constantly be staring at people that are trying to sell you something or bragging about their life or making you jealous of what they're doing. Get rid of those because all that negativity impacts you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's one final thing that I think is super interesting that I want to unpack for you because it brings us full circle and really helps you embrace the gravity of what's happened in the last five years and why this isn't your fault, but how waking up and recognizing the attention economy and how it's impacted you has also robbed you of a lot of meaning in your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to start that conversation by sharing a little bit of research with you that I found to be really important. This comes from a study that was done by researchers in China. They were looking at different interventions that could reduce symptoms of internet addiction. Everything that we're talking about here: spending too much time on your phone, too much time on social media, too much time online. What they found, published in the Journal of Addictive Behavior, is that one intervention that had very strong effects on reducing symptoms of internet addiction was exercise.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, it begs the question: why? Why would introducing exercise reduce addictive behavior online?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, there's an important reason why. Moving your body is an important way to positively and naturally squeeze that little juice of dopamine. It puts you in a better mood.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And have you ever noticed that if you ever go out for a hike or you do a pickup soccer game or you're playing a set of pickleball, you don't have any interest in looking at your phone because you're engaged in the physical activity? Like if I'm ever out skiing, I'm not skiing down a mountain looking at my phone because I'm moving my body and I'm connected to the environment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is an important thing to understand because I think what's happened is as the rules of the game have changed and we didn't realize that the phone has turned into Hunger Games and that it's designed for us to lose, it's created this self-fulfilling negative loop. The more time you spend on the phone, the less time you spend exercising or connecting with friends or doing the things that bring your life meaning like gardening and painting and picking up the guitar. All those things that lift you up naturally. You're not doing them. Why? Because you don't have time. You're tired. You're exhausted.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All of this is a result of the freaking phone and social media. So just as it sapped you and sucked you in over the last five years and you spend more and more time on it, it has left you more and more drained, more blah, more tired, and with less time. That means you don't have the time or the energy to do the things that gave your life true meaning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that's the most important epiphany of all. Here you and I are sitting there at the end of a long workday making ourselves wrong because we're exhausted and overwhelmed and stressed out. And we now just spent two to three hours doom scrolling. We've blown past our bedtime. We feel bad that we just wasted that time. And then we wake up tomorrow and instead of going out for a walk or changing our habits, we just pick up the phone again and squeeze all the juice and the dopamine's gone again. And here we are trapped in this trap.
--:-- Mel Robbins: My huge, huge number one thing is, this is not your fault. The system's designed to do this to you, which is why you and I need to wake up and we need to recognize that the phone and social media is now the Hunger Games, that you and I became a tool, that it stole everything for us, but we do not have to live like that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Big tech and the phone and social, it's not going to change. In fact, it's going to get worse. So now's the time to understand that this can be a tool. It can be a tool for good, for connection, for growth, for learning, for art, for making great money, for making a difference in the world. It can be a tool for all kinds of amazing things, but only if you use it as that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The more boundaries that you create with this, the more you put it on grayscale, the more you keep it off your person, the more you look at it and go, "Ugh, I'm not stepping into the arena. Now that I see what it is, I'm not gonna do that to myself." What you're gonna get back is kind of extraordinary.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Number one, you're gonna get time back. Number two, you're gonna get energy back. Number three, you're gonna get your dopamine reserves back, which means your mood is gonna get boosted and your energy is gonna get lifted and so is your optimism and your excitement. And you're going to recognize, "Wow, there's a lot of other things that I'd like to be doing with my life and the time that I have other than just giving it over to big tech so other people can make money on me."
--:-- Mel Robbins: So thank you, thank you, thank you for hitting play. And thank you for sharing this with everybody in your life that you care about that has a phone. I think this is one of those conversations that I truly hope travels around the world to everybody. Because waking up and understanding what's happening and seeing where you are not at fault, but you've lost a little of your power, also helps you take that power back because you do have power.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I am so excited to see what happens in your life when you start using your phone and social media and the internet for good because you can. And in case no one else tells you this, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. There is no doubt in my mind that the conversation that we just had will help you create a better life because you now see how the rules have changed. You now see the game that's being played. And once you see it, you can change how you play the game, which means you, my friend, are going to be winning at it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All righty. I will see you in the very next episode. I will be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.
--:-- [Sound of music or transition]
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right. Here we go. Go, Jesse, go. Ten years ago, you didn't spend a lot. When was the cell phone? When was the smartphone, Trace? We were on our Blackberries, like checking emails.
--:-- [Unidentified speaker]: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, let me set this up real quick.
--:-- [Unidentified speaker]: Yeah, great.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great. Okay, great. Change the way you look. Oh, hold on. Or did you guys like the way that it opened?
--:-- [Unidentified speaker]: I think it worked great.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great. Then keep it. All right, keep going. Here we go. Overcomplicating as usual. Is that good?
--:-- [Unidentified speaker]: Great, great, great. Okay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.
--:-- [Mel Robbins reads disclaimer]
This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
