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How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition

The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

Author Catherine Price
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Paperback
$15.99 US
Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed | Ten Speed Press
5"W x 7"H x 0.64"D  
On sale Feb 04, 2025 | 240 Pages | 9780593837160
Grades 6-12
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Now fully revised and updated, this evidence-based, user-friendly guide presents a 30-day digital detox plan that will help you set boundaries with your phone and live a more joyful and fulfilling life.

“If you are a human being and you own a smartphone, you need this book.”—Jonathan Haidt, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation

Do you feel addicted to your phone? Do you frequently pick it up “just to check,” only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Does social media make you anxious? Have you tried to spend less time mindlessly scrolling—and failed? If so, this book is your solution.

In How to Break Up with Your Phone, award-winning health and science journalist and TED speaker Catherine Price presents a hands-on 30-day digital detox guide to breaking up—and then making up—with your phone. The goal: better mental health, improved screen-life balance, and a long-term relationship with technology that feels good.

Now fully revised to reflect advances in the technological landscape, this groundbreaking book features new expert advice and research on the science of addiction, with expanded chapters explaining how social media and algorithms are designed to addict us, impairing our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories; and an updated section on the unique dangers social media poses to children, with brand-new tips on how to protect them.

Also newly expanded is How to Break Up with Your Phone’s life-changing, evidence-based 30-day plan that will guide you—and your friends and family—through the process of creating new, healthy relationships with your smartphone, tablet, or other digital devices.

Whether you’re seeking refuge from an exhausting news cycle or you’re concerned about the negative effects of social media, How to Break Up with Your Phone offers practical solutions. It’s guaranteed to help you put down your phone—and come back to life.
Dubbed “the Marie Kondo of Brains” by The New York Times, Catherine Price is an award-winning health and science journalist and speaker, founder of Screen/Life Balance and the author of books, including How to Break Up with Your Phone and Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food. Her work has appeared in The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, O: The Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Slate, Men’s Journal, Self, and Outside, among others. Her goal is to help people scroll less and live more. View titles by Catherine Price
Let’s get something clear from the start: the point of this book is not to get you to throw your phone under a bus. Just as breaking up with a person doesn’t mean that you’re swearing off all human relationships, “breaking up” with your phone doesn’t mean that you’re trading in your touch screen for a rotary dial. 

After all, there are lots of reasons for us to love our smartphones. They’re cameras. They’re DJs. They help us keep in touch with family and friends, and they know the answers to every piece of trivia we could ever think to ask. They tell us about the traffic and the weather; they store our calendars and our contact lists. Smartphones are amazing tools.

But something about smartphones also makes us act like tools. Most of us find it hard to get through a meal or a movie or even a stoplight without pulling out our phones. On the rare occasions when we accidentally leave them at home or on our desk, we reach for them anyway, and feel anxious, again and again, each time we realize they’re not there. If you’re like most people, your phone is within arm’s reach right this very second, and the mere mention of it is making you want to check something. Like the news. Or your texts. Or your email. Or the weather. Or, really, anything at all.

Go ahead and do it. And then come back to this page and notice how you feel. Are you calm? Focused? Present? Satisfied? Or are you feeling a bit scattered and uneasy, vaguely stressed without really knowing why?

Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we’re beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good. We feel busy but ineffective. Connected but lonely. The same technology that gives us freedom can also act like a leash—and the more tethered we become, the more it raises the question of who’s actually in control. The result is a paralyzing tension: we love our phones, but we often hate the way they make us feel. And no one seems to know what to do about it. 

The problem isn’t smartphones themselves. The problem is our relationships with them. Smartphones have infiltrated our lives so quickly and so thoroughly that we have never stopped to think about what we actually want our relationships with them to look like—or what effects these relationships might be having on our lives.

We’ve never stopped to think about which features of our phones make us feel good, and which make us feel bad. We’ve never stopped to think about why smartphones are so hard to put down, or who might be benefiting when we pick them up. We’ve never stopped to think about what spending so many hours engaged with our devices might be doing to our brains, or whether a device billed as a way to connect us to other people might actually be driving us apart. 

“Breaking up” with your phone means giving yourself a chance to stop and think. 

It means noticing which parts of your relationship are working and which parts are not. It means setting boundaries between your online and offline lives. It means becoming conscious of how and why you use your phone—and recognizing that your phone is manipulating how and why you use it. It means undoing the effects that your phone has had on your brain. It means prioritizing real-life relationships over those that take place on screens.

Breaking up with your phone means giving yourself the space, freedom, and tools necessary to create a new, long-term relationship, one that keeps what you love about your phone and gets rid of what you don’t. A relationship, in other words, that makes you feel healthy and happy—and over which you have control.
Copyright © 2018 by Catherine Price. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
“I wrote The Anxious Generation to help adults improve the lives of children. Many readers have asked me for a version of the book aimed at helping adults and teens help themselves. Catherine Price has written the best such book. How to Break Up with Your Phone is deeply researched, yet playful. It is hard hitting but will touch your heart gently. Above all, it will help you regain your attention, your time, and your life in just thirty days. If you are a human being and you own a smartphone, you need this book.”—Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, New York University–Stern School of Business, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Anxious Generation

“The Marie Kondo of brains . . . for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again."—Kevin Roose, The New York Times

“A slim, insight-packed volume that's both a primer on the toll smartphone overuse can take on our mental and physical health, and a practical manual for a 30-day reset designed to put you on a path to moderation, this is a book whose message couldn't feel more timely, or more urgent. (No, really: after finishing the whole thing in one horrified sitting, I immediately pre-ordered 3 more copies for friends and family.)”—Sarah Karnasiewicz, Health

“Price dissects the way her phone has impacted her personal and professional lives, and gives practical advice on how to forge a healthier relationship with technology—without the fear mongering.”—Refinery29

“The most important book I've read in years. Life-changing.”—Sali Hughes, The Pool

“Could be one of the most important books to be published in recent times.”—9Honey

“To design a more joyful life includes reframing some of our old perceptions and habits. Almost no single thing in modern life deserves a reframe more than the smartphone. In How To Break Up with Your Phone, Price offers an accessible and clever way to accomplish that reframe and discover more time and energy for a better life.”—Dave Evans, coauthor of Designing Your Life and adjunct lecturer in the Product Design Program, Stanford University

“Price's book is an invaluable guide of how--in the author's own words—to turn your phone back into a tool, not a temptation. In these dopamine-drenched days of the smartphone era, hours can be lost to the mindless scroll. Price's easily digestible tome is practical, not preachy, and a must-have for even the worst phubber.”—Pandora Sykes, journalist and former Fashion Features Editor at The Sunday Times Style

“Fascinating, entertaining and extremely timely. Your phone is an abusive partner—get rid now.”—Will Storr, author of Selfie

About

Now fully revised and updated, this evidence-based, user-friendly guide presents a 30-day digital detox plan that will help you set boundaries with your phone and live a more joyful and fulfilling life.

“If you are a human being and you own a smartphone, you need this book.”—Jonathan Haidt, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation

Do you feel addicted to your phone? Do you frequently pick it up “just to check,” only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Does social media make you anxious? Have you tried to spend less time mindlessly scrolling—and failed? If so, this book is your solution.

In How to Break Up with Your Phone, award-winning health and science journalist and TED speaker Catherine Price presents a hands-on 30-day digital detox guide to breaking up—and then making up—with your phone. The goal: better mental health, improved screen-life balance, and a long-term relationship with technology that feels good.

Now fully revised to reflect advances in the technological landscape, this groundbreaking book features new expert advice and research on the science of addiction, with expanded chapters explaining how social media and algorithms are designed to addict us, impairing our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories; and an updated section on the unique dangers social media poses to children, with brand-new tips on how to protect them.

Also newly expanded is How to Break Up with Your Phone’s life-changing, evidence-based 30-day plan that will guide you—and your friends and family—through the process of creating new, healthy relationships with your smartphone, tablet, or other digital devices.

Whether you’re seeking refuge from an exhausting news cycle or you’re concerned about the negative effects of social media, How to Break Up with Your Phone offers practical solutions. It’s guaranteed to help you put down your phone—and come back to life.

Author

Dubbed “the Marie Kondo of Brains” by The New York Times, Catherine Price is an award-winning health and science journalist and speaker, founder of Screen/Life Balance and the author of books, including How to Break Up with Your Phone and Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food. Her work has appeared in The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, O: The Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Slate, Men’s Journal, Self, and Outside, among others. Her goal is to help people scroll less and live more. View titles by Catherine Price

Excerpt

Let’s get something clear from the start: the point of this book is not to get you to throw your phone under a bus. Just as breaking up with a person doesn’t mean that you’re swearing off all human relationships, “breaking up” with your phone doesn’t mean that you’re trading in your touch screen for a rotary dial. 

After all, there are lots of reasons for us to love our smartphones. They’re cameras. They’re DJs. They help us keep in touch with family and friends, and they know the answers to every piece of trivia we could ever think to ask. They tell us about the traffic and the weather; they store our calendars and our contact lists. Smartphones are amazing tools.

But something about smartphones also makes us act like tools. Most of us find it hard to get through a meal or a movie or even a stoplight without pulling out our phones. On the rare occasions when we accidentally leave them at home or on our desk, we reach for them anyway, and feel anxious, again and again, each time we realize they’re not there. If you’re like most people, your phone is within arm’s reach right this very second, and the mere mention of it is making you want to check something. Like the news. Or your texts. Or your email. Or the weather. Or, really, anything at all.

Go ahead and do it. And then come back to this page and notice how you feel. Are you calm? Focused? Present? Satisfied? Or are you feeling a bit scattered and uneasy, vaguely stressed without really knowing why?

Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we’re beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good. We feel busy but ineffective. Connected but lonely. The same technology that gives us freedom can also act like a leash—and the more tethered we become, the more it raises the question of who’s actually in control. The result is a paralyzing tension: we love our phones, but we often hate the way they make us feel. And no one seems to know what to do about it. 

The problem isn’t smartphones themselves. The problem is our relationships with them. Smartphones have infiltrated our lives so quickly and so thoroughly that we have never stopped to think about what we actually want our relationships with them to look like—or what effects these relationships might be having on our lives.

We’ve never stopped to think about which features of our phones make us feel good, and which make us feel bad. We’ve never stopped to think about why smartphones are so hard to put down, or who might be benefiting when we pick them up. We’ve never stopped to think about what spending so many hours engaged with our devices might be doing to our brains, or whether a device billed as a way to connect us to other people might actually be driving us apart. 

“Breaking up” with your phone means giving yourself a chance to stop and think. 

It means noticing which parts of your relationship are working and which parts are not. It means setting boundaries between your online and offline lives. It means becoming conscious of how and why you use your phone—and recognizing that your phone is manipulating how and why you use it. It means undoing the effects that your phone has had on your brain. It means prioritizing real-life relationships over those that take place on screens.

Breaking up with your phone means giving yourself the space, freedom, and tools necessary to create a new, long-term relationship, one that keeps what you love about your phone and gets rid of what you don’t. A relationship, in other words, that makes you feel healthy and happy—and over which you have control.
Copyright © 2018 by Catherine Price. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise

“I wrote The Anxious Generation to help adults improve the lives of children. Many readers have asked me for a version of the book aimed at helping adults and teens help themselves. Catherine Price has written the best such book. How to Break Up with Your Phone is deeply researched, yet playful. It is hard hitting but will touch your heart gently. Above all, it will help you regain your attention, your time, and your life in just thirty days. If you are a human being and you own a smartphone, you need this book.”—Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, New York University–Stern School of Business, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Anxious Generation

“The Marie Kondo of brains . . . for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again."—Kevin Roose, The New York Times

“A slim, insight-packed volume that's both a primer on the toll smartphone overuse can take on our mental and physical health, and a practical manual for a 30-day reset designed to put you on a path to moderation, this is a book whose message couldn't feel more timely, or more urgent. (No, really: after finishing the whole thing in one horrified sitting, I immediately pre-ordered 3 more copies for friends and family.)”—Sarah Karnasiewicz, Health

“Price dissects the way her phone has impacted her personal and professional lives, and gives practical advice on how to forge a healthier relationship with technology—without the fear mongering.”—Refinery29

“The most important book I've read in years. Life-changing.”—Sali Hughes, The Pool

“Could be one of the most important books to be published in recent times.”—9Honey

“To design a more joyful life includes reframing some of our old perceptions and habits. Almost no single thing in modern life deserves a reframe more than the smartphone. In How To Break Up with Your Phone, Price offers an accessible and clever way to accomplish that reframe and discover more time and energy for a better life.”—Dave Evans, coauthor of Designing Your Life and adjunct lecturer in the Product Design Program, Stanford University

“Price's book is an invaluable guide of how--in the author's own words—to turn your phone back into a tool, not a temptation. In these dopamine-drenched days of the smartphone era, hours can be lost to the mindless scroll. Price's easily digestible tome is practical, not preachy, and a must-have for even the worst phubber.”—Pandora Sykes, journalist and former Fashion Features Editor at The Sunday Times Style

“Fascinating, entertaining and extremely timely. Your phone is an abusive partner—get rid now.”—Will Storr, author of Selfie

Additional formats

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How to Break Up with Your Phone: A Message from the Author to Educators

Contributed by Catherine Price, health and science journalist and author of How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan. Now fully revised and updated, with expanded chapters explaining how social media and algorithms are designed to addict us and an updated section on the unique dangers social media poses

Read more

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Middle School Psychology Student Success Education & Professional Learning Health, Sports, Games, and Crafts Computer & Information Technology High School

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