Your Phone Might Be Blocking Your Healing (Here’s the Plan) | Christen Routh: #168

Most people think screen time is a harmless habit. But what if it’s quietly training your brain against healing?

In this conversation, Christen Routh explains why doomscrolling feels like relief but often leaves you more anxious, more numb, and more alone. We talk about the real danger of screens, not just what they show you, but what they replace: real friendship, real presence, real growth. And we get practical about what to do instead, without going off-grid.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why screen overuse can mimic an addiction cycle and keep you stuck in escape mode

• How doomscrolling can increase loneliness through comparison and emotional crash

• How algorithms quietly shape your standards for love, friendship, and boundaries

• How to build a tech plan that makes your phone a tool again, not your master

Access the Family Digital Wellness Activity

Get in touch with Christen

Get Dakota’s FREE Guide, The Biggest Fitness Mistakes to Avoid

Watch the Documentary: Kenny

Watch the Trailer: Kenny (3:31 min)

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you'll receive the first chapters from our book, It's Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain and Problems from Your Parents' Divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Joey (00:52)

Welcome to the restored podcast. I'm Joey Panarelli. If you come from a divorced or dysfunctional family, this show is for you. We mentor you through the pain and help you heal so you can avoid repeating your family's dysfunction and instead build strong, healthy relationships. What if the reason you're still stuck isn't just your past trauma, but actually your phone? Most people think that screen time is just a harmless habit, but the truth is it can actually quietly train your brain against healing. You're not just wasting time. You might be rehearsing escape.

This might explain why you keep telling yourself that you'll change and then keep falling right back into the same screen time habits. Why real relationships feel harder than scrolling? Why you feel more numb or more anxious or even lonelier after you've been online? Because the real danger isn't only what's on the screen, it's also what the screen is replacing. Real friendships, real presence, real growth, real healing. In this episode, we're talking about how screens affect your brain, your healing, and your relationships. We break down

why doom scrolling feels like relief but often leaves you worse off after. We also touch on how algorithms subtly shape what you think about love and friendships, how they should actually look, and what it actually takes to get your life back. Not by going off the grid, but by building a plan that makes technology a tool and not a threat. My guest today is Kristin Roth. She spent the first arc of her career in Big Four Consulting, helping major organizations navigate emerging technology and ethical AI.

She's also completed a master's in clinical mental health counseling and she's been studying the brain, attention, anxiety, and the real world impact of screen life on families, teens, and young adults. Now, if you've ever felt like your phone is your coping mechanism, your way to escape the life you live, your way out of maybe the tension in your family, if you've ever put it down and thought, why do I feel so much worse? Or maybe you just want a simple, realistic way to build real life habits, real friendships, and.

find real peace, then this episode is for you. And with that, here's our conversation.

Kristen, so good to have you on the show, welcome. As you know, our audience comes from broken families, where the parents got divorced, there was a lot of dysfunction. They've experienced trauma, they have a lot of wounds that they're carrying, and naturally, they wanna heal those wounds, they wanna heal that trauma, and most maybe importantly, they wanna go on and build strong, healthy relationships that don't repeat those patterns that they grew up with, but one of the threats I've been thinking about lately that they face is...

Christen Routh (02:51)

Thank so much, Joey. Thanks for having

Joey (03:13)

screens as good as they can be, particularly the overuse of screens. And what I've been thinking about is that these screens, especially the overuse of screens really hurt our ability to heal, to grow and to build healthy relationships. Would you agree with that? And if so, was there a particular moment that you kind of woke up to this fact?

Christen Routh (03:31)

Yeah, so I definitely agree with that. I would say there have been a couple milestone moments. I would say there was a distinct moment when one of our daughters was young and obviously every mother thinks that their kids are the cutest. And I was recording a little video of her doing something sweet and she just looked up at me and she said, are you going to post that mom? And I said, what's posting? And that was a real light bulb moment that what was a very intimate familial experience. She was already keenly aware of, I think she was maybe four.

cause I've been off social media for a while, ⁓ that that made me really aware of how much of an impact that that had on her little very, you know, continuing to develop developing brain. ⁓ so that what I would say is a distinct one. ⁓ but there have been a number, but that's kind of the first one that comes to mind in terms of the family life.

Joey (04:18)

That totally makes sense. And kind of where did you go from there? I consider you an expert on this topic and this is something that I know you're going to be producing more resources around in the future, which I'm really excited about, by the way. But I'm curious kind of what led you from that point to this place that you are now.

Christen Routh (04:34)

Yeah. So I spent the first arc of my career in big four consulting. So I was helping these large global organizations just navigate all sorts of technology adoption, how to implement emerging technology. I love learning. Love it. Love it. Love it. I could go back to school forever if I had unlimited budget. And one of my bosses, super generous guy, Simon, I said like, Hey, I want to really

learn more about this AI thing. So he was able to help me go through one of those executive programs through MIT. And as I learned more about the technology, and I was supposed to be thinking about it and the way that it would be adopted by people in an organization, I just found myself in boardrooms talking about how to do these implementations and how to configure all of that technology in an ethical way so that

It was AI enabled, but human centered. But every conversation I started having headed back to, I would say just like the workplace as a community, and then actually to those individuals, families. And so even though I was meant to be talking about things that were very corporate, nine out of 10 times, it was talking about how families were navigating the use of technology and how they were adopting it. Particularly, I would say with.

children and teenagers. And then the conversation of course trickles into adults as well. But I would say that was the general path that led me to starting to study the brain a little bit more. I'm sure a lot of folks have heard of Jonathan Heights, Anxious Generation, Ano-Lemke, Dopamine Nation. Some of those texts were coming online as I started just as like...

for the record, like an educational growth experience, a master's in clinical mental health counseling. And so as I progressed, I started to learn a little bit more about the functionality. And then I realized, OK, now I'm talking more about that a little bit than I am about the core content of my consulting. And so that's kind of when I realized it was time to pivot.

Joey (06:37)

Wow. You cover so much ground and I love how it led you to where you are today. guess like, want to go a little bit deeper into that before we get into some of the nitty gritty, like, why do you care so much about this? Like obviously you had that experience with your daughter, you know, you're working in, you know, big consulting and everything, but I'm curious if there's anything in particular, like, why do you, why does this, you know, get you going, like make you want to help people in this area?

Christen Routh (06:58)

Yeah, it's funny. But when my husband and I first started dating, he had a smartphone and I did not. And we started dating in 2010. So smartphones were, I guess, issues on the market. The iPhone was 2007. And I think it started just as like a little bit of a competition. Joey, honestly, it was like, no, no, I think I can make it without, you know, naps on my phone. Like, I just wanted to cultivate like some of those like now we call them like 90 skills, right? How to get to a place without navigation, how to, you know, look something up.

without necessarily like having it in the palm of your hand. Had to call a friend and ask for a paint color instead of, you know, going on Pinterest and comparing with thousands of people. And I was, I think at that time, probably just a jealous girlfriend. And so I was like, Jim, you're like on your phone, you know, would you think about going back to a dumb phone? And he did. And it was very kind. And then I think I made it. I don't know, maybe, so my daughter was born in 2012 and I still didn't have a smartphone.

But somewhere between 2012 and 2014, I got my first iPhone and I realized that it was just pulling so much of my attention. And so what started kind of is like this game. You know, I had colleagues that were working, you know, in many countries and again, many global organizations say like, how can you have this job? How can you have little children? How can you do drop offs and pickups without having, you know, total and complete unfettered access? And so I think it started out more like.

I can do this, you know, and probably like a little bit of like the digging in. ⁓ but that when I started to realize is when my husband and I were out, you know, and our phones were away, that was distinctly different than our peers. And it was something that I kind of wanted to protect. So I don't think that there was ever a particular light bulb moment with our parenting, but we opted to limit screens early. I would not say our screen usage is perfect. So don't look to me for the exact model, but we thought, you know,

I think we had an iPad for about 15 minutes and we were like, this is not having a wonderful effect. Like you could, you could just kind of see the immediate reaction of like the little brain for wanting more and kind of the addictive nature. Then of course we hear, you know, Steve Jobs children, you know, weren't given access to iPads and all the, all the anecdotes that everybody already is aware of. I was like, I think we can do it. I think we can do it. So through that, and it's definitely been a learning journey again.

Not perfect, but just really encouraging families like, like this is kind of a cool adventure. Technology should be a tool that we use. We should not be kind of enslaved and, know, kind of in service to it.

candidly admit how they feel. And so just like kind of talking with friends and starting those little grassroots, like, Hey, do you think, know, Susie would want to wait until this grade? And, and now we've seen the blasphemy of a lot of these movements, like wait till eight, you know, to wait for a smartphone till eighth grade, or parents kind of gathering around and signing a petition, you know, okay, we've got 10 kids that are going to great. it, just became very alluring to.

encourage and walk with people that wanted to kind of put the genie back in the bottle. And then just like kind of how to come back to being human again, more on that at some point. but ultimately, yeah, you can see the kind of trick I don't like to do say and, you know, kind of say all the negative things we already know. So I think everybody's in agreement on the problem. But really, all it takes is us banding together to kind of resolve that.

But we're at that tipping point, societally, and it's kind of cool. I'm very hopeful. I know you said you have a new little one coming. By the time your son is 15, we're going to look back to now and be like, what goofball decisions were we making as a society? So I think we're figuring it out and I'm encouraged by that. And that's why, you know, just kind of seeing the unfortunate trade-offs, you know, just made me more and more want to help others say like, okay, I think we can do this. Not that I'm a hundred percent confident, but like let's step out and...

try it and then encourage others to do this.

Joey (10:55)

Love it. That's so good. I do think everyone's aware of the problem to some degree, but I feel like a lot of us maybe don't understand it at a deep level and I know you do. So I want to dig into that a little bit. this idea of like technology, stunting growth, preventing us from having these real relationships, all of that, that we talked about at the beginning. I want to dig into that a bit. So like what's happening? How big of a problem is this? Like break that down if you would, in case someone listening is like, yeah, I kind of know screens are a problem, but I don't really understand.

Christen Routh (11:21)

Well, so we have a lot of data that supports that some of the major impacts of screen use comes down to attention span. And so the way that a lot of content is created is to kind of keep you on it. Your attention is the thing that is the commodity for which companies are trying to kind of pull in either direction. And that in and of itself may not necessarily be super inherently bad. It's more around like when we think of it in

the family context. So there are some dangers, right, with the brain and kind of the dopamine cycle that happens with the reward pathway. You you kind of have the ability to like step on the gas or step on the brake. And if you keep stepping on the gas of your little brain, then it starts to imitate what we would kind of associate with an addiction cycle, right? So you kind of want more of that thing. It starts to have less of an impact over time. So you need a little bit.

more of it. And we have a lot of research around that part. But what we're starting to find with more research is a direct clinical link to increased rates of anxiety, particularly in young women. But I don't think anybody really is immune to the impacts of it. It's changing the way that we work significantly in the workplace, both how we connect and then through some of, for example, those clinical impacts of anxiety. What it's making is it's

harder to actually interact in real life because let's say, you know, you were, let's say you were born in 2015 and you were five when, you know, COVID came on the scene. And so you're a little COVID baby angel that had to navigate his or her first years of like, say kindergarten and you know, first grade, maybe it was online. Like that was more the standard for your developing brain of interaction. So it's.

as unnatural as it might seem to somebody born in the 80s, it became kind of that commonplace thing for a little brain. And then confluence of events, right? So then we have families looking very different than they did. And so with multiple working parents, with families that are navigating households living in different homes, there's a lot more hours of work being taken place by the parents in a way that, ⁓ yeah, technology is being leveraged to kind of help

candidly with filling the children's time. I don't want to say babysitting necessarily, but it's just a reality of the way that that has unfolded. And so when you have a child who maybe comes home and their leisure is, let's say, gaming for a bit, and maybe they're interacting with somebody online in real life, but then they consume, let's say, some television content. And then let's say they jump on a Chromebook and then they're doing their homework. We've just seen the screen time skyrocket.

So my daughter came home yesterday from health class and the kids had to pull out their phones to report their screen time. And the winner was at 59 hours a week. And an interesting insight to Joey is that she's in a phone free school. So that was all incurred for 7.25 AM and after 3.15 PM. And so that's just a lot of time. The issue is that when you go then to build a friendship,

They have to learn the basic skills of building friendships in real life, which is natural as that is for you. And for me, it's not, ⁓ for somebody that has kind of started from square one building those relationships, let's say with a video game system as the core interaction or a social media platform as the core interaction. And so ultimately, yeah, we're just doing our best to kind of give those gifts of how to be a friend because the secondary kind of dovetail.

trickiness is a lot of these young adults and teens and, you know, even young adolescent children, their expectations around friendship are being driven by an algorithm. And so they have wildly, I would say wildly different standards of love and what kindness or

You know, an expression of like tenderness could look like, and candidly on the flip side, the very kind of dark side of it is they're getting fed a lot of content that's, know, candidly dangerous. You know, I just saw, you know, somebody kind of create a profile posing as a 14 year old girl. within I think two hours of being on Snapchat and Instagram was already being fed, you know, self-harm content and, you know, lot of things algorithmically that we're talking specifically about loneliness. And so.

Again, we've all heard the anecdote. We're never as connected as we've ever been in history in terms of the number of relationships that we're cultivating because most of those are, digital. It's overwhelming and not what we would maybe consider real friendship in the sense of like, Hey, I love you. You love me. I'm going to disappoint you. You're going to disappoint me. We're going to suffer through this conflict together. And then.

You know, the way the culture has kind of navigated the discussion of boundaries has also made that exceedingly complex, particularly for parent and child relationships, and particularly young adult, child and middle age and aging parent relationships as well. So I could keep going, but I'll kind of pause there. I'm not sure if there's a thread you want to.

Joey (16:42)

Yeah, no, no, no, it's so good. It's good to hear all of this as hard as it is to talk about. And I think that, like you said, everyone kind of recognizes this as a problem, but no one really knows what to do about it. So maybe let's shift over there for a second and maybe we'll go back to the problem a little bit later. But what is the solution? Because I know on some ends, one end of the spectrum is just like to live a totally kind of techless life, which I know for some people either isn't realistic or it's not very attractive. It's like, you know, I...

Don't want that. So I'm curious, what's the solution, especially for our audience, like if it's a teenager or young adult listening who, you maybe they recognize like, yep, I use a lot of screen time and I maybe need to cut back. So I'm curious, yeah, what are the solutions? What are the options? Okay, real talk. If you've been trying to get in shape so you feel better physically and emotionally, but nothing is working, you're not crazy. I've been there myself. I recently read a free guide by Dakota Lane, a certified personal trainer who we've partnered with that's helped about a thousand people and

was really helpful for me personally. In the guide, he breaks down the biggest fitness mistakes that we all make like under eating, over stressing, or focusing too much on the scale. And he gives really simple practical tips that you could actually use that you can implement today. And so if you're tired of feeling like you're never gonna get in shape, just click on the link in the show notes and grab the guide today. It's totally free and it might just be the thing you need to start feeling healthier physically and emotionally.

Christen Routh (18:03)

Yeah, so I would say there's no one call to action. I think it's specific to each individual and I think it's specific to each family. I would say just evaluating for an individual that is capable of doing a self-evaluation. How it is that you use your screen is a great starting point, just kind of inventorying. Clinical intake will often as counselors do some basic questionnaires, you know, hey,

Tell me a little bit about like your family's mental health history and your sexual health history and things that are pretty intimate. And when we get to the, so I've actually folded in screen time as an intake question. And when we get to that question, there's deep shame for many, many individuals. They might say, I don't even want to look at it or I don't even want to think about it or I'm sure there's a, I'm sure there's a screen time app. And then those that are aware,

can kind of cite it right away. So they might say like, yeah, you know, it's three hours and 25 minutes. I've worked my way down from fat. So kind of that self-awareness around how you want to live your life intentionally with your devices is a great first step. ⁓ I wouldn't say that's necessarily the call to action. I do think, like I said, I'm very encouraged that there are individuals that are really starting to be intentional. So if you've already navigated that, let's say you've.

removed the devices that are unnecessary. Let's say maybe you've gotten out the home phone and you're encouraging your kids to call each other. I think the next gift, particularly for young people that parents can help is around cultivating friendships in real life. So just encouraging to get together in person where you are able. I remember being struck the first time.

when a young adult told me like, yeah, they'd been dating somebody for six months, but they'd never met in real life. That's a much more common paradigm now that we have, or they might cite chat or chatty as like one of their closest friends. And that's because they're very reliably available to them. And so it takes a little more work, but particularly as parents, parenting children in multiple households, it's just doing like the harder, more present thing, which is encouraging them to be together. So I always say like a basic thing like,

The child texts their friend, it's like, who are you texting? Susie? Like, okay, great. Invite her over. And it's kind of that simple, but that, that can be very anxiety producing right now for a lot of children. We kind of have to start somewhere. have to like grab that first rung of the ladder to, you know, kind of climb up and overcome ultimately the social anxiety piece that a lot of young people are experiencing with in-person interaction. I would also say hobbies is another thing that I really promote. Most young people now, if you say like, what do you like doing?

They won't lead with like, I love scrolling, you know, Instagram and like checking out like new recipes. Like it might be more subversive. They might say cooking, but then you find out they actually haven't picked up a knife yet. ⁓ and so just kind of encouraging that bridge from an online interest into an in real life hobby, because ultimately, you know, often we use that digital communication as a pastime because we're exhausted, but it's, it's inactive.

In the sense that we're not learning something, we're not building a skill, we're not growing. And the thing that we think that is bringing joy when we actually then put it down, it often you realize, and this is supported by data, that you are more sad after having done the scrolling and then the mental, you know, comparison of looking at somebody doing a hobby than actually just doing it yourself.

Joey (21:35)

Thank you for all that great advice. I love how tactical it is. The loneliness piece is really interesting. I've noticed it with our audience that relationships can feel extra scary when you come from, you know, a really dysfunctional family. Um, I think there's especially this fear. I know I felt this myself of like repeating what you grew up in. And so I think there is a temptation, like you said, to kind of go online where it might feel a bit safer. There's some distance. I can kind of present myself the way I want people to see me.

not all the flaws, but I think that, like you said, it just leaves us lonelier and even more unseen than before. But why is that, I guess? I'm curious, like, why does all that make us lonelier and more unseen?

Christen Routh (22:14)

Yeah, so kind of goes back to the addiction cycle of the reward pathway of the brain. It's kind of the same thing as coming down from a little bit of a high. So maybe the colors and the interaction feels very positive, but you often end up, like if you look at the kind of graph of the actual chemicals running through your brain afterwards, it's kind of the letdown. So that's the more biological explanation. But I would say if you were to ask most

Like young children, what are you thinking about after they leave an interaction on social media? It's often like, don't have what that person has comparison comparison being obviously a thief of joy. talk about often. also promotes, I would say the elimination of suffering, which is not practical. So when folks come in for a session and they'll kind of say like, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with this thing. Let's say depression or anxiety. We don't eliminate.

Depression, we don't eliminate anxiety. We learn how to suffer well through it. We can reduce it. We can learn ⁓ tools to more healthily cope with it, particularly in a family system. We can build up good boundaries for what is and isn't appropriate in friendships and relationships to help rewire the brain around what's been wired very counter-humanly.

And then something that you said that kind of struck me was, you know, how not to repeat, you know, perhaps something that was modeled for you as a child, whether that's, you know, let's say, interactions of conflict. It's also just being hopeful and maintaining that hope that like, Hey, I can learn. We know so much more about the brain now with neuroplasticity. That is one of the most like easily connected to the virtue of hope scientific facts like that we require our brains and like,

You know, this isn't, this isn't forever. Things can be for a season, but by the same token, it's, it's navigating that balance of my one brother very adorably says like before he was settled into his like future life vocation, like I was sad. I was a little depressed and then I found my vocation and I was sad and I was a little depressed. And that's kind of normal, but that's not really promoted through social media. So kind of helping young people read jigger and just say like, Hey, like you see my interaction with my best friend. Like we're not.

always in perfect relationship. There's only one real perfect relationship we believe in any sort of faith tradition and that's typically with your God. And we're just trying to model that. But ultimately in family communities, but also in workplace communities, it's modeling it, right? So modeling appropriate boundaries, modeling reasonable expectations, not exceedingly wild ones of,

well curated and beautifully photographed lives that, know, again, we know all the anecdotes. It's the child with or the teen with the most amazing sets of like reels and feeds that's struggling with, you know, suicidal ideation or, you know, loneliness just as much as the next person. And so to the extent that you can bring in that layer of authenticity, but model it like, Hey, I'm, I'm sad. Like I'm struggling. Like,

I wish I had this thing my 40 year old friend had like life or, you know, I'm sad, but you know what? This is also some joyful things. You know, we know a lot more about, you know, gratitude and the positive effect that has on the brain. But again, I think I go back frequently to a huge life skill. hear a lot about resilience and resilience is good to some degree, but it's also like when things are sad, when things are tough, when we are suffering, part of it is, is how to work with it.

Not like to circumvent it because that goes right back to that reward pathway and like just kind of the addiction cycle, like eliminate all things that are bad. Well, if you eliminate all things that are bad, that's not how your brain was made. And that's not good for your brain either. So, you know, just helping to navigate it, recognize the packets of joy, embrace that joy when it comes. But.

Joey (26:21)

Yeah. This episode is sponsored by Blackstone Films. They just released a new documentary called Kenny. It's about an ordinary Denver priest who lived like a true father and transformed families and inspired vocations. He would actually wake up at 430 every day to do an hour of adoration. His parishioners would ask him to pray for them and they actually got those prayers answered. Some even call them miracles. He had to shepherd his people through the Columbine shooting, if you guys remember that.

horrible, horrible event. He ate with the families in his parish every night of the week. He hiked with groups of young adults in the Rocky Mountains on Colorado, and he sat with couples on the brink of divorce, even saving a marriage, which they talk about in the documentary. And so if you want a hopeful model of leadership and fatherhood, something worth watching with maybe your spouse or your small group, watch Kenny. The trailer and the full film are now streaming on formed.org. You could just tap the link in the show notes to watch the full documentary.

or just the trailer. Again, thanks to Blackstone Films for sponsoring this episode and for telling such an inspiring story that I myself watched and really appreciate it. I wonder if what you said, like this desire to eliminate suffering is why we're seeing so many suicides. I know there's been so many, even with people I know, and it's such a sad thing, but I think, yeah, I've never heard it put in quite that way. And I think that's so accurate. And I think with our audience in particular, with the young people listening right now, for example, the young adults in particular,

I think a lot of us, a lot of them would recognize like, yeah, I am using my phone as like a way to soothe myself or to cope with all this pain in my life, all the problems in my family. So I guess like to that person listening right now, you already gave a lot of good advice, but would there be anything in particular you would say if someone kind of came to you and said, Hey, this is my coping mechanism. This is my escape. This is my way of like kind of getting out of the problems of my family. What would you say? Maybe what's one thing that they can do to maybe help do something a little bit healthier?

Christen Routh (28:16)

Yeah, I don't want to clarify the question. So are you, are you tying that to self harm specifically meaning if somebody is struggling with self harm or suicidality or just suffering.

Joey (28:26)

Yeah, great question. Not, wasn't talking about that in particular. Yeah. So it's a separate question of more just like a general struggle with like, yeah, you know, my parents are fighting or there's a lot of tension in my family. instead of maybe dealing with it or in this way, that way you're coping in a healthier way. They maybe are just doom scrolling.

Christen Routh (28:42)

So there are so many, but again, I think it comes back to the individual and they're gonna know the best. I think I reflect back to just the self-awareness. So we have so many tools now and I expect, I would say in the next 12 to 24 months, we're gonna see a lot more tools available. So something actually one of my British colleagues mentioned it offhand knowing, like I chatter about this all the time during my.

other role as a, as an executive assistant. And it's actually, it's called the brick. So this is a tool where you can, at this point, I should be asking for commission. This is not sponsored, but does not know of my very humble existence, but you tap your phone and you select to essentially eliminate the use of any app on your phone. And you can put parameters around that. And very brilliantly, they'll say like, start with five apps. But once you leave the house, you can't.

Access that it's not like a screen time limit where you can ignore it and override it. It's it. You have like five lifetime, like get out of jail for free cards. But then after that, you need to buy a new one, which is great. but there are so many tools like that, that if you're looking really just to, like I said, kind of get on the first rung of the ladder, recognizing how you use it and then potentially leveraging a tool, there's many, many other digital tools available. Brook is just happens to be one, but it is a lot easier.

I'm going to tie it back to the hobbies. It is a lot easier to turn away from something when you have something else true, beautiful, or good to turn towards. And so like the thing that I pray for for my children is one good friend. And so if you can just imagine, you know, I think of my childhood and, know, I think of my daughter who has 56 more hours than the girl sitting next to her in health class. Like what's she doing with her time? You know, she's doing.

all things that are fun and true and good and beautiful. And it's like a lot of hobbies and, know, it doesn't have to, you know, again, a lot of young people go immediately to athletics. I was not an athlete. I was a musician, but to be able to cultivate that in a way that also doesn't become like automatically very competitive. We've seen a huge shift in families where, you know, we, kind of had this proliferation of unfortunately like promoting like.

Hey, there's kidnappers everywhere in your neighborhood. so parents came to kind of zoom in and we've seen a lot more helicoptering and results of that. And so we've never spent as much time supervising children as we have, but just really giving them the ability to cultivate creativity and free play. That's ultimately the stuff that pulls you away from the doom scroll. It's having something that you love more. And, you know, again, for people of faith, it's like, when will I stop using my phone? Well, when I realized I love God more than my phone, it's like, well. ⁓

That is good. But yeah, I think, again, it's hard, particularly for younger children to learn that without mom and dad modeling that. so, you know, that line, you know, are they going to remember your eyes or are they going to remember the back of your phone? It's like, you know, but it's it's just the reality. So the best gift you can give your kids is be interested in things other than your phone and show them that a creative and, you know, hobby filled and friend filled life is is a good one.

Joey (31:59)

Yeah, no, I love it. And I think you're wise to say that it's going to be personalized and customized to everyone. But I think the principles that you're sharing, I think are applicable to everyone. And I love that whole idea of like a push towards the real, toward experience, toward even like tangible things. It's really interesting. Like a lot of my friends now, I'm just looking around to like hobbies they're getting into. And it's like, it's all like away from a screen. It's very tangible. Like, you one of them is really into like farming now and

you others are into other things and it seems to be yeah this move towards like feeling dirt or something and not not so high tech.

Christen Routh (32:34)

Exactly. And we're seeing that with young adults. For those that are maybe, let's say in the 21 to 25 range who was handed a smartphone, maybe as an eight or a 10 year old before screen time limits existed, they feel the impacts. They're the first ones to say like, I've taken up fly fishing and I now, you know, know how to basket weave. They have, there's such a return to those hobbies for that younger generation.

And the first thing that they'll say is, my kids will never have an iPad. My kids will never have a phone. kid, like they lived it and they know, they know how much they have struggled as a result of it. And so that's why I'm encouraged, even though right now I do think the climate cultural message is a little bit like doomsday, particular around artificial intelligence, but like.

It's not going away. So I'm a big proponent of how do we make this like an exciting adventure where we can provide people the guidance for its good and ethical usage to put the genie back in the bottle in a way that it becomes a tool for us. ⁓

Joey (33:30)

Yeah, no, I would agree with you on that. And I think there's a lot of good coming to it, even though I a lot of people are being negative, but that's another conversation for another time. Okay. So imagine a young adult's listening right now and they've heard a little bit of like some of the signs of like, your screen time is like really high, other things like that. Maybe they're, you know, feeling a certain way, but what are some of the other maybe like warning signs that like, Hey, you need a break from the screen. Is there anything, ⁓ a list of things perhaps that you would give them? know we've thrown around a few things already, but I'm curious, like if you would say, look out for this.

Christen Routh (34:00)

So I don't know that there's any, again, like out of the box things to be aware of. I would say anecdotally, those that struggle more as a clinician, I might say, you know, any unprocessed trauma back there, you know? And so just kind of your subconscious has such an impact on the way you move. I'm sure it's come up. I know many greats have gone before me on this podcast. So I'm sure somebody covered that, but yeah. And just meaning like,

Cool. What are you here for? Because ultimately when you're struggling, so what's interesting is like it is difficult with young adults to promote it per se as tech addiction and kind of invite them on into a tech addiction clinic because there is that shame. But if we start with what are you living for? What's your purpose? What's your meaning? And obviously we're not expecting a 21 year old junior in university to be able to answer that articulately that it's a curve. It'll change. 21 will look different than 31.

But yeah, what are you, what are you living for? So one counseling technique, particularly for those that work with individual struggling with addiction, it's called motivational interviewing and motivational interviewing. It's just this most kind, gentle, compassionate way to approach. What are you motivated to do? do you really, in this case, if it were to be, ⁓ an actual, let's say physical substance to which somebody was addicted, like, okay, great. Like tell me about your relationship with heroin. Like, well.

What, what does it always given you? What is it providing to you? What do you, okay. Tell me more. It does not, it does not kind of demand or command that motivation should be something. It continues to open up and walk down the path until they find their intrinsic motivation. It's really the same thing with smartphones. If somebody is not internally motivated and does not know the meaning for which they are living their, why their purpose, their, at least like some sense of identity.

really hard to kind of convince somebody to be motivated to put something else away. So

Joey (36:00)

I agree. Yeah. And I love that technique because I definitely am a firm believer. One of my mentors kind of instilled this in me that everyone actually already has all the motivation they need. It's just

buried deep within them and they have to uncover it. have to discover it. But once they do, my goodness, people will do incredible things. It's, about finding that why like Nietzsche said, know, a few, yeah, I forget the exact quote, but you know, a man with a why can endure almost any house, something like that. And I think that's so true. You know, I found that in areas of my life, something I'm always trying to live better, but yeah, I think that's really, really good advice. Not, not what I was expecting you to say, but I think that's really beautiful. Cause, cause at the end of the day, if we kind of zoom out and look at it, it's like technology,

You know, smartphones in particular screens, there's just a tool and you know, if they're running our lives because we're addicted to them, ⁓ that's a sad existence. But the good news is there's a better way. There's a better existence and that can just be a piece, a tool, something that you carry with you to, you know, to accomplish some greater meaning, like you said. And I think that's a much more hopeful message because, because I, you know, I don't want this podcast to sound.

super down on technology. love technology and I know you do too, right? Like we've been able to do so many great things with, you know, helping people to exit poverty, to, you helping people have better health. I know there's like problems in all these areas for sure, but there's been so many improvements, you know, in the business world and just like in humanity overall. But of course it's a two edged sword. comes with a lot of problems, but, I think I love this approach. Like you were saying that it's just, it's a tool and it matters like where you point it.

Christen Routh (37:30)

Exactly. And I think what, when we're kind of rationalizing our use of it, we talk about how it connects us as a community, which it does. And that's one of its wonderful uses. But I'll say, for example, a shift in the workplace with that connectivity that has had a trade off, right? So let's say in my early days of when I was an auditor, we would, you know, when my dad was young and he was, you know, a CFO and somebody asked for a work paper.

And it was five o'clock and he was on his way home. First of all, he didn't have a cell phone to call, right? To ask him for that thing. Maybe halfway through his career, he had an email. You waited until 9 a.m. And so there was a lot more segmenting around the workplace and the workplace community. Now it is nice if you're the auditor that's going to be in the room till midnight. You can call the CFO. You can ask, you know, I can ask for the work paper. They email it. They ping it forward. But that constant connectivity and that.

work-life integration has kind of trickled into everything then. And so again, just being intentional about how it is that you want that tool to be used in your family and then agreeing with, you know, your life partner on how you want that to unfold or if there's multiple parents in the mix, just trying to sing from the same song sheet is one of the easiest ways to try to kind of make it that tool again, because ultimately, even though circling back, it was meant to be

a supplement or an augmentation of connection, it has replaced a lot of connection. So now let's say you have a colleague. I remember very distinctly, actually, I had a new client that was put on my plate in 2020 and I didn't meet them in person for almost three years. And then after having met in real life, the entire relationship changed in the best sense of it. And the ability to work together was just like absolutely.

skyrocketed and just changed in a way that I did not expect. And so I think that personal experience, again, I don't have the data to support that per se, but I think even from like a workplace efficacy because of task switching and because of the constant connectivity and because of a number of those other things, it's actually, that's where it's becoming actually deleterious to our ability to do work well and then to do work.

in community and it's the same thing with every community. So schools, know, PTO, used to be like just all in-person parents rallying around a thing and now it's, know, sign up genius and this and that. And that's not all bad. Some of those things are really good and super helpful, but it eliminates, you know, do you know all your children's friends, parents from having had an in-person interaction or is it more like, yeah, you know, we set them up to let's say play a video game together and.

They've been at one birthday party and I dropped them off, I didn't get so that in-person community. But right now it's funny. There's just still like this little bit of shame around just kind of popping into the center of a parent group of parents and saying like, Hey, I'm blank blanks mom. And like, you know, it's great to meet you because we we've kind of lost that art of, you know, kind of in-person networking. know that's something that you're very gifted and, kind of seeing people and putting together their, I call them Venn diagrams.

If you never have that opportunity or you're a remote worker exclusively, like you can't bump into anyone in the elevator. Online school is wonderful for some students, but it is harder to naturally develop a best friendship if that person is in Florida and you're in Georgia, you know, those types of things.

Joey (41:02)

Totally, no, I've seen them in the work sphere, like you said, without spending too much time on this. remember just, you know, we had a, last company was, we were completely remote. I was one of the leaders in the company and meeting the team members was huge. It was awesome. Just I was able to better lead them. You know, my colleagues as well, like the other leaders, like I was able to, yeah, just work. Like it's like, almost like it shifted overnight when you kind of meet them in person. So I think there's something very good and real about that, about, you know, meeting in person. And like you said, it.

goes into every area of life. so yeah, no, think there's going to be a lot in the future about doing like real experiences. There's a lot of opportunity there and a lot of people who want that. So no, so good. I was curious, you know, we've kind of thrown little nuggets here or there, but I'm curious if there's any, um, anecdote or story or study that kind of shows the benefits of just getting more of a handle on this. Like, like what are the results? Like what, what does the data say or what do you do at least stories anecdotes say about like, if you

get more mastery over this, will maybe make you happier, whatever the result is, especially when it comes to maybe healing and growth and relationships.

Christen Routh (42:06)

So I am far from the expert on happiness, but in our broader community, Dr. Arthur Brooks, who I highly recommend, is in fact a happiness expert. So I definitely would gear people towards his body of work, which shows the data that aligns to some of the things that we've been talking about. Those with a purpose and a meaning will for sure have an easier time of being happier more often. We see in Jonathan Haidt's work,

Instances of anxiety are certainly going to be decreased as screen time decreases. So we have that at this point, like I said, with that tipping point. I think if you come back to me this time next year or this time three years from now, there's going to be so much more available data because it now has so very many sets of eyeballs focused on it. But I would say those are just, yes, anecdotally some of those things that we had already talked about with.

some of those other experts in those key.

Joey (43:03)

areas. Love it. Yeah. And one story I would throw in is, you know, when I went to Franciscan University studying in Austria at that time, I didn't have a smartphone until after college and going over there, you know, my regular phone didn't work. And this is at a time where I don't even remember if I had like an iPad or something, but, but yeah, they gave us like these dumb phones and we could buy minutes to add onto them, which is so foreign to a lot of people listening right now. But, my goodness, Kristen, that was like one of the happiest few months of my life.

I just, loved it. It was so good. You know, just hanging out with friends, the 180 of us who were there, you got to know them real well. Yeah, there were problems, but you you work through those problems and going on hikes, playing sports, you know, going to waterfalls and diving through caves and doing all this like beautiful, beautiful views of the Austrian Alps.

Christen Routh (43:51)

You are the original ice bath champion, I'm sure. Myself, but there was one wired phone down the hallway that we had to share and like a phone outside. I didn't even have it

Joey (43:55)

Not me, but...

Okay, yeah, yeah, that was.

Christen Routh (44:07)

abroad.

And I remember Skype becoming an actual product when I did, I was a French major undergrad and it was like mind blowing. Again, that's the joys of both sides of things, you know, the ability to connect with your family at home without it being $17 a minute was great, but then being disconnected from your family at home so that you had these experiences of independence and failing and resolving and

you know, learning in a foreign country, you know, that's so different. I do giggle now because now I hear about students, you know, with cell phones and, you know, taking like Airbnb reservations as they're like walking in. like, there was some gift though, and having to plan and learn, but it's cool. You see, you know, I think you're familiar with Andrew Lobacher and the work that he's doing with Humanality and encouraging students to go back to those phones. They're learning life skills that they haven't had the opportunity, I'm sure, to cultivate, uh, just because of circumstance. so.

Joey (45:05)

Totally.

Christen Routh (45:06)

it they will be as formed young adults having to navigate it. Even if it's a little more painful, even if it's a little patience inducing, yeah, life's as my dad always says, is a lot about waiting. So the faster we embrace that, but yeah, the culture is preaching the opposite. So it is hard a little bit to reconcile those things until we settle.

Joey (45:08)

Yeah, no.

If you come from a divorced or broken family, or maybe you know someone who does, we offer more resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and much more. All of our resources are designed to help you heal from the trauma that you've endured and build virtue so you can break that cycle and build a better life. And so if you want to view those resources for yourself or someone that you know, just go to restoredministry.com slash resources or click on the link in the show notes.

Yeah, no, there's these big machines, like you said at the beginning, that want all of our attention. And so we're fighting an uphill battle, but I agree. think that the pendulum is going to swing and we're going to see some real change. Yeah, so good. And maybe one challenge I would leave people with and feel free to throw something in as well is just like, whether you're married or not, sitting down, if you're married, you know, with your spouse, fiance, whatever, and just coming up with like a simple plan of like, this is what we want our family to do when it comes to technology.

Or if you're just a single person on your own, this is kind of how I want my life to look. Because I think so often in my life, it sounds so simple and so basic that I'm almost too simple to be effective, but it's like, we just lack the design aspect, the intentionality. And when we actually sit down, we realize, no, this thing has been kind of on autopilot controlling me, dictating what I do. And I just want to be the one in charge. And I think everyone wants that. And so maybe that's one challenge with you.

Yeah, put the phone away, get out a piece of paper and a pen, which I know sounds kind of foreign. And maybe write out a little bit of like what you want that to look like for my family. What that looked like is we were spending too much time watching movies. You we don't watch like regular TV, but it was just too much time on movies and screens. And so we actually just took the TV down and it was just an experiment that we were just running. Like, let's just do this for a month and see what happens. We could always put it right back. Yeah, it's going to take, you know, 15, 20 minutes, but it's still sitting in another room.

we're not using it's awesome. Now we still will watch movies from time to time on a laptop or an iPad, but that's like even, you know, limited now. So we feel we're in a much better spot that the iPhone, I'll have to report back to you guys on that one. I'm doing, you know, I do better, but I feel like I can improve there. But I think that's sort of intentional and not that we've done it perfectly by any means, I think is, one of the keys. So that would be my challenge, but what would you say?

Christen Routh (47:35)

Yeah. So building off that, I think it's again, making your individualized and tailored plan. There are so many tools now and so many people that are navigating the creation of materials to help you. So I mentioned humanality. They're encouraging people to build like just in real life villages. And there is something to kind of rally around. have some cool, it's almost like a scouting where you get badges and you kind of earn stickers as you do little milestones that are screen limited.

Um, I talked already a little bit about the brick. One, one thing that we do in our household, every child that comes through the door, we have the talk the first time they visit us that phones live in our phone charging basket. They are welcome to stand next to the counter at the entire duration of the play date. They are not, not permitted. They are always allowed access to their phone. Um, it has to be plugged into the wall, which you can kind of watch. mean, my children's friends are all adorable and amazing.

you can kind of watch. It takes a few minutes to like untether. they're like, okay, they're walking past it in the kitchen. They're like, you're like trying to, you know, okay, or they might, they might check it a few times at the outset, but far and away once the phones are away, they just play and they play age appropriately in a way that they wouldn't if the cameras were out and the recording was going and they just get to, they just get to be little. So that's kind of like a cool way. So Jimmy and I tried to do that. My husband

I just put your phone away. So it kind of takes like the no phones at the dinner table to the next level. And then, yeah, just, but I would echo what you have already said. When I give talks in communities, we have a guide for how to go through some of those questions as a family and as a family plus community, because often families are living in two or three households in a community.

And like I said, when you're kind of singing from that same song sheet, it makes it a little easier to be consistent so that it's not like, well, when I'm at dad's house, I get to do whatever I want. When I'm at mom's house, she makes me put. So just having that real unified front, particularly in co-parenting is a wonderful way to help reinforce that. I will also say that every time I call a mom or a dad and I tell them about our phone rule, just so that they know, call the house phone if you need your child, because they're not going to text you back because it's in the basket.

I'm always bracing myself like they're going to be upset and I've never been met with anything other than that's awesome. Wow. And everybody's supportive. my gosh, I wish we did that. And then I say like, we can too, like let's, let's try to do it because a lot of that, you know, even when we talk about, yeah, big tech, it's like, if we didn't use it, it wouldn't exist. Right. We're the ones that are promoting and perpetuating its existence. So

Joey (50:16)

Dang. So good on that note. And I love that. And those questions, is there any way for people to get access to those? That's okay. If not, I just figured I'd ask.

Christen Routh (50:23)

If you don't mind sharing my contact information, always happy. But yeah, we call it again, positive spin, like a whole family or a whole community adventure of how to navigate just digital wellbeing. Because when it is a tool in service to us, we are, our wellbeing is higher and healthier and happier.

Joey (50:38)

Awesome. Yeah, maybe we'll try to put a link to it just so you don't have to coordinate all that, but that's amazing. Well, so good to have you on the show. I'm really glad that we had this conversation. Two final things. ⁓ One, how can people find you online? And then two, I want to give you the last word. Yeah, what maybe final advice or encouragement would you offer, especially to the young people listening right now who come from broken families, they've struggled a lot. Whatever final advice and encouragement would you give them?

Christen Routh (51:05)

Yeah. So I, as I mentioned, when my opening story, the minute my daughter asked me about posting, I eliminated Facebook and Instagram and all that good stuff. So I am only on the internet on LinkedIn. So I am happy to always receive folks that want to connect and chat about this through LinkedIn. And if there's one thing that I could tell young people, you're loved, you're lovable. It's if, if they all could believe that all the other stuff goes away, that's really the core of it.

Joey (51:37)

That wraps up this episode of this podcast. helped you, feel free to subscribe and rate or review the show. You'll avoid missing future episodes and help us reach more people too. In closing, always remember you're not doomed to repeat your family's dysfunction. You can break that cycle and build a better life. And we are here to help and keep in mind the words of CSU who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.