Put Your Cell Phone In Its Place: Strategies for Less Screen Time and More Real Life

How can we loosen the grip of our devices? Do we own them or do they own us? Joey Odom is the founder of ARO, a company committed to helping us spend less time on our phones.

Too much screen time can have a negative impact on our psychological and physical health. Depression, suicidal ideation, and anxiety are real outcomes from investing too much time on social media. In some ways, our phones have become like pacifiers and comfort objects for many of us. Today, Joey offers numerous strategies for reclaiming our lives and releasing our phones. He shares his stop/start philosophy and guidelines we can use as families to rein in the time we spend on our devices.

Visit Joey’s website goaro.com

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Joey Odom.

Ninety-one percent of people have their phones with them 24 hours a day. The question is, do we own our phones or do they own us? This is episode 496 and our guest is Joey Odom, the Founder of Aro, a company committed to helping people spend less time on their phones and more time making memories.

Joey discusses how we can spend more time connecting with people and less time on our devices. He’s well aware that they are addictive, so what can we do to put them in their place? He reminds us how social media can not only block our real-life relationships, but can lead to anxiety, suicidal ideation, and other issues. He gives us ideas about what we can do as adults to model better ways of interacting with our phone like identifying sacred spaces in times when we wouldn’t use it at all, for example. Joey offers quick tips that can help us establish new and healthier habits when it comes to tech use. As the Weston A. Price Foundation always says, we want technology to be our servant, not the other way around.

Before we get into the conversation, the Wise Traditions Conference is only a few days away. We could not be more excited. It is being held in Orlando, Florida, from October 25th to the 27th. We want to see you there. There are amazing speakers, fantastic food, and lots of Florida sunshine. Join us. I want to highlight, we have fantastic speakers, as I said, including Dr. Manel Ballester-Rodés, who will be speaking on circulation and how to understand the body and soul in medicine. Run. Don’t walk to our website to secure your tickets. I will see you there.

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Visit Joey’s website: GoAro.com

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Welcome to the show, Joey.

It’s good to see you. Thank you very much for having me.

Looking Back

Tell me about the moment when you realized that your phone was impinging your relationships with your family.

It goes back about many years. My son Harrison, when he was five years old, was playing his very first soccer season. For anybody who has had kids involved in youth sports, you may know that the most successful kids in youth sports are ones that appear to have gotten out of a work release program. They’re very aggressive people. My sweet Harrison wasn’t an aggressive kid. He is a great kid. High EQ and cares about other people. As a result, he hadn’t scored a soccer goal this season when everybody else on the team had. Here we were, another Saturday afternoon, my wife, my daughter and me lugging out the lawn chairs to the sidelines.

This day was different than all the others. It’s about midway through the game. Sweet Harrison rears back his leg and he kicks. I remember I can picture this moment. This moment comes to my mind almost in slow motion, like a movie, like the dramatic James Horner music in the background as the ball glides over the grass into the back of the net for Harrison’s very first soccer goal. All the parents knew that Harrison hadn’t scored a goal yet this season. The crowd goes wild. His coach runs out on the field and he hoists Harrison up, lifts him up, but there was this moment, this little split second in between the moment when the ball hit the back of the net and his coach lifted him up when Harrison did what a five-year-old boy would do at that moment.

He looked to the sidelines at me to lock eyes with me, to share this moment with me, to see the pride and the smile on my face. It was this beautiful, magical moment, except I missed it because when my sweet little boy looked over, all he saw was the top of my head because I was looking down at my phone. That was a moment where I said, “Something’s wrong. Something doesn’t feel right.” It’s a regretful moment, frankly.

What it told me was there’s something wrong that I need to attend to, that I need to turn towards, that I need to notice inside because this relationship with this silly little rectangle that lives in my pocket all the time, that relationship was getting in the way of the most important relationship in my life. One of the top three most important relationships in my life. I said, “I spent most of my life thinking about the person I would marry someday and what my kids would look like. Here I was, allowing this thing to subvert all of those things that I had wanted in my life. This isn’t okay.”

Do you remember what you were looking at at that moment?

Absolutely not. I have no idea. It legitimately could have been the most important work email I’ve ever gotten. It could also have been a cat video. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you what. Let’s say I was freeing some hostages from a domestic terror cell. Let’s say I was doing that on my phone. Harrison didn’t know. When Harrison looked over, all he knew was I missed that moment. He says that he doesn’t remember. It makes me feel good, but I know there was that moment. I know there’s that split second. Here’s another thing that’s interesting. Even though that was his first soccer goal, who knows how many other moments I missed? Who knows how many other times he turned to the sidelines to look at me?

Who knows how many other times that I have no idea. That’s the one I happen to be aware of. The only reason I’m aware of it is that my wife told me that it happened. It was one of those things that I think most of us, and this is a good time for a caveat. If you can relate to that, this is no judgment or condemnation. I think the guilt and the shame we place on ourselves when it comes to this topic is getting in the way of us getting better. I would encourage everybody reading to give yourself some grace. I’ve had to do that for myself because that wasn’t the only moment.

Give yourself some grace. We were not taught when we were growing up how to manage these things, and they were insidious. They’ve taken over without us noticing it. I want to encourage anybody reading this to be a preacher at a pulpit here. This is somebody who has been what I call the worst of the worst and someone who has seen progress because I know if you’re struggling with this, the world can look different. That’s what we’re here to say. The world around you is much more beautiful than the world on your screen. Your life can look different if you’re struggling with it.

The world around you is much more beautiful than the world on your screen.

Screen Time

I’m glad you said that about no judgment because I think it is too easy to kick ourselves and we don’t understand the pull that these devices have over us. We’re experiencing this in adulthood for the first time people before us did not. Let’s talk a little bit about stats before we dive into some solutions. How much time does the average adult spend on screens, and then let’s go to teens and children?

I would like to answer that question slightly differently if that’s okay. It’s only because as we’re figuring this whole thing out, the iPhone turned 17 years old, it’ll be smoking in 2025, and it’s almost as if the pendulum is beginning to swing all the way back to where we’re demonizing every bit of screen time. I don’t know if that’s the right way to look at it because when I look at my Sunday screen time report, I could look at it and be like, “I was on my phone for that much,” but then I say, “I was on ways getting directions for a quarter of that time. Is that bad screen time?” I use my phone for work. I think it’s important for us to be careful not to vilify every bit of screen time.

The screen time stats do get shocking when you start seeing kids on their phones for 6 and 7 hours a day. A twelve-year-old is probably not on Waze for half of that time. I understand that that’s a lot of it. Not to completely take a right turn on the question, but I think that the real question for ourselves is, “How often are they with us?” There’s one stat that jumps out to me that I think epitomizes the relationship we have with our phones. That is 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. They are with us 24 hours a day because we haven’t determined a place for them. The place for them is with us. They’re in our pockets. The problem with that is that it initiates what we call the PID cycle.

Proximity, you build a relationship with your phones like you build a relationship with any human. You’re around them. That’s the P. When you’re around somebody, you Interact with them more. There’s the I, and then you become more Dependent on that thing, there’s the D. Proximity leads to interaction and that leads to dependence. When you’re dependent on something, what are you going to do? You’re going to be around it more.

When I say dependence, I don’t necessarily mean like a toxic dependence, I mean that when you’re around a friend and you may need them to pick up your kids every now and then, you may need them to get the mail for you when you’re out of town. These things can be very good things. But with our phones, we begin to be diluted into a false dependence.

Let me give you an example of a false dependence. Everybody knows and you probably know a lot better than I do, that sleep is incredibly vital to our wellbeing. In fact, the most effective form of torture still is sleep deprivation, yet we’re bringing this thing into our homes every night into our rooms that are killing our sleep because of the blue light before bed.

Wise Traditions | Screen Time | Joey Odom — Screen Time: The most effective form of torture is sleep deprivation, and yet we are still bringing our phones every night when we go to bed.

They’re filling our minds with a bunch of nonsense the moment we wake up because we look at them and they’re killing us. We’re looking at them in the middle of the night. They’re killing our sleep, yet we have them with us. If you ask somebody why they sleep with their phone in their room, they would all say, “It’s an alarm clock.” Is that a dependence or is that a false dependence?

I will shoot you an email. I’ll send you $5. You can go buy an alarm clock and you get your phone out of your room. That is a false dependence, yet they’re with us all the time. As a result, they’re with us in our rooms. We have a false dependence, therefore we’re approximate to them. The status is with us all the time. Here’s what happens. When they’re with us, we use them.

This is a shocking stat. Eighty-nine percent of our smartphone usage is self-initiated. It’s not the notifications coming in. It’s not phones or texts coming in. It’s us picking up our phones voluntarily, very often in the presence of our real relationships that are more important to us, and we go on a rabbit trail. We’re initiating the use of them only because they’re with us. At a very basic level, we have to break this proximity that we have with our phones, which is amazingly easier said than done.

Phone Dependence

I can’t wait to get to that part. What’s coming to my mind right now is comedian Louis CK talked about our dependence on our phones. “The minute we get anxious, sad, nervous or lonely, we grab it. It’s become a collective pacifier of sorts.” What would we do if we didn’t have it near us to interact with, as you’re saying, and to become dependent on it? We would feel, and maybe that’s part of what you’re talking about. You had an awareness on the sidelines of your son’s game that has led you to this place where it’s like you want other people to grow in their awareness. Use the phone, but use it wisely.

I love that you brought that. It’s like you’re reading our emails here. We didn’t compare notes, I promise, readers. When you talk about a pacifier, what you talk about is something very real. What Louis CK talked about is very real. I don’t want to digress too much here, but when we say we have a relationship with our phones, we need to take a step back and recognize that that’s weird, that we have a relationship with an object. Adults do not have relationships with objects for the most part. Kids do. Kids have relationships with objects like pacifiers, teddy bears or blankies. There is a term for those things, and they’re called transitional objects.

Another term for is comfort objects and what a child does and these survey major purposes in a child’s development. These are good things for a child’s development because they transition them away from this dependence into independence. A parent leaves the room, and a child clings to the teddy bear. That gives them a false sense of security in the absence of their real security.

Before long, the child realizes, “I don’t need this teddy bear. I’m okay. I can do this on my own.” That’s a great part of development. This is interesting. Our phones have become a comfort object to us. In other words, they have pushed us back to childhood, to infancy, because we’re clinging to these things where with a blankie or a teddy bear, we were clinging to an object in the absence of true security and relationships, we’re clinging to these things in the presence of relationships.

We’re clinging to these things at the dinner table in front of the people that we love. We’re doing it with old friends we haven’t seen in years, yet we’re clinging to this thing instead of being there instead of being ourselves. To your point, we’re unable to feel and be bored. What’s in cities about that is we’re unable to then spark the beautiful creativity that’s inside of us. We’re unable to deeply feel the feelings of happiness, sorrow, or regret, and then fully process those things that we can then go thrive on the other side.

Louis CK, believe it or not, is exactly right here that we are clinging to these things like pacifiers. I want to take it back one more time, but life doesn’t have to look this way. I wanted the readers to continue to tell themselves this is not a sentence that we’ve been handed down. We can do something about this and life can look different.

Relationships

I love that encouragement. We’ll get there in a minute. I want to talk more about relationships. We’ve both been intimating and explaining that the cell phone changes our relationship with ourselves, our feelings, and our ability to be present. How does it change or affect our relationship with those around us?

I’ll start in two areas that we focus on a lot. We focus a lot on families and relationships. This question will probably orient towards that. Let’s talk about marriages or partnerships generally in a marriage. The Gottman Institute says that successful couples who remain married turn towards their partner’s bids for emotional connection 86% of the time. While couples who don’t make it, couples who do end a divorce only turn towards their partner’s bids for emotional connection 33% of the time. We know what an emotional bid is. It’s one of those subtle little things that my wife may throw out. Something like, “Did you hear about that new Italian restaurant downtown?” She’s not telling me about a new restaurant. She’s saying, “Dummy, take me on a date.” That’s what she’s telling you.

I’m glad you can read between the lines. That’s awesome.

The problem is I can’t. She has to tell me because I am a little slow in that area, but that notion turns towards that we are physically unable to turn towards our partner’s bids for connection when we’re holding a phone. We’re certainly emotionally unable to turn towards those things when we’re holding our phone. We’re wrapped up in that that we can’t pick up those subtle little cues. Even beyond the divorce statistics, I don’t think that divorce statistics are a barometer for a healthy marriage.

I think the level of intimacy is a healthy barometer. Just because you’re married, it doesn’t mean you have a good marriage. We all got married because we wanted intimacy. I’m not talking about even physical intimacy. I’m talking about this feeling of being seen, allowing yourself to be seen, being known, allowing yourself to be known, being fully loved despite all of that and loving despite all of that. We’re unable to do that. Whether it’s divorce statistics or if it’s this level of intimacy that we all want in our marriage, but it’s hard. You talk about ancestral eating. It’s almost like that. That is the thing that we want, yet cotton candy and chocolate chip cookies taste a lot better. You may disagree on the taste better.

Those things, it’s almost like we’re feeding ourselves this digital candy all the time. That’s one. I think when it comes to our kids, we don’t need statistics for this. We see it and we know it, but if you throw out statistics, teenage unhappiness is at an all-time high. It is at crisis level. We all know it. The surgeon general is coming out and saying, “We need warnings on social media companies.” Congress is passing TikTok bans because our kids, the not unhappy, have suicidal ideation and anxiety and all of that. This is going to be a hot take. Please disagree with me if you’d like. I think we have a tendency to blame the kids so much, but I believe that we have a generation of teenagers who have grown up with parents who have looked at screens instead of their eyes.

Could you repeat that? That is profound.

Honestly, it’s hard to say because I’m looking in a mirror when I say it. It gets me a little emotional thinking about it. We have a generation of teenagers who have grown up with parents who’ve looked at screens instead of their eyes. That sucks. That’s hard.

I’ve witnessed this. I’ve probably experienced it, too, if I did a little more introspection. The other day I was walking down the street and I live in the city. I saw this family and like a little SUV and there was a little girl, she must have been 3 or 4. She put her hands on the window. It’s like she was trying to make eye contact with someone, almost crying, “Help me.”

I looked at her parents. They were in the car with her. They were both on their phones and here was this child. It’s giving me chills telling you this story. It makes me sad. Desperate for attention and love, her parents were on their phones. Now, they might’ve been trying to figure out where they’re going next or responding to texts, what have you? There are good ways to use the phone, but their dear little daughter needed something that neither of them was giving her at the time.

What more natural need does any human have than the need to connect, the need at a very young age, and study after study on eye contact from infancy to infancy that need inside of them? For the young kids, it’s almost like we’ve taken this natural need for connection and inserted this unnatural device in between it. Our kids are mad. They’re showing anxiety. They’re showing anxiety when they’re teenagers, or maybe even younger, but they’re pissed off from when they’re at a very young age. This may sound familiar, and we’ve heard this again and again. This has shocked me because I thought if it was me, but kids from 2, 3 or 4 years old who are saying to their parents, “Mommy, put down your phone. Daddy, Put down your phone. Mommy, watch me. Daddy, watch me.”

They’re begging us. Here’s why. This is going back to give yourself a little bit of grace. If you’ve heard that line, “Mommy, watch me. Daddy, watch me.” I want you to celebrate that. There are two reasons why. The first one is your child likes you. They want you to be with them. How great is that? I’m lucky that my kids still like me. I went and saw my son at lunch. He’s working in a restaurant. I ordered some food, and we made some jokes. What a great thing it is for your kids to like you. That’s one. Celebrate that.

If they say, “Mommy, watch me. Daddy, watch mommy. Put down your phone,” celebrate it because they like you. The second one is probably even more important. If your child’s saying that, that means that they believe they are valuable enough to be looked at. Think about that. That’s the problem. In teenage years, they don’t think they’re valuable enough. You can instill them with this beautiful sense of value by looking at them, being with them and noticing them. If they’re saying that to you, that’s great because they think they’re worth it. Now, we get nervous when they stop asking because when they stop asking, they have begun to believe that your phone is more important than they are, that they’re the distraction. The phone’s the focus.

Maybe they’ve gotten a phone of their own, so they’re not looking to you anymore. They’re equally distracted.

Who could blame them? That’s what they’ve seen as normal. The model for parenting, we call this the three Ms. The first one is as parents, we Model a bad relationship with our phones. We pick up our phones in the middle of a conversation with our kids. We have them at the dinner table. We model this bad relationship with our phones, and then we give kids a phone one day. What do they do? They mimic what we’ve modeled because it’s normal. Of course, they would. It’s not their fault. They have seen it. They think that’s how you manage a phone. Even if they didn’t like the feeling at first, they began to believe, “This is how you use a phone.” They Mimic what we model.

The third M is absolute lunacy because we all do this. We get Mad at our kids for mimicking what we modeled. What on Earth are we doing? Let’s stop blaming the kids and start to look at ourselves. When we do that, especially if your kids are young, what an amazing opportunity, you can model a great relationship with your phone where it’s not at the dinner table, where you set it aside when your child’s talking to you when you prioritize human relationships over phone relationships, you model a great relationship and then they’re going to believe that that’s normal.

We get mad at our kids for mimicking what we have modeled. Let us stop blaming them and start looking at ourselves.

They’re going to mimic that relationship. You can make memories and magnificent, marvelous moments or whatever other cool M you want to do. We can completely change this three Ms cycle we’re in. It begins young. It begins with normalizing. To your point, another roundabout way to say that our kids from a very young age notice it. Our kids are craving for kids’ connection. Now, you can start making that change.

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Coming up, Joey gives practical tips for shifting how we handle our phones, including his start-stop philosophy and three simple guidelines to rein in. How much time did we spend on our devices?

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Solutions And Advice

Let’s talk about some solutions and ways to extricate ourselves from these very complicated relationships that we have developed with our phones as adults. Talk to us about how we can get going on shifting our relationship.

It’s important to start with having a deeply held why and understand why. What I will say is that you have to understand that every good thing you want in your life will be limited by your relationship with your phone. I know that sounds simplistic and a bunch of what I’m about to say is going to sound reductive and simplistic, but try it out. Every good thing, I want a deep relationship with my kids for life. That’s going to be limited by how attentive I am to them versus my phone. Let’s begin with that. I’ll give some practical tips, but first, I want to begin with what I call start-stop. For readers, it’s easy to blame our kids and our spouses, but I want to encourage you to start with yourself.

Every good thing you want in your life will be limited by your relationship with your phone.

I want you to look at yourself and say, “This begins with me. I have the control here. I can do something myself.” I want you to start with yourself and forget the blame for a moment, and then I want you to stop at nothing to get it right. I want you to take every extreme measure you need to because every good thing in life will be limited by this. Stop at nothing to get this right. What we would encourage people when it gets to it on a practical level is that I want to encourage people to begin with a few things. I have three guidelines for people that you can start with. You don’t need anybody else to do this. You can start with these three things.

The first one is I want you to spend an hour a day physically distant from your phone. Is that basic? Yes. Is it available to you? Yes. I want you to spend an hour physically distant from your phone. When you do, we said earlier that 91% of people have their phones with them 24 hours a day, and by spending any amount of time, you joined the 9% club. That’s pretty cool.

You’re in a very thin air there on people who spend physical time away from their phones. You might say, like me, many years ago when we began this business, “I don’t think I can spend an hour away from my phone.” If someone told me to go run a marathon right now, I couldn’t do it, but I could probably walk or jog a mile. Start with five minutes today.

Spend five minutes physically distant from your phone. Tomorrow, spend six minutes. The next day, spend seven minutes. Continue to add. Begin slowly. Think of this thing. This is not a quick fix. Everything I’m saying here is going to sound fairly unsatisfying because we’re not talking about an immediate fix.

We’re talking about building a muscle. That’s something that you can commit to throughout your life. That’s one. Spend an hour physically distant from your phones daily. If you can’t do 1 hour, do 5 minutes. If you’re already doing 1 hour, do 1.5 hours. You’re doing a 1.5-hour, do 2 hours. The second one is in your home. I want you to consciously designate sacred times and sacred places that are phone-free zones.

The easiest one, I’ll begin the absolute, pun intended. Table stakes are the dinner table. Go ahead and agree that that is sacred, that, “My phone does not come to the dinner table with me.” Create that culture in your home. Do that for yourself first. Your family will start to to latch onto it, especially if your kids. Your kids are going to love it. Our business helps people put their phones away. The kids are the ones who love it the most because mom and dad are fully present with them. The kids who don’t have the phones love it the most. They’re going to come to life when you do that. Another one, it can be anywhere. If you watch a family movie, it can be the couch. You’re watching a screen, but at least you’re not having individual experiences.

Don’t take your phone with you to your kids’ rooms when they’re young. Get creative. This is fun to think through. What’s sacred? Sacred is a man-made thing that you deem as holy. Let’s find those holy, sacred places that you can deem, “these are the places without phones.” The third one, and this is my favorite one, if those first two things are science, is the art. It’s the search for moments of connection and those moments for connection. It goes back to those emotional bids. They’re happening around us all the time. Let’s think of my daughter Gianna. It is hard to be a teenage girl. I’ve never been one, but I’ve heard it’s hard. It’s tough managing everything, including friends and putting social media on top of that. It’s a tough world they live in.

She came to me one day and began to talk to me about her day and maybe things that were hard or maybe something that happened with her friend. All it takes is one glance at my phone to kill that moment because she was being open with me. She was opening herself. She was being intimate and showing her heart to me. It takes one glance and that kills that moment. It doesn’t kill that moment. It kills her likelihood of opening up to me in a future time. It’s killed a lot. It’s killing back of that and it’s killing the intimacy there. What if, instead, at the beginning of that, she said, “I got to tell you what happened to school today.”

What if I said what I believe are the six most powerful words in a relationship in 2024, “I got to hear this. Let me put down my phone.” I said those six words. It’s simple. It’s not me patting myself too hard in the back, but it signals her that she’s important in the moment, and then I physically remove my phone from that situation. I go put it in a drawer. Let’s say you have a place for your phones. In our business, you can put it in Aro box. This is not about our business. You put it somewhere else and remove it from the scene. What that has said to Gianna is something unbelievably powerful. It said, “There are 8 billion people on Earth who can theoretically reach me on my phone. You are more important than every single one of them right now.”

What do you think that does the next time she has body comparison issues and she sees something online or the next time she feels a little bit bullied or she feels left out or excluded? At minimum, she has the resilience to say, “I know I have value because my dad looks at me in the eye because I know my dad loves me.” Think about what that could do for a generation of kids if we take that small step or remove it. Think of what that can do for marriages. I’ll recap those three things. 1) Spend an hour physically distant from your phone every single day. If you can’t do 1 hour, do 5 minutes. 2) Establish sacred times and sacred places that are phone-free zones. 3) Search for moments of connection and then say those six powerful words, “Let me put down my phone,” and physically remove your phone from the scene.

I can feel how freeing that would be for the person with the phone. In other words, it’s not just going to improve my relationships with others. It’s going to help me feel, be present, and connect many beautiful things. I can also relate to being in your daughter’s shoes, trying to talk to someone who maybe put their phone down for a second, but it’s right within hands reach. I know and I almost feel like they’re waiting for me to wrap up so they can pick it back up. That’s communicating something.

Aro

That proximity and their eagerness, their hand is itching for. It tells me, “I’m not valuable.” I’m not trying to take on that message. I know I have a part in how I perceive things, too. What I’m getting at is this is a wonderful tool for improving relationships, these three guidelines. I know you’ve designed a whole app. Let’s talk for a moment about what Aro is and how you feel it can help us establish new habits.

In a brief sentence, it is a screen time solution for families. It is for the person who says, “I’m struggling with this,” and for the person who probably has that high level of self-awareness. Readers fall in this category of self-aware people who are looking to improve. Readers fall into the category, the people we want to talk to. It’s for somebody who says, “This is important to me.” I’ve tried it on my own and I’m having a hard time. We make it easy to put down your phone. We do it through a habit-forming app. We look at this through the lens of habit. We do it through a habit-forming app that you can go download. You search Aro in the App Store or Google Play Store.

You can download the app and try it for free. If this is interesting to you with a physical place, a box where you can put your phone, it charges your phone and automatically, in both cases, Aro quantifies the amount of time that you’re away from your phone so that it can then gamify that experience. It’ll remind you to put down your phone, but then it gamifies the experience of being away from your phone. You can look and you can see, “I’ve spent 48 minutes away from my phone. That feels great.” You could even tag your session, almost like a fitness app to say what you were doing when you were away from your phone. It’s because we have a box that you can order as well, but we all have a place where we can put our phones.

We all have a shoebox and a drawer. You can do all this on your own. This is the ruby red slippers you don’t need for this. You can do this on your own, but the problem is we don’t have that system that helps guide us to do that. That’s where the app comes in. We have a brilliant product team that is thinking all through. I understand the paradox in-app to get me off apps like, “What is this?” what a brilliant opportunity we have to leverage technology to redeem technology for the good, fight fire with fire, or use something. We use all the tools, tips, and tricks social media companies use to get us on our phones. The streaks and the badges and all that stuff.

We use all that to celebrate time away from your phone. That gives you a little dopamine hit and that makes it feel good that. That makes you your end to community within your family and can make it a competitive and in a fun way to see who spent more time off their phone. That was the whole premise. It was because my co-founder and business partner, Heath Wilson and I, had missed the mark. We needed some help. Discipline wasn’t doing it. I’ve heard James Clear in Atomic Habits say, “An environment always trumps willpower.” If we’re relying on discipline and willpower, if I’m a smoker and I’m trying to smoke, I’m not going to keep a pack of cigarettes in my front pocket. I have to remove those.

The thought behind it is how we can meaningfully change habits by using technology, whether through the Aro app or the Aro app and the box. The fun thing is, and this is where it’s truly a dream come true, is hearing stories of young kids’ families saying, “This has changed my life.” I’m not here to sell a product. I don’t care if someone joins Aro, but the term Aro means to notice. What I do care is that you live a life of notice.

I believe that’s accessible to all of us. I believe that that is available to us. This notice in the arm means to turn towards and take heed, “What if?” Imagine for a moment, no matter how dark down the wormhole you are, you might be in your smartphone right now and I want you to trust me on this, “What if the world could look different?”

We are here to help. I don’t care if we have a bunch of free resources or resources on our website as well. What if you took a first step today, whether that’s downloading the Aro app for free or took a first step in implementing any of those three changes I mentioned because the world can look different? A sneak peek, the world is freaking beautiful.

We don’t need virtual reality. There is reality. I also think there is value in having some accountability and a coach. For example, I could decide on my own, I’m going to run a marathon, or I could find a group that we could do the training and so forth with together. That helps me stick to my own goals. I’ve read Atomic Habits. I know there’s power in this and also power in apps. My daughter used to use one for focus that the more time she spent on a given task, it would have little seeds at first and they would grow into these trees in a forest. You think, “That’s silly,” but it’s doing exactly what you’re describing. It’s gamifying something that she wants to do. It’s offering her that dopamine hit of a reward when she stays focused. Why not leverage some of this stuff to our advantage?

One reason that we’re still struggling badly with this is because the solution is simple and it’s almost like we don’t allow us ourselves to acknowledge that it’s hard. It’s simple, but it’s hard. The simple solution I’ve said is spend some time away from your phone. That’s a hard thing to do. You think about exercise, and you mentioned exercise and running. We can all burn calories for free. We can all build muscle for free. We can run around the neighborhood or we can do pushups, whatever they are. Yet a lot of us join gyms and that’s for the person like me who says, “I need help removing the friction of doing something difficult but valuable.”

To your point, accountability and group, that is such a huge part of removing friction or someone telling me, “Come in and here’s what to do. I’m an expert. Let me tell you the exercise you need to do and going to a place and having that community,” all that stuff that’s important, I believe, as we take this more seriously, again back to the start-stop at nothing, for us to acknowledge, “This is hard. I’m having a difficult time. I need some help.” When we can acknowledge that, I think we’re going to begin to see breakthroughs in this as we acknowledge that, “It’s hard. I need some help.”

Anecdotes

Speaking of breakthroughs, I know you’ve worked with many families and individuals who have benefited from Aro. Whether it’s Aro or their own new Atomic Habits that they’ve incorporated, tell us the story of a difference that someone saw when they started making those real-life connections and fewer the digital ones.

One of my favorite stories comes out of Houston. This is an Aro member who posted one day on our Instagram account. We’re on Instagram. I know people said, “You’re on Instagram, too?” Yes, I know the sick needed a doctor. On a post, she said, “Thank you for changing my life.” I said, “I got to hear about this.” I reached out to her and I asked her, “Will you tell me what you meant by that?”

She told me a story about her and her husband. They have a 4 and a 2-year-old and her husband works offshore where he is home 2 weeks and away 2 weeks. She said that they had struggled so much certainly in the times when he was gone, when the boys, they had two again, four and two when the boys needed her attention, even when he was back where he wanted to be present and they said they couldn’t kick it, they couldn’t figure this out.

She said one night, in absolute desperation, she went on her website, she joined Aro and she said that it has changed her life since. She basically said, “I don’t even know what it is about the system that’s made so much of a difference. Certainly, the boxes and the app have helped, but what has happened in a short amount of time, and I love this for a 4 and 2-year-old, is that the normal has changed for them. What’s now normal for them is full attentiveness in those moments.” I understand this. There are times when you have to say, “Hold on one second. Mommy’s doing something.”

This is not some ethereal world we’re painting, but when their boys want their attention and they’ll remind her too, this is what’s funny, that your kids, they love this much, you can create little monsters, they’ll remind them, “It’s Aro time.” Whether you’re flipping it with the Aro app only or you have the box, put it in for your kids. For her, what’s normal to them has completely shifted. That’s one. I’ll tell you another one from my personal life. When we started this journey about many years ago, my daughter, who I’ve mentioned a couple of times, we were watching a movie. She’s ten years old. It was May 8, 2020.

I know that because I wrote it in my journal and I read this. It’s top of mind. We finished a movie and Gianni turned to me at the end. She wasn’t congratulating or judging me. She said, “Daddy, did you know that’s the first movie we’ve watched and you haven’t had your phone?” It was a gut punch, in a way. It was like, “Have I messed this up that badly for ten years?”

There was another side of it that said, “I’m now putting effort towards this and I’m making some progress. It felt good.” I told Gianna after I read it in my journal, “Do you remember that one night when you said about the movie that I’d never had my phone?” She goes, “I remember that.” She was ten then. She laughed and said, “It would be so weird if you had your phone during a movie now.”

That’s progress.

It’s a complete paradigm shift for her. The normal for her in a relationship now is full attentiveness. What happens when she goes on a date here in a few years and the boy sitting across the table is on his phone half the time? She’s going to finish her grass-fed beef and let him pay for the meal. She’s never going to see him again because she is going to expect attentiveness. What does that do again for her value, and what does she expect in a relationship? Those are two literally thousands of stories that are a dream come true because that’s our goal. We want to create an entire generation of intentional families. Hearing those stories is heartening for me to know and to have the confidence to say to everybody, I promise you that world and that life exists,

How many times do people say to you, “My job requires that I be available 24/7?”

We hear a lot of buts. We are in the but business. My encouragement to them is, “I don’t know your situation. I totally get it.” Back to the three principles, “Do you have five minutes? Is there a sacred time? Is there a sacred place? Can you get it out of your bedroom at night? Let’s begin small.” Some of those are incredibly legitimate. I’m not minimizing those. I think some of those go back to the false dependency we talked about where you say, “I understand, and that makes sense that you would say that. Let’s build a muscle together. Let’s start small and let’s build a muscle together,” because everybody’s at a different place in the continuum. There’s never a judgment on it. I would never be like, “You’re wrong.” “I don’t know your situation. Where can we start? I think you can start. I think you can reclaim and redeem a few minutes and let’s see how that muscle grows over time.”

Everybody is at a different place in the continuum. There is never a judgment on it.

I’m glad you used the word sacred when you talk about one of those guidelines because I’ve been to a couple of weddings now where they’ve said, “Guests, please put away your phones.” It’s a completely different experience because I’m not trying to capture something on the screen. Instead, I’m fully in and everyone there is watching the bride and groom, noticing the flower girl or the ring bearer. It’s a whole different vibe. It’s beautiful.

Health Tip

Thank you for reminding us that we can have that at various moments throughout our day now. I want to pose you the question I love to pose at the end of the show. If the readers could only do one thing to improve their health, whether it be related to phones or not, it’s your call, what would you recommend that they do?

I feel like I’ve talked enough about phones too much. Everybody’s probably tired here. The one thing for me is it’s to find a single vice, don’t find all of them, and cut it out. In November 2023, I cut out alcohol. I’m not drinking anymore. My sleep is drastically different. Everything’s changed with that. I’m not falling asleep on the couch when I’m hanging out with the kids. That’s been one.

I’m fighting a battle on sugar. I got a sweet tooth. If it’s for a season or if it’s sustainable, for me, it’s what is that thing? That’s going to also snowball. I don’t think I would be cutting out sugar now if I had not cut out alcohol. I was like, “I’ve done it with that I can do with this.” I would love your take on that. Advise me real quick, what do you think of that advice?

In other words, if you cut out one vice, yes. I think it is a beautiful thing because you don’t want to be a slave to anything. I think it’s hard to do on your own, but I think if you can find, much like we’re discussing accountability, a group or an individual that can hold you accountable to making some shifts, it is a matter of perhaps changing your environment as Atomic Habits recommend. There’s lots to consider, but I think it’s a wonderful thing because you’re going to be a day older tomorrow anyway. Why not be a day older and stronger and wiser in one area?

I love that. That’s mine. I’ve also started walking. My wife and I take walks at night, a couple of mile walks and I’ve loved that too. The conversation alone. I leave my phone at home. I hold her phone for her in case the kids happen to need us, but I’m the one carrying it for her. I’m a big walking fan and I always scoffed at the evening walkers. Here I am, one of them.

It’s such a simple, basic exercise that we were born to do. Within 9 to 12 months, we work hard to get up. Let’s use it then or we’re going to lose it. We’re on the same page. Thank you so much for being here. You’ve offered many nuggets of wisdom. We’re thankful.

Thank you so much.

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About Joey Odom

Joey Odom is the co-founder of Aro, a disruptive technology company that uses technology to help us put down our phones and be fully present in the moment with the people who matter most. The Aro platform leverages the science of habit formation to create patterns and rhythms of presence for families. Every member of Aro’s team is passionate about fulfilling the company’s vision, which is to create an entire generation of intentional families.

Joey is a natural storyteller and a dynamic leader known for his ability to inspire and foster deep connections with others. His own experience with technology as a husband and dad led Joey to help create Aro alongside co-founder Heath Wilson. Joey also hosts The Aro Podcast, which is a weekly conversation with leaders and influencers who strive to live intentionally. Joey and his wife of 20 years, Cristin, live in Knoxville, TN with their son, Harrison (16) and Gianna (14).