Welcome to Dear Prudence. I'm your guest Prudence, Kristen Mineser. I host a couple of other podcasts,

including By the Book and How to Be Fine. Be sure to check those out if you love self-help books,

hate self-help books, or want advice on how to be okayish rather than perfect. Today we'll be

answering questions about being taken advantage of by a friend, confronting an alcoholic

parent, and supporting your cousin when her mom is being delusional. Here to help me out is

award-winning journalist and founder of TransLash Media.

Amara Jones.

Oh my gosh, Amara, it's so great to have you here today.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Yeah, and we are in studio.

And I was just saying to Amara, I wish this was on camera and not just audio because Amara, you look fantastic.

You really just, oh, you look great today. Thank you. Thank you. I'm proud of myself. This is my 15 minute looks. Oh, stop it.

With those eyelashes and those nails and this whole, what? What? That takes me like six hours to look like you do right now. Stop it.

False. I love your skirt. I know they can't see it. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Now, before we get started, we like to ask all of our guests, what is one piece of unsolicited

advice that you would give to the world unprompted?

Put down your phones.

Yeah, put down your phones.

I keep telling people that our phones are not our friends, although we treat them like they are. And we have the idea that they bring us closer, but they are not. They're one of the things that's actually been exploited to divide society and to create the vitriol and the decision and help set us up for authoritarianism in ways that we're not

aware. So put your phone down and do things to connect with your neighbors, connect with your

friends. I have a practice now a lot of literally putting my phone in, putting my phone in a place

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