Fresh Take: Catherine Price, THE AMAZING GENERATION

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

Kids & Family, Comedy, Parenting

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do we get kids to *want* to put their phones down? This week we're talking to bestselling author Catherine Price about her latest book, The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World, co-written with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Instead of focusing on parental controls and screen-time battles, The Amazing Generation speaks directly to kids, inviting them to question the promises of Big Tech and reclaim real friendship, real freedom, and real fun. We discuss: Why empowering kids works better than scaring them How smartphones and social media shape adolescent brain development The growing youth rebellion against addictive tech How to shift from conflict to collaboration when it comes to screens Here's where you can find Catherine and her work: www.catherineprice.com https://catherineprice.substack.com @catherinepriceofficial on IG and LinkedIn www.amazinggeneration.com Buy THE AMAZING GENERATION: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9798217111916 What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ What Fresh Hell podcast, mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, The Amazing Generation book, Catherine Price interview, Jonathan Haidt Anxious Generation, screen time for kids, social media and teens, tech addiction in children, smartphone brain development, how to break up with your phone, defend mode discover mode, empowering kids about technology, youth rebellion against big tech, parenting in a digital world, AI and teenagers, family screen time solutions, helping kids quit social media, real life vs social media, attention economy and kids, middle school smartphone advice, raising kids without smartphones, tech literacy for families Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell Laughing in the Face of Motherhood.
0:06.5	This is Margaret.
0:07.7	And this is Amy.
0:08.4	Today we're talking to Catherine Price.
0:10.6	Her bestselling books include The Power of Fun and How to Break Up with Your Phone.
0:15.8	Catherine is also the author of the How to Feel Alive newsletter on Substack.
0:20.6	Her work has been featured in publications
0:22.3	including the best American science writing, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
0:26.8	and popular science. And her TED Talk on Fun has been viewed more than five million times.
0:33.7	Today we're going to be talking about Catherine's latest book, The Amazing Generation, Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-filled World. Welcome, Catherine. Thank you so much. I should start by saying this book is geared towards kids. So we have talked to a lot of people from the, all right, mom, it's time for you to deal with tech. And this book I really
0:56.9	liked, it comes at it much more from empowering young people to take on screens. And you open the
1:04.4	book with this fable, the great wizards and the curse of the stones. Tell us a little bit about
1:10.5	why that story opens the book. So the greedy wizards and the curse of the stones. Tell us a little bit about why that story opens the book.
1:13.2	So the greedy wizards and the curse of the stones. I should also say I co-wrote the amazing
1:16.9	generation with Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation. So he and I teamed up to create a book
1:22.5	for kids. And we started the book with this, as you were just saying, this kind of fairy tale about these greedy wizards and these stones, kind of as an allegory in which the stones are representing smartphones, and they're packed with glittering gems, which are social media and other apps that are designed to hook us.
1:38.5	And the greedy wizards of the tech companies.
1:40.5	And the basic idea is to set up this story so that kids have an easy analogy to keep
1:45.4	in mind as they're going through the book of what's happening and what they're up against.
1:50.0	And one reason I particularly like the idea of having this allegory at the beginning is it
1:54.6	helps you kind of recognize the absurdity of what has happened over the past almost 20 years
1:59.0	since the first iPhone came out. Because as we say in
	...

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