You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

When was the last time you picked up your phone?

Are you holding it right now?

Are you scrolling while you listen to this?

Y'all, we are way too attached to our phones.

I mean, I fight against it. I don't keep a lot of

apps on there, but it's still the first thing I look at every morning. And I find myself compulsively

picking it up to make sure I haven't missed any messages or notifications. I guess it's partly a habit

I've formed and partly a craving for whatever flashy new content the apps I do have will offer me today.

You know, technology's kind of got it figured out. If you can offer a continuous stream of

novelty, you never know what you're going to see when you go on there. And that is maybe part of

what makes it so attractive. This is Katie Bowman. She's a biomechanist, which means she studies how forces affect

the body. And she's a movement teacher. We're talking to her because, well, wouldn't it be nice

if we crave movement the way we crave our smartphones? She and Diana Hill, a clinical psychologist,

say it's possible to retrain our brains to do just that.

Even if our mind is telling us things that are unhelpful, we can act independently from what our head says, which is kind of a fascinating and wonderful thing.

Katie and Diana are co-authors of the book, I know I should exercise, but 44 reasons we don't move and how to get over them.

And they're here to remind us that even though scrolling can feel fun...

Over time, what we're finding is that people don't actually feel better afterwards.

What we know is that too much screen time can mess with our sleep.

And it's also associated with depression,

...