You're listening to a special weekend edition of the world and everything in it.

I'm Lindsay Mast.

In the last week or so, you may have seen a startling picture of data put together by an analyst for financial times.

The graph shows changes in personality traits over the last eight years, starkly down,

conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extroversion, particularly for young people. These are traits

that positively affect career, marriages, and life expectancy. On the rise, neuroticism. People are

more anxious, tense, and emotional. The author of

the article blames it on distraction. He points the finger directly at the digital world. And in a

somewhat ironic twist, the graph went viral on social media. Both the information and the irony

and how it was presented to the public

likely comes as no surprise to our guest today. Claire Morel is a fellow at the Ethics and Public

Policy Center. She has studied the effects of social media and internet usage on children for

years. And she wanted to know, is it possible these days for a family to fully disconnect from smartphones and screens?

What she found became the basis for her book, The Tech Exit, a practical guide to freeing kids and teens from smartphones.

Going against the digital grain is countercultural. It takes a lot of work, particularly for parents. But

Morel says it is possible to restore what screens have taken, presence, peace, and connection.

Here's our conversation. Claire, good morning. Thanks so much for having me. Claire, you advocate

for essentially a teetotaler approach to screens. Tell me a little bit

about where you were when you hit your breaking point and you started to think it all needs to go.

Pretty early on into my research, it became clear to me that the parental controls and screen time

limits that most parents were employing as the main means of protection for their kids were not

sufficient for the harms that there was always protection for their kids were not sufficient for the

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