What Screen Time Is Really Doing to Your Body with Manoush Zomorodi
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 14.8K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We hear a lot about how screens affect our mental health, but time spent on computers and smartphones is having just as much of an impact on our physical health — from brain fog and weakened core muscles to changes in our posture, our sleep, and even the shape of our eyes.
As part of our series on spring cleaning your wellbeing, Dr. Laurie sits down with journalist and podcast host Manoush Zomorodi, author of Body Electric, to explore how modern tech habits are affecting us physically, and what steps we can take to protect our health in a world where screens aren’t going away anytime soon.
Experts Mentioned:
- Manoush Zomorodi, journalist, author, and host of NPR's TED Radio Hour
- Dr. Keith Diaz, exercise physiologist and Florence Irving Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center
- Dr. Maria Liu, Professor of Clinical Optometry at UC Berkeley and founder of the Myopia Control Clinic
- Dr. Rick Neitzel, Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan
- Dr. Peter Strick, Thomas Detre Professor and Chair of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh
- Dr. Sahib Khalsa, psychiatrist and neuroscientist at UCLA
Resources Mentioned:
- Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being, by Manoush Zomorodi (2026)
- Body Electric, a six-part podcast series by Manoush Zomorodi (National Public Radio, 2023)
- "Breaking Up Prolonged Sitting to Improve Cardiometabolic Risk: Dose-Response Analysis of a Randomized Crossover Trial," by Keith M. Diaz et al. (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2023)
- "The Mind-Body Problem: Circuits That Link the Cerebral Cortex to the Adrenal Medulla," by Richard P. Dum, David J. Levinthal, and Peter L. Strick (PNAS, 2019)
- Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, by Manoush Zomorodi (2017)
Related Episodes:
- "How I Stopped Fearing Boredom"
- "How Our Screen Habits Impact Our Stress Levels"
- "Smell, Taste and Touch: How to Joyfully Awaken Your Senses"
- “Sight and Sound: How to Joyfully Awaken Your Senses”
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:10.8 | If you follow the research on the science of happiness, you've probably heard a lot about the connection between screen time and well-being. |
| 0:21.5 | It's a problem that I think about a lot and a topic that we talk about on the show a lot. But lately, I found |
| 0:26.7 | myself wondering, what if we're missing the bigger picture? We hear, you know, the mental health |
| 0:31.9 | epidemic, growing rates of depression and anxiety has to do with the content that we get, right? |
| 0:38.4 | This is journalist Manusse Zamoroti. |
| 0:40.9 | Some of you may also know Manusch as the host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. |
| 0:45.4 | This idea that we are taking in outrage, headlines, violence, also comparing ourselves to other people, |
| 0:53.8 | that it is purely sort of a psychological thing, |
| 0:56.9 | that it's something going on in our heads. |
| 0:59.2 | Manush says that given all the focus on how technology affects our minds, it's easy to overlook |
| 1:04.1 | another important part of the story. |
| 1:05.8 | What we're not taking into account is what we actually do with our bodies when we are spending all that |
| 1:12.6 | time taking in that content. We are sitting and looking at a screen for long stretches of time. |
| 1:21.0 | And we now know that the average American adult spends 12 and a half hours consuming media a day. And I mean, |
| 1:32.1 | that's a lot of hours. It's a lot of hours. That's incredible. Yeah. Right? And I feel like for me, |
| 1:38.1 | like there was one day where I got into a cab and there was a screen in front of me on the back of the |
| 1:42.9 | seat. I got out and I went into an elevator and there was a screen in front of me on the back of the seat. I got out and I went into an |
| 1:44.9 | elevator and there was a screen in the elevator. I got out of the elevator and checked my phone |
| 1:49.9 | and then check into the building on another screen. And it just made me think like my entire life |
| 1:55.2 | is now mediated by screens. I don't feel well. My eyes hurt. I have a headache. I'm on my butt. A lot of the day. I do have a backache. Is that coincidence? I'm not really sure if that's coincidence. And then after sitting all day, I go home and all I really want to do is go lie on the couch and look at my screen again. Maybe two screens, actually, because maybe I'll watch a show while I'm looking at my screen. And we've all heard like sitting is the new smoking and all of those things. But this sort of deep exhaustion that I think many of us are feeling felt very like in my bones. You know, yes, I get exercise, |
| 2:37.7 | but that didn't seem to be making that much of a difference. And so that made me want to |
... |
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