Why Other People's Screen Time Annoys You

Culture Study Podcast

Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 789 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maybe your mom endlessly scrolls Facebook every time you visit. Maybe your kid has to be asked six times to get off his tablet. Maybe your friend is always checking Instagram when you’re out to dinner. Maybe your partner keeps checking their phone while you’re watching a movie together. Or maybe you find yourself doing all the things you find SO ANNOYING when others do them — and know these behaviors are affecting your relationships, but struggle to change them. Are you one of the 510234 moms who submitted a question about feeling guilty being on your phone (even if you’re just reading an eBook!) in front of your kids? Welp, this is the podcast for you.This isn’t a podcast episode about how ALL SCREENS ARE BAD and YOU ARE BAD FOR ENGAGING WITH THEM. It’s about recasting our relationships with them so that we can have better relationships with each other (which sometimes involves watching a screen… together!) Ash Brandin, founder of the tremendously popular Instagram account The Gamer Educator and author of Power On: Managing Screen Time To Benefit The Whole Family, joins me for a nuanced and deeply empathetic conversation that I know we’ll continue in the comments.Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode!Go to zbiotics.com/CULTURESTUDY and use CULTURESTUDY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probioticsTry a Blissy silk pillowcase for 60 nights, risk-free, and get an additional 30% off when you shop at Blissy.com/CULTUREPOD and use code CULTUREPOD at checkoutVisit Article.com/CULTURE to get $50 off your first order of $100 or moreTry Remi risk-free at shopremi.com/CULTURE and use code CULTURE to get up to 50% off your nightguard at checkoutShow Notes:Buy Power On: Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family here!You can follow Ash’s super popular Instagram, The Gamer Educator, here:You can find more of Ash’s work hereAsh on Virginia Sole-Smith’s podcast re: screen time restrictionMy collection of adults interviewing kids about why they liked playing video games (I forgot how good this was!)We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:Running a Small Business — and How to Make It Sustainable & Survivable (with Jen Hewett!)All things Love is Blind with Audie CornishDifferent Modalities of Hanging Out (aka, best ways to hang out with different people) with Mary HK ChoiThe history/utility/culture of OUTDOOR PERFORMANCE GEAR with Avery Trufelman (of Articles of Interest)What an actually family-friendly society would look like (with Elliot Haspel)An ADULT HOBBIES crossover episode with Forever35!The sociology of NAMESAnything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) hereFor this week’s discussion: How have screens been affecting your relationships with your friends or family members — and what would you like to shift?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Anne. Once a month, we pick an episode to make free for everyone. So even if you're not a paid subscriber, you'll get the bonus to Ask Ann Anything segment at the end of today's show. And if you like what you hear and you want to support the show, paid subscribers get other perks like discussion threads for each episode and an ad-free experience. You can join us for just $5 a month at culturesteadipod.
0:23.6	com. And if you're already a paid subscriber to the newsletter, you get a huge deal. I think
0:29.3	it's like 35% off. If you can't figure that out, it's in the show notes or send me an email
0:34.5	and I'll show you how. Okay, thanks, everyone. Enjoy the show.
0:43.6	This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
0:47.3	Hi, I'm Ash Brandon. I use they-them pronouns.
0:50.2	And I am known online as the gamer educator.
0:52.8	By day, I am a middle school librarian, and I have an upcoming book, Power on Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family.
1:00.3	Ash, I was telling you before we started recording that we got so many good questions from listeners.
1:05.1	But one thing that Melody pointed out as we're sorting through them is that they all are coming to these questions around
1:11.7	screen time and family and togetherness from this position of screen time as de facto bad, right?
1:18.8	Like all of them are about how how do we think about managing other people in our family's screen time?
1:25.8	And I wonder if we could just start with that positionality.
1:30.7	Like, what does that make you think? Yeah, you know, I love nonfiction books. I've read a lot of
1:35.2	nonfiction books. And I find that every time I start a nonfiction book, I am like a little
1:41.6	frustrated when the author is like, before we get to the thing that you bought
1:46.6	this book for let's first spend like a hundred pages doing some like foundational history or
1:52.8	learning and I'm always like no no get to the good part right and then I went to write a book
1:58.6	and I was like okay we've got to do a whole foundational thing. I was like, oh no, I've become the thing I hated. But you know what? From the other side, I completely get it because this is exactly what you're talking about. Like we can't really talk about how to manage things like technology and screen time if we are always at this,
2:20.8	this core belief underneath that they're bad.
2:24.9	And that doesn't mean that I'm saying, like, actually, you should think that they're great.
2:28.4	Like, no, that's not what I'm saying.
	...

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