Your Phone Is a Drug. So What Are You Doing About It?
This week, Kelly Carlin joins the show to talk about how smartphones hijack attention, cause "digital brain fog," and displace real human connection.
Hey,
Before I say anything, our friends at Fight for the Future just put out an important announcement—one about an attempt to repeal Section 230 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Be sure to check out their statement here.
A big problem with the privacy dynamic in the United States is that we force the customer to do all the work.
Want to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos? That's your job.
Want to keep your personal information off the Internet? That's your job.
Want to have a nice place to make friends while the Earth is literally on fire? That's your job.
Who's going to block all those trolls? It's not going to be the tech companies.
If you're Google, Meta, Twitter, Snap, TikTok, Amazon, and a whole constellation of far-right platforms—ones designed to indoctrinate young men and turn them into fascists—you are not responsible for policing the platform.
The tech companies will tell you this is because of Section 230.
But it's a lie.
They just don't want to do it.
Because doing it would be expensive. And shareholders don't like expensive.
So, there's a misunderstanding that exists: people think Section 230 is the reason Nazis exist on the Internet.
It's a small part of the reason, but it is not THE reason.
Section 230 is the Internet's First Amendment.
And like Voltaire said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
That's our position here at Stupid Sexy Privacy when it comes to Section 230.
While it's true that this First Amendment guarantees those Nazis a right to speak, it also guarantees women the right to speak about who should and should not be in control of their bodies.
It gives our LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters the right to speak, and it gives people suffering from repressive regimes the right to speak, the right to organize, and the right to fight.
Section 230 does not, however, give those Nazis—or anyone—the right to be free of consequences for what they say.
Only the tech companies can give or take away that ability, and they choose not to.
This happens because they do not have enough administrators, algorithms, and other automated processes—as sophisticated as those meant to make you angry and serve up content designed to keep you angry—to make their platforms a space where people can exercise whatever speech they want.
They'll tell you instead that it's too hard, that there aren't enough people, and that the job is traumatizing.
That last point is legitimately true.
But again, if you're the same people who believe that Automated General Intelligence is here now and God-like, then certainly, you're capable of believing it's possible to address these issues with your billions of dollars in capital—in a way that may not scale, but regulates objectionable content that actually violates local laws, without also allowing governments to censor speech they don't like.
And in the instance where the law is wrong, to take a moral stand and defend your customer's right to speak.
If we can send robots to Mars, we can do this too.
Support Section 230 and tell your elected officials, regardless of party, to do the same.
-BJ
P.S. If you missed it, you can listen to our interview with Lia Holland from Fight for the Future here.
Show Notes
Stupid Sexy Privacy Show Notes For Season 1, Episode 17
Episode Title: Your Phone Is A Drug. What Are You Doing About It?
Guest: Kelly Carlin, originally recorded in 2023 during the debut season of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
Episode Summary: This week, Kelly Carlin joins the show to talk about how smartphones hijack attention, cause "digital brain fog," and displace real human connection. Kelly, and our host Rosie Tran, share some recommendations on what to do about it. Nobody should control how your mind functions. Not even that weird caterpillar from the Shazam movie.
Key Points From This Week's Privacy Tip
This episode is one of very few from the 2022-2023 series that we didn't alter much. We took out the old DuckDuckGo ad and put in a new one. But other than that? It's basically what it was when it first aired.
The interview with Kelly Carlin is one of my favorites, and she offers a lot of insightful advice about mindfulness, journaling, and the importance of disconnection from these evil little rectangles.
In the Privacy Tip section, Rosie gives a lot of the basics when it comes to starting the process to separate yourself from your phone. Use timers. Put everything in greyscale. Make sure there's nothing on your home screen. And sign out of all social media apps so it's harder to get back into them when you're feeling anxious.
These are nothing groundbreaking, but we wanted to re-iterate the basics. If people JUST did the things recommended between Kelly and Rosie in this episode? They're already going to feel better about their relationship with their phone.
If you do the other stuff we're going to recommend later? Well, hopefully we get you to a point where you don't think about your phone unless you need it.
And most of the time? We don't.
Resources (NO Affiliate Links. This is what we use.)
Our Sponsor: DuckDuckGo <--Our Recommended Browser and VPN
Get Your Privacy Notebook: Get your Leuchtturm1917 notebook here.
-BitWarden.com (Password Manager: easier to use, costs money)
- KeepPassXC (Password Manager: free, harder to use, but more secure)
-Slnt Privacy Stickers for Phones and Laptops
-Slnt Faraday bag for your Stranger Danger phone.
-BitDefender (best anti-virus for most people across most devices)
-Stop using SMS and WhatsApp, start using Signal.
-Use Element instead of Slack for group coordination
--Use cash whenever possible. If you have to buy something online, try to use Privacy.com to shield your actual credit or debit card when making purchases online.
Get In Touch: You can contact us here
A Word From Our Sponsor: DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo: Here's three reasons why you should switch from Chrome to the free DuckDuckGo browser.
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Three: The DuckDuckGo browser is free.
We make money from privacy respecting ads, not by exploiting your data. Download the free DuckDuckGo browser today and see for yourself why it has thousands of five-star reviews. Visit DuckDuckGo.com or wherever you get your apps.
Stupid Sexy Privacy Intro (Christmas Edition)
Rosie: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy.
Andrew: A podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo.
Rosie: I’m your host, Rosie Tran.
You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime.
Andrew: And I’m your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorhis. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey.
Bonzo: Monkey sound!
Rosie: I’m pretty sure that’s not what a Japanese Macaque sounds like.
Andrew: Oh it’s not. Not even close.
Rosie: Let’s hope there aren’t any zooologists listening.
Bonzo: Christmas Clip!
Rosie: Ok. I’m ALSO pretty sure that’s not what a Snow Monkey sounds like.
*Clear hers throat*
Rosie: Over the course of this miniseries, we’re going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.
These tips were sourced by our fearless leader — he really hates when we call him that — BJ Mendelson.
Episodes 1 through 31 were written a couple of years ago.
But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it.
Andrew: And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we’ve gone back and updated a bunch of them.
Even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way.
Rosie: That’s right. So before we get into today’s episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
Andrew: This way you can get updates on the show, and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026.
Rosie: And if you sign-up for the newsletter, you’ll also get a free pdf and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King’s new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Andrew: StupidSexyPrivacy.com
Rosie: That’s what I just said. StupidSexyPrivacy.com.
Andrew: I know, but repetition is the key to success. You know what else is?
Rosie: What?
Bonzo: Clip 3 Christmas Clip!
Rosie: I’m really glad this show isn’t on YouTube, because they’d pull it down like, immediately.
Andrew: I know. Google sucks.
Rosie: And on that note, let’s get to today’s privacy tip!
This Week’s Privacy Tip
Rosie Tran, Host of Stupid Sexy Privacy: Everyone listening to the show has a smartphone. And the odds are good you probably use it more than you'd like. Well, there are also some excellent privacy reasons to cut back on how often you use your smartphone. Specifically, the more you use it, the more data it collects and shares with other parties. This includes the location data of everywhere you go. And we mean everywhere.
And while we're not suggesting you ditch your smartphone and get yourself a Jitterbug, if we can get you to use your phone just a little bit less, we've successfully shrunk your online footprint.
and that helps to keep you and your family safe from fascists and weirdos.
So let's start with a simple exercise and a few helpful tips.
When was the last time you went through all the apps on your phone? And I mean, really went through them. It's probably been a while, huh? So take a few minutes after listening to this podcast and break out your smartphone and privacy notebook. Because this week, you're going to go through every app on your phone and uninstall the ones you're not using.
Does that include your social media apps? We'll get to that, but you'll definitely want to uninstall Twitter.
Twitter is now a cesspool for the alt-right and their friends to gather, which is different from the cesspool that it was before, because this time, Elon Musk peed in the cesspool and then filled it with Nazis.
Unused apps on your phone expose you to security vulnerabilities, so the fewer of them you have, the better.
We recommend setting some time aside once a month to clean out your phone.
This will establish a good habit of removing unused apps regularly. Doing so will help keep you and your friends and family safe from any security breaches caused by those apps.
In step two of this exercise, we want you to think critically about the apps you want to keep. Once you remove your unused apps, take out your privacy notebook and write down the apps you've decided to keep.
Then write down why you decided to keep the apps that you did. If you can't come up with a good reason to keep those remaining apps, you should delete them immediately.
We can't stress how important this exercise is. Writing down why you kept the apps and that you did helps to clarify in your mind why you have them in the first place. This is also a good opportunity if you use certain apps way too much to write down how often you like to use them.
Once you've done that, both Apple and Android phones have features that will let you limit how long you can use certain apps each day. We'll link to how to do that in this episode's show notes.
[Reader note this isn’t a cure all, it’s just a place to start, not a place you want to finish.]
Okay, let's wrap up today's episode with a couple of quick digital detox tips.
Once you're done with this exercise, remove all of the remaining apps from your home screen.
Your home screen should always be blank. This adds an extra layer of friction when you mindlessly reach for your phone.
And speaking of friction, if you're going to keep any social media apps on your phone, make sure you sign out of them.
While removing social media apps from your phone entirely is the best practice, we know that might not always be possible. Signing out of these apps will prevent you from looking at them without purpose, which honestly is most of the time what we go to look at these things.
Social media apps can be a lot of fun, but you also don't want to give them all of your time and data. That's because none of these companies can be trusted. Just ask BJ. He wrote a book about that, like a decade ago.
Interview With Kelly Carlin-McCall (2023)
[Reader Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.]
Rosie Tran: Joining us today is a very special guest, Kelly Carlin. Kelly is the author of A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George, a certified life coach, and has a master's in Jungian depth psychology. The following interview you're going to hear was recorded in 2023, where BJ and Kelly spoke at length about how to go through a digital detox, the mental health impacts of our smartphones and how to protect your mind when you have to use these devices. Take it away, BJ.
BJ Mendelson, Co-Producer of Stupid Sexy Privacy: Hi, Kelly. Thank you so much for joining us today for Stupid Sexy Privacy. Would you be so kind as to take a moment and introduce yourself?
Kelly Carlin: Oh, that's always a fun moment. Let's see. My name is Kelly Carlin, and I am many hyphenate things. I am an author. I'm a performer. Recently, a documentary producer. And I also have a community called the Sacred and the Profane, where I offer my coaching program, which is called Humans on the Verge. And what else? I have my master's in Jungian psychology. I'm a certified life coach and have been practicing Buddhism for about 25 years and all around just very, very curious about the human journey, human condition, the creative process, and trying to find my own way through this strange thing we called life.
BJ: I think we all are. Let me ask you, on your website, you mentioned that you spent a summer without using your phone and any tech. So I'm just curious about how that came about and what the experience was like.
Kelly: Well … that was quite a while ago. And part of the reason I did that was because I've, … Ever since 2008, when these smartphones became available, and shortly after that, then things like Facebook and Twitter became a part of our life. These screens and these phones have become very much the kind of authoritarian tyrants of our life. Little did we know back then that, these people who were excited about their technology, were building these devices and these programs to completely make us basically Pavlov's dog. And I think we all entered it with a lot of hope and optimism and curiosity and excitement as any little kid would with a new toy. But I think we had very little knowledge about kind of the mental health effects of it. So, for me, I could feel I'm pretty tuned into my somatic inner body experience and, being someone who's had anxiety and depression most of my life, and panic attack syndrome. Pretty nastily in my 20s … Very, very tuned into my body and [I] really saw the amount of tension and anxiety and thrill and excitement. Like the adrenaline rushing through my body with these devices, and [I] could really feel the toll of that. And having been a person who practices mindfulness meditation on and off, but pretty consistently the last 25 years, I really knew that being able to sit without being activated or watching myself be activated is a reall powerful way to learn to be … I think, in a more grounded conscious relationship with life.
Anytime I take time away from the screens and the phone, which is harder and harder these days. I'm an entrepreneur now, so I'm always feeling like I have to catch up on things and keep things. But I do try to put some real boundaries around it still. Taking time away from it, for a longer period of time, you really do notice that it's a drug. It's like cocaine. Like the first few days or week is withdrawal and you're having withdrawal symptoms. And you're wanting to grab the phone and you're wanting to look at it. You're needing that hit. And that's so scary.
And then once you kind of get through that, then you're like, your whole nervous system goes back to some sort of other place and you realize… How much you really don't need these devices, or need all this information coming at you all the time?
We've become addicted to this level of stimulation. So, I'm just I'm so increasingly grumpy and irritable about these devices and the way our culture is set up now making us have FOMO all the time. And it's just not true. We're not going to miss out on anything. If something big is happening, you'll find out. (Laughs)
BJ: It's true. I mean, people, remember there's a line in a Tim Ferriss book. I'm not like a huge fan of his, but I remember where he said, if something is important, I'm going to hear about it, whether I'm out, or I'm in a cab, or like someone's going to be like, Hey, did you hear? And I think, I think that's so true.
Kelly: And that's how we used to find out about things, right? Your neighbor tells you, or like you said, you're, you're out somewhere and you know, And you run into someone, you know, or if it's really big, you run into a stranger and they say, Hey, did you hear that? You know, there's a plane that just flew into the world trade center, you know, like … So yeah, and this, you know, this idea, it's just, so, … I don't know if it's Orwellian, or the other guy who, there's like two different guys who kind of have this view of the weird future. And I can't remember the other person's name, but it's like, we have more information than we've ever had. And we are less, and we have less wisdom and knowledge. (laughs)
BJ: Yes, that's right. … Let me ask you, how do you approach [the devices] now? Working as an entrepreneur, knowing that you have to use these devices, are there any rules or restrictions that you put in place to just protect your mind a bit?
Kelly: Yeah, definitely. I have a 15 minute limit on my Twitter account, and it'll come up at 15 minutes and say, Hey, do you want to extend this? And sometimes I find myself hitting yes. So there's that. I did get off of Facebook four years ago, and I just started my business and I was talking to someone about it. And she said to me as an entrepreneur, she said, you know, your mailing list is way more important than your social media reach because Facebook or Twitter could go away tomorrow, and then you would have you wouldn't have those people to talk to.
And that helped me a lot to just relax, and I'd realized that on Facebook I … it was it had been a great thing when my dad first died and I was able to connect to fans and build community on there and learn how to be a public person on some level. But then it just got so toxic after Trump and everything like that. So I got off Facebook. I'm still on Twitter, which is weird, because Twitter is dying a slow death. I mean, what it was is gone. And I'm still I don't think I'm really letting myself accept that yet.
But I have 80,000 followers over there. There's some part of me that's like, yeah, I still have a reach to reach people and people are still, you know… I try to bring joy and I try not to be reactive over there. I'm not perfect at it, but I try to bring joy and some sort of groundedness to that space. So, I know people still enjoy that if they see it, because we don't know how that algorithm works anymore.
And then Instagram … you know, It's also owned by Meta and or Zuckerberg; and I really I don't like it over there. But I I originally made that account just because I'm a photographer also. And I wanted to just share some beauty in the world But you know, I try to really be careful who I follow over there. So my rules are to really not spend too much time and I certainly don't give a lot of weight to those places.
Most mornings, I wait a few hours before I check my email. I meditate. I do journaling in the morning, I do some writing. I try to do some writing. Sometimes I'll just check email just to make sure there's no fires I need to put out. There usually isn't, and try not to get sucked in right away. So I try to shut it down.
So I really do try to keep my mornings pretty calm and pretty grounded in humanity and earth. And then as far as the, you know, just, yeah … I try to leave my phone alone during the day, I try to put it down places in my house where it just sits and I don't have to have it near me. um And then I'm just really mindful about when I am stressed how often I do reach for it, like how it becomes a thing.
But I really do try when I'm at concerts, or out to dinner, or with friends to really not take it out of my purse. That's another thing too. I just try to be in the experience. And it just breaks my heart when I look around in restaurants or concerts or parks and see people staring at these screens. I feel like aliens have landed and they have like implanted something in our brain. And now all we do is we look down at these little rectangular devices all day.
You know? When you look at it from like a science fiction movie point of view, it's, um it's pretty sad.
BJ: Yeah. Our brains are no match …
Kelly: No. No. Zero.
BJ: … For that's just what I've seen over and over again.
Kelly: Yeah. I just said it last night on Twitter. I said, it's been an interesting experiment. But clearly our frontal lobe executive function of this human brain is not evolved enough to be able to withstand the hypnosis of these devices.
BJ: I think about people like myself that are ADHD and yeah, like it's, you know, it's already hard, right? But now you've got that additional layer of you're constantly looking for stimulation and the phone provides it.
Kelly: Yes. And I'm pretty sure, you know, we all have brain fog now.
[Reader Note: We sure do! Watch this video with Dr. Tracy Marks to explain Digital Brain Fog:
We are going to talk a lot about attention residue in the not too distant future.]
BJ: Yes.
Kelly: And we all think it's like, ‘oh, it's a pandemic.’ It's this, it's that. I'm pretty sure it's these phones. I'm pretty sure that we have, we're using so much. There's only so much energy the brain has to compute, to access memory, to access information. And I'm pretty sure we've overloaded the brain. And so we're, it doesn't matter if someone's 25 or 55, no one can remember anyone's fucking name. Or what the name of that movie is, or, you know, or that name of that, the capital of Nebraska, you know, and I used to have such a sharp brain and look, I'm, you know, I'm post menopausal, and I'm going to be 60 this year. It's like, okay, I've got some age stuff. Sure. But I know that it's all started when I when these phones came into my life.
BJ: Yeah, absolutely.
[Reader note: It’s Lincoln. The only reason BJ knows that is because he worked a consulting job in Omaha back before the pandemic and football is pretty much the only thing there is to do out there. Go Huskers!]
Book Ad
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All you need to do is go to the website stupidsexyprivacy.com and sign up to our newsletter.
Again, that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com and then put your name in the box and sign up for our newsletter. We'll let you know when the book and the audiobook is ready.
If you want a PDF copy that's DRM free, it's yours. And if you want an MP3 of the new audiobook, also DRM free, you could get that too.
Now, I gotta get outta here before Bonzo corners me because he doesn't think that SEO is real and I don't have the patience to argue with him. I got a book to finish.
Interview With Kelly Carlin (2023) Continued
BJ: I just want to go back to the journaling and meditation morning. Is that, is that something that you would suggest people listening to? So you might be looking for …
Kelly: Yes.It's an essential foundational practices in the work I do at Humans on the Verge. I do I recommend any kind of meditation where you have to … You can do the ones where they're guided, which are fine. But constant talking meditation to you, that's a journey. That's a visual imagery type of experience, but mindful meditation. I learned through Thich Nhat Hanh
So I have his app, Plum Village. I do use his guided ones, but his guided ones are there just to give you a couple of words so that your brain, your mind has something to focus on while your mind will wander and then come back. Anything that can help you learn to witness your thoughts, your emotions, the sensations in your body will help you.
Even if you do it for … I always tell people, if you do it for three weeks, you'll start to feel a difference. If you do it for six weeks, you'll feel a bigger difference. If you can do it for three months and get a real habit going, it will change your life. And people always say to me, I can't meditate. The minute I sit down, my mind wanders. And I want to say to them, well, that's the job of your mind. That your mind's job is to wander because your mind is wired to keep you alive. And the mind wanders because it's looking for danger, or it's looking to solve problems, or it's looking to rehash problems it had in the past to make sure that it solved them properly so that if they come again in the future, it will have a solution. Your job is not to make your mind stop wandering. Your job is to watch your mind wander. And if you do that enough, it stops wandering all the time and that takes time.
And so most of meditation, the first week, 10 days, three weeks, six weeks, and even for the rest of your life. But when you start as a beginner or when you're restarting a practice after not doing it for a while, the first good chunk of time is going to be you just getting through it. There's not going to be any moments of bliss. There won't be many moments of empty mind. There won't be a lot of time where you're not suddenly thinking about being at Disneyland or your to-do list. The whole point of meditation is to learn to recover back to center. So what I tell my clients is sit. You can use the Thich Nhat Hanh app if you want or some kind of other insight timer that lets you sit quietly. And the minute you notice your mind has wandered, that is the moment where you don't pick up a stick and beat yourself up and say, “I hate myself. I hate my brain. I can't do this. This is too hard. I'm broken. I'm stupid.” You don't do that. You treat your mind, your wandering mind as if it was a puppy or a toddler. And if a puppy was going to get into something that it's not supposed to get into, or if a toddler was learning how to walk and fell down, you would say to the puppy or to the toddler, ‘no, no, no, it's okay. It's okay. Good try. Let's begin again. Let's do this differently.’ You would bring a lot of love and warmth and kindness.
And so that's how you have to approach your wandering mind, because it is the same kind of level of curiosity and attention span as a toddler or a puppy. And so you have to just be kind to yourself. And you may do that one time during a 20 minute meditation. You may do it 40 times during a 20 minute meditation. (laughs)
The point is not, you're not winning if you do it less time. There's no winning. here, there's no gold star. The gold star is showing up on the cushion or the chair and consistently doing it every day, no matter what. It's the consistency of showing up that will change your brain, that will start to change your nervous system. And it is also the kindness with which you bring to yourself during the practice that will begin to heal. Your relationship with yourself, because we are not very often kind to ourselves. We have a lot of voices in our head that have a lot of rules and a lot of high standards and a lot of expectations. And we have very few voices inside of us that are like Big Grandma Laps that will take us in no matter what state we're in, no matter how much we screwed up. No matter how confused we are. And so it's about building all of those muscles. And if you do that for six weeks or three months, I guarantee you, your life will change.
BJ: I want to ask you real quick about in the time that we have about balance. Do you think that the tech and the apps sometimes act as if something is in balance or a person is not in balance, that we sort of use these apps and technology as an escape.
Kelly: Oh for sure. They're like any other thing that we use to distract ourselves from discomfort. So, if we're lonely, if we're, … have some unconscious, emotions or unconscious trauma that we've never processed, If we're unhappy in our career, relationships. If we're feeling ennui, a little existential dread, whatever it is. 100%,. We will … you know, it's hard to sit with these things. This is why the meditation practice is so powerful, because we learn to sit with everything. But those of us, and I will include myself always in this pile, who, you know, stuff comes up and we're not ready to deal with it or we don't know how to deal with it or the younger parts of ourselves are activated that really can't sit with it and really don't know how to metabolize it all. We will look for something outside of ourselves to distract us, whether it's food, sex, drugs, or the phone, which is another form of a drug. So yeah, we will look to things. We will look for… There was this big talk right now this week, I think the Surgeon General just came out about loneliness in America. And we've lost our ability to connect with each other. And the more we look to our phone, the more we look, the more we crave connection, the more we look to our phones, and we look to Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and these other places to connect. And the less we find it, because it's not real. It's not … It can be real connection. I have met wonderful people through Twitter and through Facebook, and they've become actual friends in my real life. But the kind of connection we need as human beings, we are animals, we need in the room, physical being around other human being type of connection. That's why the pandemic was so hard on us. And that's why kids are doing so poorly because they were ripped out of their social network, which is so essential to human development. So you know, we're in search of connection, really, and companionship, and reflection, you know? We’'re social creatures. And part of that is about needing to see other human beings to see ourselves. And when we only see human beings through memes, and 280 character sentences, or shared other tweets or whatever they are, or glorious pictures of your fabulous life. We're not really connecting. We're being entertained.
BJ: It reminds me of the Neil Postman philosophy of amusing ourselves to death.
[Reader Note: We’re going to do some kind of a book club starting next year, and one of those books will be Neil Postman’s 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” I’ll tell you up front it is NOT an easy read. I’ve started and stopped it a bunch of times, and I read a lot of books. But essentially, if you’ve read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the futuristic world Huxley is satirizing where everyone is too busy doing drugs and entertaining themselves to realize they have no freedom or control, and much of a purpose aside from what they were assigned and designated to do, is the world Postman argues we’ve created. Postman was right in 1985. He’s even more right today in 2025.]
BJ: We only have a few minutes left, so I just wanted to ask real quick, is there anything that I didn't ask that you think you would like to bring up concerning the digital detox and people trying to manage your lives with this technology and devices?
Kelly: Yeah, I would just really invite people to trust themselves away from these devices, to trust their human bodies and their souls and their innate human nature and drive towards what's real and true for them; and to find something that they can do and find some people they can be with where they can really, really put down the phone and let themselves get into a flow state. You know, whether it's a hobby or some sort of group event or hiking or out in nature or traveling or whatever it is, where their life,the moment doesn't have to be mediated through these devices or an app or a screen where you can really be present. And this flow state is so important. It's the place where really then our imagination and our creativity and time stand still and we forget to eat and all of that stuff, in a good way, because we're really connecting to really what we're evolved for.
And I think it is really what we are missing in our culture. And so if there's an old hobby you have, but anything where … Even jigsaw puzzles, like during the pandemic, I found myself, a lot of us were drawn to jigsaw puzzles. And it's like, Yeah, well, that could be seen as something distracting. And it was for me, it helped me grounded by anxiety. But it was also a beautiful metaphor for, you know, some part of my psyche trying to put the pieces together. The imagery, the symbol of that was very potent for me. But it's also very tactile, you know, you're touching puzzle pieces, and you're looking at the picture and you're, you're using parts of your mind to solve something. And it's not on this screen, it's not on this little device, which really does. I mean, I don't, I can't cite all the research, but they have really, really found that what happens to the brain the minute it looks at a screen changes things.
Anything where you can be sensate, where you can use your actual senses, hands, touch, feel, sight, smell, sound. So important. This is why nature is so important. Get out the minute you feel like yourself on the screen too long. Close that close that computer. Make sure you're taking breaks during the day if you have to be on the computer all day. One thing I do do is I do take a whole month off from my computer each year now … Because I do a lot of zooming through my business and my coaching. And I just don't zoom for a month. And then when I come back, I say to my clients, we can zoom, but I really, I'm not going to turn the cameras on because the minute you have a camera on, you're either staring at your own face or staring at someone else's … It adds another layer of busy-ness in your brain. And I find that I'm much more intuitive and tapped into what really is happening in the call when I'm not looking at them. So try some experiments, experiment with it. Let yourself be in charge.
BJ: I like that. think that that's a great note to end it on.
DuckDuckGo Live Read
Rosie: Today I’d like to highlight a couple of features offered in DuckDuckGo’s browser.
Both are really important to know about as it relates to Artificial Intelligence.
Now, as you know, DuckDuckGo’s search engine does not track what you search for.
It also offers helpful AI summaries. Similar to what Google has, but here’s the key difference:
DuckDuckGo’s AI Summaries are more concise than what Google offers, and are more private.
I can’t stress that last point enough.
Because a lot of information we enter online is anything but.
Now let’s talk about AI Chat models for a second, like ChatGPT.
Although we prefer you not use AI Chat models, if you choose to do so, Duck.Ai allows you to privately access them within the DuckDuckGo Browser.
DuckDuckGo anonymizes chats, so AI companies don't know who the queries are coming from.
Your data is never used to train these chat models.
And your conversation with these chat models are completely private.
Duck.Ai costs you nothing to use, and there’s no account required to do so.
And if you’re like us at Stupid Sexy Privacy, and you’re anti-AI, you can turn off both Duck.AI and the AI search summaries right within the browser.
No harm. No foul.
Bonzo The Monkey: *Monkey Sound*
Rosie: Oh. Thanks for reminding me, Bonzo. I meant to include this sentence:
Do you think AI Slop is ruining the Internet? We do too.
That’s why DuckDuckGo’s search engine also lets you filter AI images out of your search results.
Bonzo The Monkey: irate Monkey Sounds!
Rosie: I know. Those images you saw of Clint Eastwood were very upsetting.
Bonzo The Monkey: Monkey Sound
Rosie: What? I didn’t make those!
Bonzo The Monkey: Monkey Sound
Rosie: No, I didn’t!
Rosie: Andrew, can you please come get Bonzo. He’s accusing me of creating synthetic media again, and that’s really offensive.
*Andrew comes and gets Clyde. SFX of a chase ala Hannah Barbara. There’s some banging.
*Rosie Clears her Throat*
Rosie: (to herself) Where was I?
Rosie: So, do you want to explore these AI tools without having them creep on you?
Well, there’s a browser designed for data protection, not data collection, and that’s DuckDuckGo.
Make sure you visit DuckDuckGo.com, and check out today’s show notes for a link to download the DuckDuckGo Browser for your laptop and mobile device.
Stupid Sexy Privacy Outro
Rosie: This episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded in Hollywood, California.
It was written by BJ Mendelson, produced by Andrew VanVoorhis, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran.
And of course, our program is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo.
If you enjoy the show, I hope you’ll take a moment to leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may be listening.
This won’t take more than two minutes of your time, and leaving us a review will help other people find us.
We have a crazy goal of helping five percent of Americans get 1% better at protecting themselves from Fascists and Weirdos.
Your reviews can help us reach that goal, since leaving one makes our show easier to find.
So, please take a moment to leave us a review, and I’ll see you right back here next Thursday at midnight.
After you watch Rosie Tran Presents on Amazon Prime, right?
