A breakup, not a detox
Price's framing is the reason the book works. A detox implies you go back to the same habits afterward; a breakup means you change the relationship. "Breaking up with your phone means giving yourself the space, freedom, and tools necessary to create a new, long-term relationship with it, one that keeps what you love about your phone and gets rid of what you don't," she writes.
Catherine Price speaking. Photo from catherineprice.com.
Thirty days, starting with a week of watching
The plan opens with Technology Triage: a week of tracking when and why you pick up your phone, before changing anything. Readers often find they overestimate or underestimate their pickups, and either surprise is useful. Then come the changes: delete or move the apps that pull hardest, turn off notifications, set up phone-free zones like the bedroom and the dinner table, and try a trial separation from the phone. The last stretch is about filling the time you win back with things you care about.
The plan is grounded in research, though nobody has tested it as a whole
A 2026 review of the plan by the No Distractions team found no trial of the 30-day program itself, but good support for its middle section: in a randomized study, a bundle of small setting changes cut problem phone use and improved sleep, and it beat simple screen-time tracking. Their advice, which fits the book: treat week one as diagnosis, not treatment, and put your effort into the setting changes.
For parents, the first phone to fix is your own
There is little here about kids, and that is its value for a parent. Children copy what they see, and a parent who has put the phone in a drawer at dinner can ask the same of a 13-year-old without sounding hypocritical. The 2025 revised edition adds material on algorithms and a section on kids.
From the publisher's Amazon page.
Watch her explain it
Price on CBS Mornings, with practical first steps:
Her TED talk is about her next book, on fun, and starts from what our phones take from it:
Read it with
Price coauthored The Amazing Generation with Jonathan Haidt, the version of this argument for kids 9 to 13. Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism covers similar ground for adults with a stricter 30-day reset, and Johann Hari's Stolen Focus explains the attention economy behind both.
