AI Summary
5 min read"At the end of two weeks of blocking most internet apps on her phone, Julie Beck’s sustained attention score jumped from 3.1 to 3.8 — an improvement roughly four to five times larger than the average participant in a 2025 study that equated the effect to reversing a decade of cognitive decline."
That is the core finding of this episode of How to Touch Grass, where staff writer Julie Beck and producer Natalie Brennan explore whether it is possible to reclaim a scattered attention span — and what actually works. The central figure is Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing, who argues that the problem is not simply "too much screen time" but a deeper confusion about what attention is for.
The attention economy sells quick fixes, not real change
Odell describes habits as "grooves" that form over time, geologically. The attention economy sells the fantasy of a quick fix — delete an app, feel better instantly — but real change is slower and less dramatic. She warns that when people try to go cold turkey and fail to see immediate results, they often spiral into shame, which makes the problem worse. "The danger is that a person feels shame, they feel that it's bad. They're like, 'Okay, I need to change this' and then they try really hard to change it. And then if it doesn't go the way they want it, and then they feel more shame. And now it's just like a spiral."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:49) **Hook: The Attention Anxiety Confession** - Julie and Natalie share personal struggles with phone habits and attention, from midnight doom-scrolling to forgetting to lock a gym locker.
- 2 (03:56) **Introducing Jenny Odell and the "Quick Fix" Trap** - Author of *How to Do Nothing* returns to discuss how her thinking on attention has evolved seven years later.
- 3 (05:53) **Physical Limits and the News Problem** - Jenny explains how aging and a changed relationship to the news helped her break the scroll cycle.
- 4 (06:39) **The Antidote: In-Person, Shared Projects** - Jenny describes how volunteering at a native plant restoration and repair fairs provides a lasting cognitive reset.
- 5 (08:27) **The "Standing Apart" Mindset** - Jenny offers a practical philosophy for living with a smartphone in a society that requires one.
- 6 (10:41) **Why Attention Feels Tied to Identity** - Jenny explains the deep existential unease behind the popular desire to "heal" one's attention span.
- 7 (12:07) **Julie's Two-Week Experiment Begins** - Inspired by Jenny, Julie recalls a 2025 study where blocking mobile internet for two weeks reversed 10 years of cognitive decline, and decides to try it on herself.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Of all the potential effects of using smartphones, the one that seems to inspire the most anxiety is what scrolling could be doing to people’s attention. On social media (ironically), many people express a desire to “heal” their attention spans from the damage they feel technology has done. They’re picking up on something real. In one 2025 study, researchers found that blocking the internet on people’s phones for two weeks led to improvements in sustained attention equivalent to reversing 10 years of cognitive decline.
In this final episode of How to Touch Grass, host Julie Beck embarks on an experiment to see if she can heal her own attention span. Beck and co-host Natalie Brennan also hear from Jenny Odell, the author of How to Do Nothing and Saving Time, about how Odell’s antagonism for her phone actually helped her make peace with it, and how nature can teach us to pay deeper attention to the world around us.
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