Ruby Ryba - Navigating Screen Time in the Digital Age

Stuart Cooke (00:01.454)
Hey guys, this is Stu from The Health Sessions and I am delighted to welcome Ruby Ryber to the podcast. Ruby, how are you?

Ruby Ryba (00:08.408)
Good, thank you. Thanks so much for having me today.

Stuart Cooke (00:10.946)
super excited about this one. It is a topic close to our hearts and probably close to our ears, I think, for most people. But first up, for all of our listeners that may not be familiar with you or your work or your channels, I'd love it if you could just share a little bit about yourself, please.

Ruby Ryba (00:25.966)
So I'm Ruby Ryba. I'm a screen time strategist. What that means is I think consistently about screen time and how we can improve our relationship with screens, particularly phones. I have a book coming out in March, 2026 called How to Stop Scrolling, where I dive into the behavioral changes that you can make to live the life that you want to live, not the life that your phone wants you to live.

Stuart Cooke (00:52.43)
Fantastic, fantastic. Again, very close to our hearts. I remember years ago a friend of mine sent me an image of his Christmas day. And Christmas day for us was typically you'd have big Christmas dinner and then you'd all sit around and play games and chat and maybe you'd put the TV on because the Queen is making a speech. And he took a picture and every single person was staring down.

at their mobile phones on their laps and he just said, thanks Steve Jobs. And it was the funniest thing that I'd seen. But it's so true, right? It's just so true because these things kind of came out of nowhere and now they are so insidious and they're so ingrained as part of our everyday life in terms of our movements, our habits, distractions. I'm assuming because you're so interested in this topic and have written about it and practice and preach that your phone perhaps became

Ruby Ryba (01:28.654)
Yes. Yes.

Stuart Cooke (01:49.828)
a problem for you. Am I right in thinking that? In terms of excessive behaviour.

Ruby Ryba (01:52.942)
I don't know actually, like I think to me it seems that way, but I probably my behavior is not abnormal. I just am sensitive to these sorts of things. But what I did notice is that I felt like my phone use, maybe while not excessive, was not always on my terms. you know, when you just, you're on your phone and then you put it down and then you say, wait,

Stuart Cooke (02:12.644)
Hmm. Right.

Ruby Ryba (02:19.532)
Why did I, why was I on my phone? right, I needed to check the weather. And then you like do it again. And then you're like, wait, I still don't know if I need to wear a sweater or not. know, that sort of thing would happen to me every now and then. And I just was like, this is not okay. This is bizarre, you know? So I think those sorts of things. And then I guess I also am just really, I care deeply about autonomy. I want for everything to be on my own terms. I've always been that way for as long as I can remember.

Stuart Cooke (02:21.476)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (02:48.802)
And I just, I don't really think that the guy making the phone really cares about your autonomy. And so it just makes you start to wonder, what do I want to do? And make sure that that's actually aligned with how you're living your life, which because this device is made in such an addictive and enticing way, and it's just woven into everything in our lives, unless you really like take a step back and think about what you want, you're not.

Stuart Cooke (03:09.54)
Mm.

Ruby Ryba (03:16.94)
you're probably not behaving in alignment with your values. So I think that's, that was kind of the tipping point for me in terms of why I wanted to dive into this.

Stuart Cooke (03:26.626)
Yeah, no, totally. I remember seeing a documentary on Netflix years ago that I think delved into the backstory between a lot of the social networks and how they use lots of algorithms and very precise frameworks to keep us on that phone to monetise their networks because we're essentially the currency and the longer we spend on the phones, the more ads they can serve, the more revenue they can generate.

Ruby Ryba (03:53.738)
Exactly. We live in something that is called the attention economy, where attention is valuable. It's finite. The term information economy has also been tossed around, but I like attention economy better because our attention is finite. Information is endless, but our attention is finite. And so there's value in it because you need to have the finiteness in order for there to be supply and demand. There needs to be scarcity. And what we are not spending our attention on to our

with ourselves, we're spending it somewhere else. So if we are viewing an influencer's video or clicking on something, all that engagement is profit. So that's why with streaming services, for example, you can get a discount on your streaming service if you get ads because ads work and you watch them. I mean, it's funny how well ads work. There's all this psychology behind them. There was an ad that I kept seeing about

dawn dish soap with these really cute little chicks on them. And I just like kept seeing it. And then one day when I was in the grocery store, I usually get soap that just is, you know, has some more natural ingredients, whatever. And I saw the ducks and I was like, these ducks are so cute. I know these ducks. And I knew that I was being totally manipulated by the ads that I'd seen, but I just, bought the dish soap, you know, you can't help it. It works on everyone.

Stuart Cooke (05:03.746)
Hahaha.

Stuart Cooke (05:09.27)
It's the strength of behavioural economics. It's not by chance that those ducks made it onto the front of that pack or in the advertising.

Ruby Ryba (05:12.59)
Mm-hmm.

Ruby Ryba (05:16.692)
Exactly, yeah, yeah. I can't remember what it's called, but that's one of the strategies of marketing is to take something that we already have a positive association with. That's like the polar bears with Coca-Cola. It's very interesting, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (05:26.744)
Yeah, yeah, love it, love it. So tell me, you have a background in teaching and you're also a mum as well. How did that shape your views on perhaps what you thought could potentially be a problem for a lot of people?

Ruby Ryba (05:45.218)
Yeah, so I think the common thread between teaching high school math and helping people get off their phones is that I like to take research and kind of heavier reading that most people aren't really interested in and making it more accessible to the masses. So with all this phone stuff, you kind of hear about it, you know that you're supposed to be on it less, but who actually knows why or what's affecting us? And that's where I come in. I feel like

I can often be the bridge between the academic and the everyday person. But in terms of how it affects kids, definitely, used to teach high school and it was really interesting seeing how different the high school experience was for my students versus when I was in high school. I could already see it and apparently it's more severe now, but just.

the attention spans were diminished. If you're competing with short form video, how can you possibly get students to listen to five minutes of a lecture? And that's, I remember we were being told, and I mean, there is research behind, you don't wanna be lecturing for a whole hour or even 45 minutes, five minute, 10 minute chunks are great, but five minutes compared to a 15 second video is just an eternity.

Stuart Cooke (06:44.42)
Mm-hmm.

Ruby Ryba (07:10.122)
and it's even something that they're not that interested in, and there's no sound effects, and there's no visuals and this and that. And so I see a decrease in frustration tolerance. I see a decrease in boredom tolerance. I also see kids and adults wanting instant gratification. We tap, tap, tap as soon as the video is boring. You can't even handle two seconds of boring. And I even remember some of my students showed me

I don't know if you've seen this with your daughters, but these younger people on their feeds, some of the videos that come up have two videos on them so that if you get bored of one video while you're watching, you can look at the other video. like, cause one of my students was showing me a video and it had like this weird, what is it called? ASMR thing on the other side. And I was like, wait, but what's that? And she's like, yeah, most of my videos have that. It's so that if this gets boring, I can look at that like while I wait, like the two seconds that I'm bored, you know? So it's...

Stuart Cooke (08:00.083)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (08:05.9)
Wow. my word.

Ruby Ryba (08:10.314)
It was definitely really eye-opening and I'm so grateful for that experience. But it can't keep going in that direction. You know, it just can't. We're not, like humanity is not well set up if that's where we're going. That we need a two sec, like we need a video to distract us from our video.

Stuart Cooke (08:28.234)
Yeah, it's just insane. I remember back in the day when we had a new television when we were younger and it had a feature on it called Picture in Picture and it essentially pulled up another channel in the corner and I thought why on earth, like why? Like why and how? What would I ever do with that? Like was ludicrous. But I guess that there's something to it because yeah, we're seeing it everywhere now in terms of...

Ruby Ryba (08:37.228)
Okay.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Uh-huh, yes.

Ruby Ryba (08:51.171)
Yes.

Stuart Cooke (08:52.228)
It's just an endless, endless drawl and the attention is really interesting as well because I remember seeing another quote on the internet while I was scrolling obviously, but essentially it was about kids saying, kids were wearing like t-shirts with the 80s, like 80s bands and get me back to the 80s and one of the commentators said,

Ruby Ryba (09:01.838)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Stuart Cooke (09:15.426)
you wouldn't like you wouldn't make it in the eighties. used to have to get, you know, we'd wait at a bus stop for four hours and all we'd have to do is look at our shoes. Like there was nothing else to do. And in stark contrast today, you go to a bus stop, nobody's communicating. Everybody's staring down at this device. When you're on the bus, everybody, nobody's, nobody's speaking. Like it is literally just the head down. It's sad. And I can see what you mean when you talk about the like attention, like attention is a thing of the past.

Ruby Ryba (09:23.19)
Right, right, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (09:45.284)
concentration because we have got this instant gratification. I have to see something else because I'm bored of that swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And that is just making its way into everyday life. And I wonder what the future is going to look like because these kids now will be the adults that ultimately take charge of the world moving forward in 15, 20 years.

Ruby Ryba (09:45.294)
Mm-hmm.

Ruby Ryba (09:59.639)
yet.

Ruby Ryba (10:07.714)
I do think a big problem is the environment though. And so that almost makes me challenge that quote because I think that the kids would survive in the eighties because they would have to. You have no alternative but to look at your shoes, you know? And that's the problem is that we have all of these alternatives. There's just so much that I think there's another quote that's like the ancient problem was scarcity and the modern problem is abundance. You know, there's too much, you know, there's too much sugar. There's too much...

Stuart Cooke (10:16.514)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Tastes right.

Ruby Ryba (10:36.962)
technology, there's too much everything. And so we need to intentionally construct environments where those temptations don't exist. So I'm working on my book, for example. Oftentimes, if I'm writing out of the house at a cafe or the library, I'll just leave my phone in the car because then I won't go on it. It's kind of that simple. It takes a little bit of intention and planning, but just realizing that. And yeah, in terms of the kids'

of today being the adults of tomorrow, I mean, I do think that we adults also need to think about what sort of behavior we're modeling, you know, because we say, these kids, they're on their phones, but who buys these kids' phones? Who pays for their, you know? And is it really because, you know, we need to know when to pick the kid up? Like, you can do that with a flip phone, you know? Or it's really tricky.

Stuart Cooke (11:20.792)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (11:31.98)
It's the hardest thing. mean, I've got two 17-year-old twins. One of the twins is great at saving. The other twin is terrible at saving. So Lauren, the twin who is terrible at saving, asked Grace, who has a lot of cash because she saves well, to fund her a new mobile phone. Well, I'm not buying them a phone.

Ruby Ryba (11:44.59)
Mm-hmm.

Ruby Ryba (11:56.13)
Wow, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (11:57.066)
And so she did and now Lauren is beholden to Grace and Lauren defaulted on a couple of her payments and then that's a whole new thing in the house and Grace said, right, I'm charging you interest on that. So yeah, it is crazy. Crazy household. So I am keen to understand then common triggers because you mentioned that, you you'll just leave your...

Ruby Ryba (12:05.494)
my goodness.

Yeah, yeah. my goodness. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (12:23.608)
phone in the car perhaps when you go out and you've got things that you really need to concentrate on and I'm very cognizant if we go out for a meal the mobile phone will never come with me ever. I don't want that phone in a restaurant and also if I'm out and about walking I don't want the phone in my pocket because I just want to enjoy what I'm doing but I know that that is often not the case for many people and sometimes it can almost

create heart palpitations if the phone isn't within reach. So I'm keen to understand the common triggers then that drive these people to have to have that phone in their pocket at all times or in their hands.

Ruby Ryba (13:03.16)
So, before we get to triggers, I do think that design over willpower is really important because just understanding what you actually need your phone for and what you don't need your phone for can make a really big difference because those heart palpitations that you're talking about, I think a lot of people don't even know what they're experiencing them for. So first thinking about what do I actually need my phone for? Do I need it for important phone calls or am I freaking out because I'm worried about

Stuart Cooke (13:06.084)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (13:16.857)
Mm.

Ruby Ryba (13:32.29)
you know, how my most recent social media post is doing and just kind of separating those things out and thinking about the priorities. But in terms of triggers, so I like to call the things that get you onto your phone on ramps. So for on ramps, there's proximity and there's environmental on ramps, right? So there's proximity is just how far away your phone is from you. You know, do you sleep with your phone on your nightstand? Do you work with your phone on your desk, et cetera?

Stuart Cooke (13:38.723)
Hmm.

Ruby Ryba (13:59.298)
But then there are also environmental triggers, right? When you're at dinner and everyone else starts pulling out their phones, that's a social trigger. And you think, OK, well, everyone else is on their phone, so guess I'll go on my phone. And then another person is done with their phone, but they see that you're on your phone. so it's just like this vicious cycle. So those are sort of the environmental ones. Then there's also notifications, of course, which, again, you can redesign. So do you really need all of your notifications turned on? Do you need notifications from every single app?

Probably not. You can also use focus modes to have some notifications come through, some not. A common, very valid reason that people might want their phones on full volume is if they have aging relatives or children, whatever, that they need to hear phone calls from. But then you could just have phone calls on, but all the other notifications muted. So really crystallizing what

you want from your phone and setting boundaries with the rest can be helpful. And then finally, a last on ramp would be just boredom and absence of an alternative, know, sort of the drug of choice, the app that your thumb just knows where it is on the home screen. And thinking about what am I getting out of that? mean, today, for example, I was writing in the morning and then I was doing stuff with my kids. I had like an hour before this podcast and I sat down.

Stuart Cooke (15:05.955)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (15:23.47)
and was about to go on Instagram for 10 minutes, because I use a distraction blocker, so it only lets me go on for 10 minutes at a time if I choose to. And I was about to go on it for 10 minutes, but then I thought, you know, like, I'm not going to feel restored after this. I edit and the distraction blocker helps because the fact that it takes 10, 20 seconds for the app to load, it does give me some time to even question if I need it or not.

Stuart Cooke (15:31.172)
Okay. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (15:37.497)
Hmm.

Ruby Ryba (15:49.71)
And so I read instead because I'm reading a pretty good book right now. And honestly, like that was probably more restorative. But that was helped by I didn't have an absence of an alternative, right? I did have something that I could go to instead. And that takes practice and that takes getting to know yourself and thinking about what do I need in different instances? You know, I'm not always in the mood to read a book. But because scrolling the phone is kind of the path of least resistance.

it's off and it's always within arm's reach, it's something that we like to reach for. So really thinking about a menu of alternatives is also really helpful.

Stuart Cooke (16:27.948)
It's tricky too because there seems to be an increasing integration of everyday necessities into the phone as well. So we've got Apple Pay, oftentimes if you're in an electric car now, you've got an app on there, you can start the car, connected to home devices, two-pact authentication, all of that stuff is making it more of a necessity, which is kind of hard to then keep it at home if you're out and about.

Ruby Ryba (16:42.574)
two factor authorization, yep.

Ruby Ryba (16:54.146)
Yes. Yes. So that's definitely one of, like that's the only valid on-ramp. know, there is the valid on-ramp of you need to use your phone for a valid reason. And there are some things that I do recommend using a substitute device for. So if there's something that you find yourself using your phone for over and over again, like let's say use the timer because you're cooking or you use the music because you like to listen to music at home.

Stuart Cooke (17:04.088)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (17:24.056)
then maybe that's something where you can actually treat yourself to something that is a dedicated device. So whether it's a kitchen timer or a turntable or whatever, but you're totally right that there are some of these things like I use my phone to pay for parking or whatever. There are some of these things where you do actually have to use your phone. And for that, think being aware of the on-ramp.

Stuart Cooke (17:45.348)
Mm.

Ruby Ryba (17:51.554)
which is what gets you on the phone, but then the slippery slopes are what keep you on the phone. So making sure that you go on the phone for a reason, but then you put it back down when you're done. And that's again, something that does take a little bit of training, but crystallizing your values and why you're on your phone in the first place is helpful. It's not bulletproof, but it helps.

Stuart Cooke (18:13.59)
No, totally. So would it be fair to say then that the problem really largely exists with the social media apps that are on your phone, right? I mean, those are the shiny objects that keep calling us back.

Ruby Ryba (18:26.606)
Yeah, I do think that when you're thinking about design over willpower, there's proximity, there's boundaries, and there's temptation. And a big bucket of temptation is the social media. So thinking about how you can reduce that temptation, how you can make your phone less shiny is really important. And it also goes back, I think, to thinking about who's profiting. If we're thinking about the attention economy, what are you getting out of going on your phone?

Stuart Cooke (18:34.2)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (18:38.212)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (18:52.195)
Hmm.

Ruby Ryba (18:55.872)
scrolling through social media, you know, so I have that that that app that lets me go on social media for 10 minutes at a time and I like that because sometimes my friends will send me videos and stuff and so I can catch up and like watch their videos although honestly I'm still considering just getting rid of it all together because it's like sure I'm watching the videos that they sent me and I'll send some videos back but I really don't know if it's worth it. I'm just like haha like it's a little like I don't know. And

Stuart Cooke (19:11.886)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (19:25.262)
I just lost my train of thought. yeah, making your phone less shiny, adding friction, making it more difficult. So there's a number of ways that you can do that. I mean, you can clean up your home screen. You can delete apps. You know, some people will, for example, use the social media apps only in their internet browser, which is just a lot clunkier and more annoying or just on their computer once a week. You can also use, I don't know if you've heard of Brick. It's a, yeah, it's a physical device.

Stuart Cooke (19:44.888)
Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (19:53.424)
Hmm. Yeah, I was looking at it last, only last week actually, it popped up on A-Feed somewhere. So tell me what, sorry, it just looks like a small tile. So what, tell me what it does.

Ruby Ryba (20:00.749)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, so you can tap it and you can, well, first you set up different modes. So you can set up different modes where you get rid of, let's say one mode, you literally have only your phone and Google Maps, or you might have a mode where you have, you know, you can set up as many different modes as you want, and then you physically tap it, change the mode, and then you cannot change the mode again until you physically tap it. So what's nice about that is if your brick lives at home,

and you tap it and you say, okay, I can only use my phone and like texting and Google Maps capabilities, then while you're out and about, there's nothing you can do about it. So I think that that's great. I think like, why try to muscle through not tapping something? You know, it's just so much easier if someone blocks it for you, you know? Like I used to tell my husband, you know, when I used to tell my daughter that she has to be done with TV, she's a lot better about it now, but it used to be like a big like...

Stuart Cooke (20:48.525)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (20:59.938)
Okay, your 30 minutes is up. And it was like, no, blah, blah, blah. But I used to think, you know, she doesn't realize, but she's lucky that she has someone to enforce it. I wish I had someone to enforce turning off TV, like if I'm watching late at night. And that's what brick does for you, you know? So, and a lot of people have done interesting things like that, like using timers on their routers so that their wifi goes out at a certain time. There are things that you can set up to kind of just make things easier.

Stuart Cooke (21:09.57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (21:22.829)
Okay.

Ruby Ryba (21:28.844)
in terms of sticking to your goals.

Stuart Cooke (21:30.82)
Is there perhaps one singular proven strategy that you've found to be the most effective that perhaps just allows people to take that step to improve their phone habits?

Ruby Ryba (21:47.053)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (21:50.082)
like smash the phone with a hammer. That would be a great one. Or the brick, smash the phone with a brick.

Ruby Ryba (21:50.22)
It depends.

I mean, I think different people are drawn to their phones for different reasons, which is what makes phone use particularly interesting to me. But I mean, if you want some statistics, gray scale is an interesting one. When you put your phone on gray scale in black and white, research found that it reduces phone use by 50 minutes a day.

Stuart Cooke (22:03.172)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (22:14.372)
Hmm.

Ruby Ryba (22:22.008)
which is pretty significant. And so that's an example of making it less shiny. When the phone's in grayscale, it's just not as fun. And the colors on your phone are so saturated that when you're spending time on your phone, makes the rest of, it makes real life feel grayer. But when your phone is on grayscale, I've actually noticed it makes my life look more colorful, which is interesting.

Stuart Cooke (22:22.242)
Wow. Yeah.

Mm.

Stuart Cooke (22:38.573)
Yeah

Ruby Ryba (22:46.19)
But grayscale is tricky because a lot of people don't like it. It's hard to actually make yourself use it. So I I would really recommend thinking about a couple of proximity, like high frequency proximity. So in terms of what are the things that you do often? You sleep every night, you probably leave your house every day, and you probably work.

Stuart Cooke (22:52.76)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (23:13.272)
Think about those three times and where can your phone live during those three times. Because if you just make that one decision of, my phone is gonna sleep in the kitchen and I'm gonna sleep in my bedroom, then that is eight or 10 hours of freedom that you're gonna get from your phone every day just based on one decision. So I think thinking about behaviors or habits that occur frequently and making small changes to those can make really big differences.

Stuart Cooke (23:41.282)
Yeah, like it, fantastic. I tried the grayscale thing, but not from the allure of shiny things. I wanted to see whether it impacted battery life. And it didn't. Not at all. What do you think about the future of smartphones? And I say this because we are now in the advent of emerging AI in terms of it's starting to...

Ruby Ryba (23:44.91)
Mm-hmm.

Ruby Ryba (23:52.789)
interesting. Okay, fair. Okay.

Ruby Ryba (24:06.168)
Mm-hmm.

Stuart Cooke (24:09.316)
weave its way into obviously know chat GPT, you can talk to that, you can even create companions now that talk to you which take this phone to a next level. I don't know where it's going to end up but I can kind of see where it's going.

Ruby Ryba (24:26.798)
Yeah, mean, my hope is that even though the phone is going to continue to be everywhere, that it does feel like people are reaching an awareness, though, of the drawbacks. You I think it's been like this shiny new exciting thing for a while, but people are starting to realize, wait, this makes me lonely, this makes me isolated. So, but I can also see some division based on this. I feel like it is possible that there will be

Stuart Cooke (24:34.66)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (24:48.068)
Mm.

Ruby Ryba (24:57.474)
different groups of thought on this. feel like I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes almost a more polarizing concept because there are a lot of people that are very committed to changing the way they interact with their phones and there are people that aren't. But I mean, my hope is that we kind of can overcome this as a human race and realize that it's a tool to be used, but not something

to let take over. Yeah, I don't know, I can't tell you.

Stuart Cooke (25:29.602)
Yeah, fingers crossed. mean, it gets smarter as the days tick over. It's very, very interesting. Just coming back to children, obviously, because I'm most concerned about kids with phones because brains haven't properly evolved, the temptations are just so easily absorbed. How...

How would you speak to a parent of a family that has young children that are kind of in that age bracket then when mobile phone is now being a consideration? mean, for you, I mean, I don't know the age of your children, but what age should a child have a mobile phone? Like what age do you think that would be acceptable? And what kind of boundaries would you put on that particular device if you even gave it to them?

Ruby Ryba (26:23.598)
Yeah. So I'm lucky that my children are still young. I have five and a half, two and a half and almost born. And so I have time to think about it. But it's funny that you say this because literally a couple days ago, I was telling my husband, like, if the school that my daughter is in is the kind of school that she needs to have a phone when she's 11, like, I will pull her out of that school. Like, I feel very strongly about this. But I also know that if your kid is the only kid without a phone,

Stuart Cooke (26:29.536)
Okay. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (26:45.604)
care.

Stuart Cooke (26:52.192)
Mmm. Yep.

Ruby Ryba (26:52.248)
then they're gonna be left out, you know? And so it's really important to try to find a community of like-minded adults. So in terms of what my personal, what I would love to have if I could just control all the parents in my kids' grades and stuff, definitely no phone until at least high school, ninth grade, 14 years old. No social media for sure. I mean...

Stuart Cooke (27:16.804)
Right.

Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (27:22.958)
When you think about how challenging it is to be a teenage girl or boy, I mean a teenager, even early 20s, there's so much going on and then you're using social media to compare yourself to others. You're learning about parties that you weren't invited to instantly because it's all on there. just, being a human is hard enough. That just sounds awful. So, I mean.

delay as much as possible is what I would say. I I don't think adults should even have social media. I mean, there was a time, I think it was last year, about this time, maybe two years ago, around this time of year, November, and I go to my husband, like all stressed out, and I'm like, my God, like we only have one Christmas tree. Like we need to have a Christmas tree in every room. And he's like, what are you talking about? And I was like, you know what? I think I've just been like on Instagram a little too much, and I see these like mom Instagram.

Stuart Cooke (28:12.95)
I've watched that.

Stuart Cooke (28:17.603)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (28:19.49)
like people would like, it's like, this is Sally's tree and this is Charlie's tree and I let them decorate it with their, and I was like, whoa, like, you know, and I'm even, I even know about this and yet I just got like sucked in and I'm a fully formed adult, you know? And so I cannot imagine, cause I remember my middle school hood and high school hood without phones and you know, you just feel very, you want to fit in and you care about what other people think of you and it just must be so amplified with the social media.

There's also just such a opportunity cost because these kids, instead of playing outside, instead of being outside, which is so important, you know, in the podcast episode that you had recently with the light guy, that was a really interesting episode. And I was like, my God, two hours outside every day? Like, I was like, okay, I need to start doing that. But you know, the kids are spending time inside on their phones instead of outside. And parents are so worried about getting...

Stuart Cooke (29:03.374)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (29:07.118)
Ha

Ruby Ryba (29:16.6)
their kids getting kidnapped or whatever. But that is very, very unlikely. There was a lot of news coverage of kidnappings in the 80s and 90s. And then that really made people a lot more worried than they need to be, when really there's so much more risk on the internet. There was a study done, I think it was this year in June and in August, where researchers set up TikTok accounts and they set them up as 13-year-olds.

They checked off all of the safety considerations, like don't show me explicit content, whatever. And then within two clicks, they were shown on their like, for you page, porn or like porn simulation, which is insane. And then they told TikTok, they were like, look at what happened. And they're like, that's so weird. And they took down those exact photos, like those exact videos, but in question, but they didn't change anything in terms of how the app worked. So then when the researchers

Stuart Cooke (29:59.254)
Wow.

Stuart Cooke (30:05.57)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (30:13.507)
No.

Ruby Ryba (30:14.766)
did the study again two months later in August, they got the same results. Or there was the thing that came out about on Instagram, miners are often recommended groomers because groomers are usually trying to find miners. And so Instagram realized that the groomers want the miners and so they recommend the miners, the groomers. And it's...

And it kind of makes sense from a statistical standpoint how the algorithm would do that without bad intention. But there's just so much risk in terms of what children can see, what we can see. When there's an assassination or there's war or there's just really horrific things, you can now see zoomed in video footage of this stuff, which can be really horrifying. So I digress, but I just.

Okay, back to what parents should do. Okay, so no screens in bedrooms ever. I think as much as possible, communal devices. So you don't get an iPad, there's just like an iPad for the family that you can use sometimes in the kitchen. Same with TV. Using technology together as much as possible. So instead of them going down a rabbit hole or like, you know, just watching like 30 episodes of something by themselves, maybe like,

Stuart Cooke (31:20.1)
Hmm.

Stuart Cooke (31:33.955)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (31:37.408)
every night, you watch the TV together. And I understand how that's challenging because a lot of times as parents, we rely on, we can rely on screens as babysitters, right? Like the whole point is I want my kid to be on the screen so that I get some spare time.

Stuart Cooke (31:51.726)
Well that's right, yeah, you probably don't want to sit through four episodes of Dora the Explorer.

Ruby Ryba (31:57.3)
Right. But then maybe they don't need to be watching four episodes of Dora the Explorer, you know, or or sure. Maybe they can have, you know, my daughter can watch TV on her own. Right now, it's always changing. But right now we have just tickets and she has four 30 minute tickets that she can use each week. She's five. And so then she decides, like, OK, I'm going to watch on Monday. I'm going to watch on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, whatever. Because I also think that the answer is not to give them no technology.

Stuart Cooke (32:00.374)
No, that's right.

Stuart Cooke (32:26.797)
Yes.

Ruby Ryba (32:26.86)
because then when they are exposed to it, they will have no understanding of how to limit or budget it themselves. So I'm trying to teach her how to budget it on her own and so, you and she watches her shows, but it's tricky.

Stuart Cooke (32:39.874)
Yeah, it is tricky. remember with Lauren, Lauren was the child that we said you could just, well, to my wife, like we just can't let Lauren have an iPhone because it will just suck everything out of her. And I remember we, when they went to a school when they were 14 and it was a long way, so she needed to have a phone. So I got her a, like a dumb phone, like, you know, Nokia thing. And when she opened up the...

Ruby Ryba (33:01.752)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (33:05.924)
the look of disappointment on her face. She wanted an iPhone. There's no way you're not getting an iPhone. I found that thing in the recycle bin two weeks later. She just thrown it in the bin. And then went ahead, got herself a job, bought herself a phone through her own means. then there was the whole screen time issue. She had this phone for a week and I said,

Ruby Ryba (33:10.094)
Poor thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ruby Ryba (33:19.851)
my goodness.

Stuart Cooke (33:36.418)
I need to check your screen time. I hadn't even thought, because my eldest daughter had it and we'd implemented it with her. When we went on screen time, we saw days where she'd spend 12 hours on this phone. And so it's like, well, look, you've got an hour on the bus going to school, you've got an hour coming back, I'll give you two hours a day. And then when you're off the bus. But then of course that screen time, as we mentioned before, migrates onto a bigger screen because the laptop couldn't.

serve up desktop, TikTok and all of this other nonsense. So yeah, it's real tricky. So tell me about the new book coming out, How to Stop Scrolling. So what can we expect when that is released?

Ruby Ryba (34:09.856)
is.

Ruby Ryba (34:18.766)
Yeah, so in my book, I have three pillars for behavior change. So we talked a little bit about design over willpower. so there's designing the life that you want to live. Then I also talk about not leaving a vacuum. So if you're spending five or 12 hours on your phone and suddenly you're not, what are you going to do? Sit on your hands? You need to think about what you want to do. And I think that that actually is one of the reasons why people spend so much time on their phone is because

Stuart Cooke (34:39.662)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (34:45.878)
it's easier to scroll than to think, what do I want to do with this one life that I have? And that can feel like a lot of pressure. But I also think that we currently feel all this pressure that everything we do needs to be really productive and hard and intense. And that's not true. You could just sit there. One of my options for don't leave a vacuum is attention and presence. So if you're not on your phone when you're with your kids, what are you doing instead? You're actually

Stuart Cooke (34:50.307)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (35:15.5)
being present with your kids. If you're not on your phone when you're watching a movie, what are you doing? You're watching the movie and that's actually a victory. And then the third pillar is to be kind to yourself because when you are changing, you can't be shaming yourself into change. You are going to stumble, you are going to have setbacks. So you want to accept and expect these setbacks. And instead of kicking yourself for them, you want to use them as opportunities for...

Stuart Cooke (35:21.721)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (35:42.784)
analysis and say, okay, how can I now going back into the circle, how can I design things better next time, you know? So that's sort of the three pillars. And then I go into all of that. And each pillar has subcomponents. And I talk a lot about just different environments that people might come across. And I think that when you keep these three pillars in mind, you can really change any behavior.

Stuart Cooke (36:14.34)
Excellent. Well, I certainly look forward to sharing those links. So question is, will it be released as an e-book so people can read it on their mobile phones?

Ruby Ryba (36:21.582)
Great question. It'll be paperback. I guess I'll do a Kindle. I haven't decided about that yet. I was thinking I'll do an audiobook because I know that some people can't sit through reading. Yeah, it's tricky. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, one of the first decisions I made about the book was to keep it short because I felt like my target audience wasn't going to be interested in reading a thick book. So it is funny. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (36:28.462)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah. Hmm. No, absolutely right. I know.

Stuart Cooke (36:46.264)
Yeah, it's so hard, isn't it? The social dilemma. No, that's fantastic. So look, we're getting close to time. I'm keen to understand then as a teacher and a mom and someone who's deeply interested in changing behaviors. Like what do you personally do? What are your non-negotiables that you do each and every day that allow you to get the most out of your day?

Ruby Ryba (36:50.99)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Stuart Cooke (37:15.918)
And they don't have to be related to anything that we've spoken to about at all. And it could be that you like to get sunlight in your eyes. It could be like you like to stretch in the morning or you like to a cup of coffee and do some journaling or whatever those may be. So what are your non-negotiables?

Ruby Ryba (37:33.038)
That's a great question. I I definitely care a lot about sunlight and water. I feel like I always am going back to the basics. You know, there's sunlight, there's water, there's getting enough sleep, there's eating well. I've been sort of interested in fermented foods recently. I hear like a lot of great things about that. So I've been trying to like increase that. I mean, I think I'm always kind of learning and implementing new things. So my non-negotiables are always changing.

Stuart Cooke (37:36.546)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (37:41.796)
Mm-hmm.

Stuart Cooke (37:49.657)
yeah. Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (38:00.174)
Yeah.

Ruby Ryba (38:00.206)
My poor husband, know, it's like, this week we're eating tons of fermented foods and next, you know, I'm kind of like a researcher in our own home. But yeah, I mean, I think just taking care of my physical body is such an important foundation because you can't do anything beyond that. You know, I think that so quickly people start to think about what is the root cause of everything that's going on? I think I might need to go see.

Stuart Cooke (38:03.518)
Haha,

Ruby Ryba (38:27.054)
like a holistic doctor or this or that, and it's like, wait, are you getting enough sleep? Are you drinking water? And so I think whenever I feel kind of out of alignment, I always want to make sure that I'm checking on my basics. And then what else? I mean, I'm always growing. I'm always working on something. I try not to be too hard on myself. That's probably a non-negotiable. I wear many hats because I am a mom, I am a wife, I am an author. And so to try to...

have only one focus of each day is something that really helps me. You can't do it, you can do it all, just not all at the same time. So, you know, today might be a book heavy day. I did a lot of writing, I'm on this podcast. Tomorrow I might be spending more quality time with my kids. That sort of thing, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (39:04.856)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (39:13.838)
Fantastic. No, I like it. And you mentioned sunlight and you spoke about the podcast as well on light and we didn't even touch on blue light from phones and the impact that has on kids sleep and then the other problem and then the downstream consequences of no or not no quality sleep because your body thinks it's daytime because you're shining a torch in your eyes at night.

Ruby Ryba (39:21.688)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yet another problem, yes.

Ruby Ryba (39:36.418)
And that's also gonna affect attention span and it's gonna affect school ability the following day and it's gonna affect memory consolidation. There's just so much to it. I think there's just so much at stake and so that's why I feel so passionately about this. I really think it can negatively affect our physical and mental health and that there's just so much out there that we could be doing instead of staring at these tiny screens.

Stuart Cooke (39:38.541)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (39:43.161)
Yeah.

Stuart Cooke (40:02.742)
I know. I said to my daughter, Grace, who spends a lot of time on her phone, but she doesn't do social. She's found this app that basically gives her free books. She's a reader, but she loves books. But she's continually staring at this thing, just reading books. And I said, boy, you know, if you, she does go to the library, but she says that they.

Ruby Ryba (40:12.86)
okay.

Ruby Ryba (40:19.128)
Go to the library.

Stuart Cooke (40:25.092)
She doesn't have, they don't have the books that she wants. It takes too long to get the books that she wants. And she's found this little collection of books and she's just always on this thing. And I said to her the other day that, know, if you gave that time that you'd tied into just reading book after book on that mobile phone, you'd be fluent in four or five different languages. It's just, it's a time shift, isn't it? It's like, where do you want to put that time? And it is, yeah, it's so hard.

Ruby Ryba (40:50.328)
Right.

Stuart Cooke (40:55.286)
especially with you mentioned that these kids are tired and wired and then they go into school and then people like you have to try and teach these kids that are tired and wired and they've got no attention and they just, yeah, it just goes on and on and on. problems that I would imagine will be faced for generations to come and if it won't be phones, it will be the next thing.

Ruby Ryba (41:02.947)
Yes.

Ruby Ryba (41:15.34)
Right, but I do think a big part of it is also education. There was a study, and I'll send it to you so you can link it, but where students were not mandated to decrease their phone use in any way, but they were just shown a series of documentaries day after day on phone use. And they started to police themselves and use their phones a lot less. Because I think a lot of times people just don't realize how much is at stake in terms of...

What is happening to your brain? What is happening to your mental health? What is happening to your relationships? And so when we start to actually realize what we're losing and what we could be gaining, I think it can motivate us to change. It gives us a why.

Stuart Cooke (41:46.756)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (41:52.802)
That's it. Yeah, absolutely. It's a huge trade off. So what, what is next? What's next for you? What have you got in the pipeline? Obviously, you got the book coming out. We're coming towards the end of the year. What what are you? What have you got in the pipeline?

Ruby Ryba (42:07.384)
Yeah, I think I'm gonna be promoting the book next year in 2026, I am, next step, well, my personal next step is to be talking to kindergarten moms in my daughter's grade because I wanna get people on board with delaying phones in her school in our grade. And then professionally, I think next step for me is thinking more about

Stuart Cooke (42:26.66)
Hmm.

Ruby Ryba (42:36.622)
kids, tweens, teens, and what we can be doing. I think that there's a big focus also on screens with young children, you know, so they say, no screens until 18 months or whatever. There are these rules for really little kids, right? And then there's also all this info on teens, like, my God, teenagers are using their phones for all this time, this is terrible. But it makes me think, like, no one's thinking about, like, the five to 12-year-olds. Like, what's happening there that's setting the teens up for this?

Stuart Cooke (42:38.53)
Mm-hmm.

Ruby Ryba (43:06.476)
So that's kind of something that I'm particularly interested about diving into. yeah, this book is about adults and I think my next book will be about kids or parenting in some.

Stuart Cooke (43:12.173)
Well it's-

Stuart Cooke (43:18.498)
Well it breaks my heart to see little toddlers being pushed in prams with iPads. Like that's a... Boy boy. That's conditioning 101.

Ruby Ryba (43:25.272)
no need.

100%. And boredom is so important. I remember I said that to my kids when I was teaching all the time. I mean, I wasn't too boring of a teacher, I promise. But occasionally, you have to muscle through and do it. And they're like, but this is boring. And I'm like, do you know how many times being able to tolerate being bored has served me professionally? If I'm in a long meeting with my boss and my boss is boring the heck out of me,

Stuart Cooke (43:32.162)
Mmm, cool.

Stuart Cooke (43:39.586)
Haha

Ruby Ryba (43:55.726)
And what am I going to do today? Oh, sorry, I'm bored. Like, I've got to go. You know, like, no, you have to sit there and tolerate it. And there's just, there's a lot that can be learned from not being on the phone.

Stuart Cooke (44:08.598)
I do wonder, I my kids wear t-shirts of bands from the 60s, 70s and the 80s and they listen to a lot of older music and I wonder whether, boy that music was so wildly creative. The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, like Michael Jackson, the list goes on. Music's so different these days and I do wonder whether the whole creative input has paid a huge part in that in terms of...

There's always something to fill the gap when perhaps potentially you may have been sitting there with a guitar and just dreaming about lyrics and tunes and what have you, but I know. I think about these things.

Ruby Ryba (44:45.91)
Right. Isn't there a quote that's like boredom is the mother of creativity? and I also do think that creativity is hard work. You know, there's another quote about writing that's like, write whenever creativity strikes. Good thing it strikes every morning at 9 a.m. You know, like you have to make yourself do it, you know? So that's a great question, a great point. It's interesting.

Stuart Cooke (44:49.54)
Something, yeah, that I have to, yeah.

Stuart Cooke (44:54.702)
Mm.

Stuart Cooke (45:01.7)
Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, no, I love it. Fantastic. Well, look, great conversation. How can our audience get more of you? Notification of the book, I noticed you have a blog and social channels and things like that. Where can we send them?

Ruby Ryba (45:21.87)
Yeah, so if your audience goes to howtostopscrolling.com, you can sign up for my weekly newsletter, The Scroll Shift, where I send you some tips every Wednesday. It's a black and white, not very shiny email. And you'll also get updates on my book there, howtostopscrolling.com.

Stuart Cooke (45:35.812)
You

Stuart Cooke (45:39.928)
Fantastic. Fantastic, Ruby. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Look forward to sharing it with our audience. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you. Okay.

Ruby Ryba (45:47.128)
Thanks too.