Carlos Whittaker
Appearances
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
We've outsourced all of it.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Oh, yeah. Oh, no. That's who we were created to be.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
All of it, dude. We've outsourced our humanity.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I spent eight weeks... And I no longer could outsource any of this anymore.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So I legitimately detoxed. My body and my brain wasn't used to actually living the way it was created to live. You talk about brain... health and memory. And there's a study done. I feel like the study was like 2016. So this was almost a decade ago that showed London cab drivers.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
The ones that use GPS versus the ones that don't, the ones that use GPS versus the ones that use landmarks, the ones that use GPS develop a gray dense matter on their brain that the ones that were using landmarks didn't. So it's literally like we are atrophied. I mean, you're right. Like when you don't use it, it's slowly,
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Totally.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah. That's amazing.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And so tell me, am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. And not only are you not wrong, but this black box, whatever we're calling it, right? This thing. You talked about wonder. You talked about the allure. You were able to savor this moment with yourself. Like all of these things. I want us to... But everybody at the show... We're like this.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Through the screen. Absolutely.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Absolutely, right? And you've seen the videos or the photos of... There's this one famous photo that shows the juxtaposition between Michael Jordan hitting a game-winning shot in like 1992 versus somebody hitting a game-winning shot in like 2022. Every single person... in the Michael Jordan, it's just standing there with their mouths hanging open and their hands out like this.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And then in the 2022, whatever, every single person has their phone up. And I'm just telling you that we have lost... The ability... And listen, I don't want this to be all doom and gloom, but I do want people to understand.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
We have to grieve that. You have to understand, like, you are legitimately losing decades of your life. Like, if somebody is listening to this that's 30, okay, I'm 50. So, like, yeah, I may be losing 12 years. You're losing... 30. 30 years. 30 years. 30 years of your life. And not only... I don't want you to even think about losing 30 years of your life.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I want you to think about, like, what are you losing? Not just a life, but like these moments with your son, right? Like... Walking out, when I would walk outside and it was this hot and I didn't, I would laugh because I was like, I don't know if it's 97 degrees, 100% humidity, or if it's 98 degrees with zero, I don't care. It's just hot. And I know it's too hot to do what I wanted to do.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So I'm just going to, you know, like all of these uniquely human experiences that we were created to do, I got to do again. So the good news is like, I fell back in love with it. with all of these things that we no longer do that we were created to do as humans, right? Wondering, noticing, savoring, beholding, getting lost and finding our way.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Just all of the community, the table, all these things that are gone now, I got to live it again. And so the good news, here's the good news, is I'm now addicted to those things.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I'm no longer addicted to my screen. And it's crazy. It didn't take me setting up all these rules. It didn't take me like, okay, I'm going to make my phone lock at 10 p.m. No. Last night, for example. Mm-hmm. Yesterday, I'll just use a current day example. I am putting up my Christmas decorations in my front yard.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And the last few years, I've time-lapse filmed myself because I'm going to make a YouTube video and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to savor doing this without having to think about a video and all these things that I'm doing. I don't know, maybe 25 neighbors. No, so this was at the point of this recording, election day.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So election day here in America, and I'm putting up a 25-foot Rudolph in my front yard. The amount of people that just stopped and said, thank you. Oh. I really needed this today of all days. I needed to see a Rudolph. I needed to see Santa. Like, thank you. And like, these are things, savoring these moments, having these face-to-face, human-to-human interactions that normally we wouldn't have.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
But now, like, I'm addicted to those things. Those are the things I'm addicted to. Like, I want more of that. So I pick up my phone less.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
We've taken it. It's gone. It's gone. These screens... I mean, I'll just say that it's not real community. It's not. It's not. And there's people that are listening to this that, and I get this pushback a little bit sometimes, where people are like, well, I don't live in a, I live in a tiny town. I don't have, you know, a lot of friends. I don't have, and so my phone helps me make friends.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
It helps me. And I'm like, I'm not saying that you can't make a friend on your phone, that you can't, but it's just not, it's not what it was supposed to be. Right. And I tasted what it's supposed to be again. Ooh, I don't ever want to taste the other thing again. Like it's not real.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Right.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
No, it really is. And it's easy to make to, honestly, I mean, I say easy. It's not complicated to make that life again. You don't have to move to monastery. I did it for you. You don't have to go to Amish farm. I did it for you. But I have laid out probably 17 to 20 things in my book that I think give people handlebars on what they can do to live this life, right? To, to get back to, um,
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
being truly human again without our phones. I was joking this morning to the staff how we trust Yelp now more than we... It's taken our ability away to go to a restaurant that we actually just want to go try. It's like, well, I checked Yelp and there's a one-star review. I'm never going there again. I'm not going there again.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Some dude named Bob with taste buds that aren't like yours made that decision for you. You didn't. And so for me, I just think I have created... through writing this book, I've given people handlebars on like how to wonder again, like let wonder happen.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You know, I think when I was, I think I'm a little older than you, but like when I was in high school, I'd go to like the CD store to go listen to like music. And so I'd go to the CD store, I'd knock on my phone, I'd go and I'd walk up and down the aisles. And back in the day, like you'd have to like take the demo CD, put it in CD player, put the headphones on.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I'll never forget walking down the aisle once, and seeing the most beautiful woman cut out that I've ever seen, like by this new CD. And I was like, who is that with her golden locks? You know, I was like 17, 18. And I walked up closer and it said Mariah Carey. And I was like, who's this Mariah Carey goddess? And like, I put the CD on and I listened to it. I was like, Who is this?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Listen to her voice. And I didn't know who it was. Then I took the CD to the person at the front. And I was like, hey, do you know who this is? No, we just got it in. So they couldn't tell me. So then I bought the CD. I went home. And I just listened to it for weeks. And I'm just listening. And I'm like, I don't know who this is.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And then on MTV, like three weeks later, there was like a three-minute interview with her. And I got three more minutes. That's so uniquely human. I mean, just figuring things out, like all of that is gone now. And I got to do it again with the monks and with the Amish. I got to literally live the purest existence.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
When I got back, my daughter said, because they got to live with me for three weeks without a phone. At the end, so I had a Sony camera with me. I was kind of self-documenting the whole thing. I asked my daughter, I said, so how's it been? And I'll never forget, she was 17 at the time. She said, this is the purest version of you I've ever experienced.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
It's there. Is it data or data? They're both.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Depends on how pretentious you want to be. I want to sound like John. I don't have a lot of friends. So I'm at the monastery. Every meal is... Breakfast and dinner are in silence. Lunch, you can talk. Okay, so that's weird. If you've ever eaten with somebody and all you can do is hear yourself chew and swallow, it's like the strangest thing ever.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
It's the strangest thing ever. I'll go and set myself on fire. So, like, meals already were weird with the monks, right? Chewing and slurping. Then I got to the Amish. And, bro, like, I just remember that first morning I show up at Willis' farmhouse. And after I—I was sleeping in a tiny house on their farm. And so I walked over to the main house.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And he's like, all right, Kathy's got breakfast for us. So I was like, oh, sweet. And it was gigantic spread. Like, I mean, you know, farm breakfast. But we sat there for like an hour eating. Mm-hmm. And talking. And I'm like, bro, don't we have to farm? And there's something, you know. And then lunch was like an hour and a half. And then dinner was like two hours.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And there was like, I don't know, 20 people at dinner. You know, other neighbors that had come over. And this happened day after day after day. No meal was longer or was shorter than an hour. And most dinners were longer than two. And I just was like, Willis, why?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Oh, bro. I was like, let's go.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Because I finished my bacon and eggs in seven minutes. I get antsy. You telling me that. Listen, listen. I finished my bacon and eggs in seven minutes. We sat there another 52, 53 minutes. And I was like, Willis, I'm done with my meal. He's like, no, you've just eaten. You haven't had a meal. And I was like, wait.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You've just eaten. You haven't had a meal. We don't have meals. We don't have meals.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And they have meals. And I was like, why is this taking so long? He's like, Carlos, we don't have Facebook. We don't have Instagram. We don't have Twitter. The only way we can visit and know what's happening in our community is over a meal. So every meal's an hour to two hours long. When I was doing research for the book after I got home, this was the kicker.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
The average American meal in 1923 was 90 minutes long. The average length for a meal in America was 90 minutes long, 1923. 2023, it's 12 minutes. 12 minutes. That's eating. That's not mealing. And we wonder, again, why we can't have conversations with each other. Here's the thing. The Amish are the Amish for a reason. I am not Amish for a reason.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So therefore, just knowing that we have a very large spectrum of beliefs, myself versus the Amish. I don't believe everything the Amish believe or else I'd be Amish. So as we're having these two-hour meals, we're talking about the most hot topic, geopolitical. I mean, we were talking about all the stuff with the Amish.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
We disagreed on so much, Willis and I. But bro, you cannot hate somebody for 90 minutes over a steak. It's too tiring. And so we talk about something, we disagree, and then we end up somewhere where we agree. And the next thing you know, I've got this cadence of disagreeing over something, but agreeing over what we love in the food and the relationship. And we've just lost that in America.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
We lost the ability to do that. And so, again, that's another uniquely human experience that is gone because we're either scrolling on our phone during a meal or they're just too fast.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
No.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And, you know, I can see you're an efficient guy. Do you like efficiency? Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And two things can be right.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, it's not. It's a hack. Yeah, we've so fallen in love with efficiency. When I was with the monks and the Amish, I just was like, yes, they're efficient with what they have, but that's not the goal.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
The goal's not to be efficient. Right. Um, you know, I, I feel like their, their goal is just to live this peaceful life and to like, you know, Willis, I'll never forget. We're, we're on the, on the back of the tractor and we're being pulled by these four gigantic, like Clydesdale horses, right? Plowing the field. And we're just sitting there and I'll never forget.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I turned to him and he's like, you know, Carlos, every day I'm out here on this horse, plowing this field, birds are flying around me, I think. I'm just so blessed. There's a lot more efficient ways he could be plowing that field. There's a lot more efficient ways that the Amish could be doing a lot of things.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
But they've made a decision to maybe not be so efficient so they can be a little bit more human. Which is why I asked you that question. I ask myself that question all the time. Am I trying to hack my life away into this thing or am I just going to live it? You can live your life or your life will live you. And I just feel like so many of us, our lives are living us instead of us living our lives.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I don't know, man. I just think that, you know, watching the Amish live the way that they lived with such purpose and such community. Well, it's changed me forever.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Okay. I did a talk based on my book to a bunch of video game developers.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Their planet is like, not only video games like on a console, but like VR, right? So like these people are not, they're immersed. So here's the no phone guy coming in to talk to video. And it's like, listen, it's... It's more about falling back in love.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
It's not about the phones.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I'm telling you, it's not about the phones. When you start falling back, so you're an accountant on your screen or whatever, you know, a simple thing. If you're going to watch a movie with your family, the only screen you're allowed to watch is the movie screen. Okay. Yes. Here we go. So now what have you done?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You've cut, you've severed another screen out of your, and so now, because most people watch TV and movies now with a screen in their hands.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So there we go. So that's simple. Watch a movie? Just watch the movie. Be with your family. Talk about the movie. Laugh. Just watch it. You're not there. Second thing, this is probably the most... Has been the most powerful thing for me. You talk about being present. Now, again, I know not everybody can do this. I was talking to a bunch of nurses, like in hospice care a few weeks ago. And...
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
One of the single greatest things that I've done is I've placed my phone on permanent do not disturb. My phone, the only phone calls I allow, the only buzzing that ever happens on my phone, my phone will never buzz unless my wife, kids, or my mom calls me. Calls me, not text me. They know if they text me, I'm not going to know until I look at my phone.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So that doesn't mean that I'm not getting notifications. They're still on my screen when I decide to look at my phone. But for a year and a half, my phone has been on permanent, do not disturb, which I'm sure Whitney, my assistant, or my manager, or my wife, I'm sure it drives some people crazy oh, my phone isn't in charge of me anymore. It never buzzes.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I was, I was with the monks day 10, sitting in Father Francis's office, pouring my heart out. He's like, yes, young man, all these books around. He's in his big, big robe and his phone. I'll never forget. It goes while I'm like, and he's like, excuse me, young man. And he picks up his phone and he's like, oh, okay. I'm sorry. Hold on. He puts it back down. And I was like, did this monk,
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Did this monk just do? And he's like, I guess I need to read your book, you know? But I spent two months and never had one ding or buzz on my body to take me away from being present with the person in front of me. when I got home, I was like, I have to continue this. This has to be.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So like, I will never be with somebody and my brain go away from the conversations we're in, even though they don't, they didn't hear the buzz in my pocket. My, my brain goes to my phone for one second and then back to the conversation I've left into an alternate universe. And so that's one thing I've done. What, whatever it looks like for you to turn, do not disturb on. Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
That's been a game changer for me. So now I'm in charge of when I'm picking my phone up again. You know, I talked about this morning to the staff buying an alarm clock. You know, like the Harvard study showed that the last 30 minutes were awake before we fall asleep. And the first 30 minutes we wake up, we're consuming more content than like my great grandparents generation consumed in a month.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So – and again, we're wondering why we're so anxious. So just buying an alarm clock, plugging your phone in in another room, read a book before you go to bed. And so you're going to save yourself an hour, right?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
This is so good.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
It's terrifying. And so, but I want to let everybody know that on the other side of that reckoning is so much freedom and peace. I know. It's, It's so much. And I was the same way when I got home and I had no screens with my family. Like, Were we just going to talk to each other? And my kids were like, dad, will you stop talking to me? You know, like, I just was like, hey, how's that?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You know, and they weren't used to me being that present. And I'm telling you, presence and solitude, it feels like a reckoning because it is going to be a reckoning for all of, you know, and the CPA that's on their laptop eight hours a day, you know, all, I know nurses that are on call 24 seven, you have to have your phone on, you can't put it on do not disturb. There's caveats, right?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
But I promise you, every single person listening to this knows the one thing they can do to do the next right thing to get a little bit of that freedom back in their life when it comes to these screens. You all have an opportunity to do it. What's it going to be? What's the one choice you're going to make today? And again, I tell people, do one hour on a Saturday with no screen. Just start there.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
That alone gives some people heart palpitations.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, yeah. Own it. And just trust me when I tell you. Trust me. Trust me because I may be the only person that you know. If you're listening to this, I'll say that you know me now. I'm the only person you know that's actually done this for two months. I'm telling you on the other side of that reckoning. I love that you call it a reckoning.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
On the other side is you're going to fall back in love with wondering and savoring and being truly human. That you're just... This is how I like to explain it. I moved to Nashville. This is what it's going to feel like. I put up a photo this morning of stars that it doesn't really work on. That doesn't really work on a podcast, but let me explain it this way.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
This is what it felt like when I finally got... unaddicted to my phone. I moved to Nashville 2010 and my wife told me about three weeks in that I'm wheezing every night. She's like, hey, you sound like Darth Vader when you're sleeping. And I was like, what do you mean? She's just like, I can hear you breathing like heavy, like maybe you have asthma. And I was like, maybe I don't have asthma.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I've never had asthma in my whole life. I'm 40 years old. She's like, you should go to an allergist. So I went to a doctor and he did an allergy test on me. I said, my wife says I'm wheezing. I don't hear myself wheezing. I feel fine. I'm working out every day. I'm running. He said, well, let me do an allergy test. So he tested all the allergies. He's like, dude, you're allergic to Nashville.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Everything. Every tree, every piece of grass. He's like, let me do a breathing test on you. So he had me blow into this tube and he goes, man, you're only using 60% of your lung capacity. I said, what? I feel fine. He goes, you feel fine because you're used to it. You're used to not breathing. But let me give you something. Then he pulled out this inhaler. I've never used an inhaler in my life.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
He's like, shake it up. I want you to take a hit. And the second breath you take, your lungs are going to go from 60% to 100%. I said, okay, whatever. I did it. The next breath I took, bro, after months of living in Nashville. I took a breath at 100% after only taking a breath at 60, and I almost started to weep because I didn't know I was suffocating.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And this is what I'm telling people is when you do this, you may be thinking, I don't need to do this. I'm fine. I'm telling you, when you take that breath after your inhaler, you're going to realize this is what it's like to breathe, and I haven't been breathing. Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Reckonings are reckoning.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Uh-huh.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You know, Sunday afternoon, we all get it, unless you've turned it off, whether you're an Android user, an iPhone user, or iOS user. And the screen time notification comes across, and it says you have averaged so many hours and minutes a day on your phone, which, honestly, it's not a very impactful thing. moment for any of us.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes. Well, and that, you know, again, not to revolve around religious language, but bro, I had to come to a reckoning when I didn't have my phone and I'm with these monks. And all of a sudden, like, I feel like God's silent. And I feel like, I'm like, what is this fairy tale I believe in? Next thing you know, like everything fell apart.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I'm like, I couldn't Google it to put it back together. That's right.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I'm telling you, bro. I had numerous reckonings. You can read about it in the book, but definitely a lot of reckoning and a lot of freedom on the other side.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
There's not an easy option. But just like that screen time notification came across my screen. There's an aha moment waiting for every single person. The only thing I'm asking people to do is do the math. So just do your math. And do your math. See how many years you're losing of your life. Legitimately, I should have called my book, Get Half Your Life Back.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Because if you even just cut it in half... I can legitimately say on this microphone, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you will get half of your life that you were losing back. And if that's not motivating enough, like to think like, gosh, I can actually live 10 more years. Maybe not in length, but in life. In depth. In depth. Yeah. You know, like it is. Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So, you know, if you're a developer, if you're a... like chew on it. Let it, let this be hard. Like it is hard. Like, like this isn't.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I'm going to challenge you. Okay. I rarely, if ever, now drink my coffee out of a to-go cup. If I go to a Starbucks, I need to let everyone know they have ceramic mugs. I was in Italy, and I went to a gas station on a road trip. Middle of nowhere. And I went in to get a to-go coffee. And they looked at me like I was crazy. I was like, can I get the espresso to go? And they're like, to go?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I looked down the middle of nowhere country gas station, and there's three... one old man, one kind of maybe 30 year old woman and someone else leaning against the counter with their little ceramic mugs, sipping their espresso. And I thought to myself, if I don't have three and a half minutes to drink my coffee before it gets lukewarm out of a ceramic mug, then I'm moving too fast.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So literally every single coffee shop I go to, I asked for a ceramic mug and I never get it to go. So that there's one thing that I do. Um, Savoring is something that I think we need to redevelop our skill set. We can get used to, you're in this world, you get used to good things, right? Like something was great and then you have it all the time. It's like, it doesn't feel so great anymore.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
One of the things I now do is when I look at my life and I see something that I've gotten used to how good it is, I walk away from it for a second and I come back to it. Why? Well, if you walk into a bakery and it smells amazing,
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
We swipe it away or we see the number, which mine happened to be seven hours and 23 minutes a day. And I would see that for weeks on end or eight hours or nine hours or six hours. And I just swipe it away. Okay, cool. Whatever. But for some reason, this one particular Sunday, I decided to do the math. I don't know why. I was like, let me just do the math.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
oh it smells so good and you get that croissant and you start drinking your coffee and you eat the croissant well five minutes later you can't smell the croissant anymore but someone else walks in and they go oh my gosh it smells amazing and you're like I don't smell it anymore what do you have to do you have to walk out of the bakery you have to come back in to experience it again so I try to do that all the time I try to like walk away and then come back in so I can recognize that I've gotten used to the goodness can we double click on that real quick yeah sure
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Get lost. How about this? Don't put Chick-fil-A in your freaking GPS because you know how to get there. And the only reason you're putting it in there is what if there's traffic and I can get a faster way? No, just drive to Chick-fil-A. Stop putting everything in your... So many people tell me now, they're like, yeah, it's so weird.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Like if I'm driving to church or driving to the office, sometimes I'll put my office in my GPS, even though I drive every day because I'm like, what if there's traffic? And I'm like, what if there's traffic? Maybe you're just supposed to sit and be still for a while. Something else that I do.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
If I'm ever, I don't do this when I'm flying, but when I'm driving now, I no longer listen to podcasts in the car. I only listen to podcasts if I'm on a trip, if I'm flying. You're going to have to figure this out for yourself. But solitude, we're the first generation of people walking the earth that have the opportunity to completely... get rid of solitude.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
This has never happened in the history of humanity. If anyone was traveling alone from point A to point B, up until 19, when the car radio was invented, they had solitude. we no longer have solitude. And so start making a decision. You're going to go on a walk without your AirPods. You're going to go on a walk without your phone.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You're going to drive from point A to point B for 30 minutes without any content consumption. So like even those little things, I think, can help you recapture this lost art of being human. That's literally the subtitle is how seven screen-free weeks with monks and Amish farmers helped me recover the lost art of being human. Because it's an art that I feel like we all know.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And some people are listening to this. Honestly, if you're 20 years old, You've never known life. You don't know this. You don't even know this. It sounds like we're talking about living on the moon. Yes. And I'm telling you, give it a shot.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Try it. And you're going to be like, you're going to have that hit of the inhaler.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So the math told me that I spend 49 hours a week on my phone. So I was like, okay, hold on. That's two entire cycles of the sun. But awake time, that's like four days, right? So I'm not counting sleeping. No one's on the phone when they're asleep. So just being awake 49 hours of awake time, that's actually four days.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes. Or that bad.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I didn't know it could be that bad. You know? I mean, gosh, even I talked about earlier today, slowing down to what I call Godspeed, three miles an hour. Like, what in your life can you slow down, you know? When COVID happened and everyone's shut down and we're stuck at home, what? Everyone's walking. Everyone's walking. My neighborhood looked like Central Park.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And my family and I would walk around the neighborhood. And it's so funny. I'd lived there for seven years and I was like... The first walk, I was like, what's that? It smells like a rose garden. And I looked in my neighbor's backyard that I've never seen before because I drive by at 30 miles an hour, but I'm walking and I literally smelled something I never smelled before.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I realized they've got an entire rose garden. And oh my gosh, they've got bees back there. I was noticing things I never would have because I slowed down. I'm telling you, we're missing so much.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Last thing, I was at the Atlanta airport and I decided after I wrote this book to count out of a hundred people coming up the escalator, how many people were looking at their phone and how many people weren't. I want to take a guess as to how many out of 100 people were looking at their phone.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
100.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I just thought to myself, we're literally living our life looking straight down. Gaze up and glance down. It shifts things.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And you can't do that if you're not looking up.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Thank you. I appreciate you. Unfortunately for you, now you got a new friend.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, and we'll go to a punk rock show. I got black skinny jeans.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, yeah, the cargo shorts. The one pair my wife didn't get rid of. You'll have to teach me how to do that. I was listening to NWA.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes, that's crazy, right?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes, that I'm staring at six inches of LCD in my hand. So then I was like, well, that's kind of crazy. So then I kept doing the math. And that math showed 100 days a year. So over three months a year, I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, oh my gosh. I know why the notification doesn't say this.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Can you imagine if the notification said, you spend three months a year looking at, like that would change things, but it doesn't do that on purpose, I'm sure. Then I did one more equation. And it showed that if I lived to be 80 some odd years old, and again, at the time I was 48, I will lose over 12 years of my life looking at a screen. And that was my tipping point.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
That was the point for me where I was like, okay, I don't want to lose a decade of what I have left staring at this stupid thing. What's it doing to my soul? What's it doing to my brain? What's it doing to my relationships? I want to know what this is actually doing, the damage it's doing. Because I know some of the good things that it does. Like, you know, I help people. That's our jobs.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
That's our jobs. I talk to people. And I know that it helps people. But it's got to be. There's no way. We weren't created for this.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So that began, that tipped my domino. Yeah. And I just, I watched them fall and I made a decision to not look at a single screen. So not a iPhone, an Apple watch, an iPad, a TV, a laptop, not a single screen for basically two months, seven and a half weeks. And I wanted to see what would happen. So in order to add a little data to it, I got a hold of a neuroscientist in Los Angeles.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
My cerebellum healed years in a period of seven weeks. When I did not look at a screen, my memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile. There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And I said, would you scan my brain before and after so I could at least see if there's anything that would happen?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yes. You know, just so I could see. And he's like, absolutely. We'll do it before. We'll do it after. And I'll do some cognitive memory testing on you as well. So I was like, sweet. So I go and I – he scans my brain. Now, in the middle of these seven and a half weeks, it's not like I just chilled or I didn't move to a cabin for two months and what I –
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Spent two of the seven weeks at a Benedictine monastery with 21 Benedictine monks. It's St. Andrew's Abbey in Valley Room, California. Then after those two weeks, I went and lived with an Amish family, a sheep farming family in Mount Hope, Ohio. And listen, I went all in with the monks and the Amish. Like I became a monk. I became Amish. I'm all in.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, I'm going to do the thing. I'm going to go in. Then I lived with them. for two weeks. Then my wife picked me up and I lived with my family at home for three weeks, uh, because I was like, well, they need to see the benefits of whatever's happening. Let me try this with them. Um, though they can still be on their screens, but I'll, um, not be on one.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So a total of seven and a half weeks and I went back and got my brain rescanned, um, and ended up writing a book and making a documentary. And, um, I, I, I, I've hit a pain point that, um, Christians, Buddhists, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, not a single human being doesn't know this pain point.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And so what I'm trying to do, and we talked about this at lunch yesterday, what I'm trying to do is to approach this conversation in a different way than maybe a lot of other people have approached it. Because, John, the truth is, the reason I made this choice to do this is that I went on Amazon and I started just looking up books on screen time and on how they're damaging.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And there were all these books. out there telling me the research shows and this and that, but I couldn't find the book from anyone that had done it. Yes.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I was like, okay, all these people, these PhDs, all these people are telling me what it's doing to me, but no one's done it. So I couldn't find the book. So I was like, well, then I'm going to be the guy. I'm the perfect lab rat. Seven and a half hours a day on my phone, TikTok, Instagram, all the things.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I'm making videos every day, talking to the little camera that's staring at me, getting my identity based on what people think about what I post and likes and shares. And I'm the perfect guinea pig. So let me remove my identity. Let me remove everything. and live it, and then that's why I'm sitting in front of you right now.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Wow.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, totally. Which is why I'm glad I did it. Now, to be fair to everybody that's listening, this wasn't a scientific experiment, right?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Yeah, yeah. So it was just me, the only lab rat. But let me tell you what happened to the lab rat. My cerebellum healed, he said, years in a period of seven weeks. Now, he's like, I see traumatic brain injuries, I see healing, so I can see a lot of healing. He's like, it's significant. But the kicker was my cognitive memory score. This is mind-blowing.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
When I did not look at a screen for seven and a half weeks... Now, the cognitive memory testing, I felt like I was in Stranger Things. Like I walked into this office with fluorescent lights. It looked like a hospital room with a 1987 IBM computer. And it would just flash faces on the screen. And so it flashed different black and white portraits at me. And I'd watch it for like two minutes.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
Then it would stop for a minute. This is one of the tests. And then it would flash more faces. And every time I remembered a face, I'd have to hit the space bar. So those are the kind of tests that I was doing. remembering numbers, numerals, all those things. My memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
And my father has dementia. I moved my mom and dad a year ago into the house across the street because my father, who's one of the brightest minds, incredible speakers, communicators, now doesn't even recognize me and who I am. And so let me tell you, when I went to the neuroscientist clinic, I was not only... There was this fear.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
There was this fear when I first got the brain scan that he's going to be like, oh, bro, I know you want to do this experiment, but you got about five years, right?
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
You can see it coming. And the breath that filled my lungs when Dr. Amen walked in and goes, I know your father has dementia and I know you're worried, but I just need to tell you something. I've seen dementia brain. You don't have it. Like, bro... It was like I could take the biggest breath.
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
So, you know, the brain part was very important to me because I wanted people to know that things were shifting that I wouldn't have been able to tell just by telling the story. Well, it's not woo-woo and it's not like a... I felt different. I did a thing. You know? Yeah. So I had that. But here's the kicker. When I was done, I didn't have to go back to his clinic, bro. I...
The Dr. John Delony Show
The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
I was so freaking sharp by eight weeks. I felt like a different human. I'm glad I went back to get the testing done because it confirmed what I thought had happened. But yeah, my brain changed. My brain healed.