A Night with Mel Robbins

Author

Randy Ginsburg
August 13, 2025

Welcome to the 22 new readers who have joined us since last week! If you haven’t subscribed, join 2500+ smart, curious folks by subscribing here:

1) Kanso’s phone-free event series, Here & Now, will be back in NYC on August 19th. 40+ ambitious people gathering together to lock away their phones, build deeper relationships, and be fully present for the first time in a long time. If this sounds like your vibe, RSVP here.

2) Last email, I teased the idea of a 24 Hour Offline Challenge, which many of you showed interest in. Well, it’s official. September 13th evening to September 14th evening.

If spending a full day offline sounds equally as exciting as it does scary, you should sign up and bring your friends and family along for the ride (it’s free). RSVP here.

Last week, I flew back to NYC for 30 hours to attend a few important meetings and events.

During this trip, I had the pleasure of being a guest at Verizon Unplugged with Mel Robbins: a conversation with Mel and her college-aged son Oakley about finding phone-life balance, moderated by Verizon's CMO Leslie Berland.

The event was a clear signal of Verizon's continued foray into the world of digital wellness. There's something both ironic and necessary about telecommunications companies leading conversations about technology moderation — the very companies that profit from our connectivity are also investing in our ability to disconnect thoughtfully.

We desperately need more conversations about healthy tech use (especially from prominent public figures), so I’m glad they’re starting to make this a core focus of their larger mission.

While the conversation was mostly geared towards parents finding better solutions for their families, I found it very interesting. As a childless 28-year-old, I anticipated much of the discussion material would be irrelevant to me, but this event made me examine my own relationship with my phone in ways I wasn't expecting.

Mel opened the event with an important quote, something I regularly echo within this newsletter: "Where you put your attention determines the quality of your life." Your attention is one of the most valuable things you have, and it reminded us how easy it is to give our focus away without even realizing it.

Mel also made it clear that she is not anti-tech. Very much the opposite. Multiple times she reiterated that the phone is both a connector and a wedge. It lets us reach the people we love, and it pulls us away from the people sitting in front of us. Her framing was clear: the device is not the villain. The absence of guardrails is.

With that said, here are Mel’s five tips for creating a better phone-life balance:

1) It starts with you.

The idea here is simple. Your kids are a mirror of your own habits. If you want to instill better habits in your family, the work needs to start with you. You can’t blame the device.

Don't be the person who spends 10 minutes scrolling, ignoring the important people in their lives (kids, friends, partner) and then complain when they are doing the same thing to you. This hit me because as someone without kids, I realized how often I do this with friends and my girlfriend. Recognizing the hypocrisy here can be tough, but it’s important to have someone to call you out.

On Jan 2, I wrote an article titled Your Screen Time Starts with You which pulls on a similar thread. Looks like great minds think alike :)

2) Be curious, not controlling

She encouraged parents to step into their perspective rather than stepping on it. That parents should see their kids' phones as "their friends." At first, it hit me as depressing — do we really want to cement the idea that chat bubbles are equal to in-person connection? But the reframing matters: if you think of it as their friends, you start from empathy instead of restriction.

This doesn't only work with kids. Whether it's a partner or friend who you'd like to see change their phone habits, people don't want to feel forced. Instead of "You're on your phone too much," try asking "What do you love about being on your phone?" It opens up actual conversation.

3) Let them lead the way

This one is definitely the most parent-specific. If you know your kid is struggling to find a balance, here's what Mel recommends doing instead of calling them out on it and immediately forcing a change.

Sit together, name your concern, and solve it with them. Ask "Have you thought about what you want to do about this?" Working with them builds confidence and trust. The changes that actually stick are the ones people choose for themselves, not the ones imposed on them.

4) Two daily habits to practice every day

1) No phones in bed or next to your bed while you sleep.

2) No phones at the dinner table. More eye contact, more talking. Ask your kids (or friends!) to call you out when you slip, which creates two-way accountability.

Despite being fairly conventional knowledge, Mel was really honest about how hard these are to implement. She talked about how our phones have basically colonized our most sacred spaces. The bedroom should be for rest and the dinner table should be for connection. But we've let these devices into spaces where they don't belong.

The sleep one hits different because so many of us use our phones as alarm clocks, which gives us an excuse to keep them right next to our heads all night. Mel suggested getting an actual alarm clock (revolutionary, I know) and charging your phone in another room (turning your mobile phone into a landline at home is a fun and effective trick).

If you've read any of my previous writing, you know that I find the dinner table to be the single most important piece of social technology we have at our disposal. I'm all for any idea of how to preserve that magic.

5) Create a rocking family group chat

Use it for celebration and laughter, not just logistics. This one really got me thinking because it's such a smart pivot. Instead of seeing group chats as another way technology is taking over family life, it was encouraged to reframe it as a tool for connection — sharing memes, celebrating small wins, or sending encouraging messages throughout the day.

What I love about this approach is that it acknowledges reality. Kids will be on their phones, and group chats will be an integral part of their social world. So instead of pretending that's not happening, why not make your family chat one of the highlights of their phone experience?

If you want to check out the full talk, you can do so here:

Hopefully, this got your gears turning. Maybe enough to join our 24 Hour Offline Challenge :)

See you next week!

— Randy

If you’re looking to improve your digital wellness, here are a few places to start:

Kanso Experiences - Unforgettable phone-free social experiences for ambitious people who are tired of the feed and hungry for real relationships.

Kanso Reset45 Cohorts - A cohort-based bootcamp to reprogram your tech habits in 45 days. If you’re interested in joining, reply to this email.

Kanso 1:1 Digital Wellness Accountability Coaching - For those who need high-touch, personalized support and daily ongoing accountability.

The Digital Reset Journal - The first journal designed to help you build a healthier relationship with tech

Digital Detox Tools - A free directory of 100+ digital wellness tools to integrate into all areas of your life.

Follow me across platforms:

You can find Kanso across Instagram and TikTok @unplugwithkanso too.

That’s all for this week. Now stop scrolling, and go do something great.

— Randy

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