How to Escape the Smartphone Doom Loop | Larz May, Elise Hu | TED

Elise Hu: Tell us a little bit about what led you here and what it means to you to be a digital wellness entrepreneur.

Larissa May: The beginning of digital wellness started with digital sickness. I literally was scrolling to death.

I was a college student spending 10 to 12 hours a day behind my screen. I was scrolling more than I was walking, sleeping, or socializing.

And luckily, I had an RA that saved my life. But I was going to the psychiatrist every day, and I found it really interesting that they asked me about drugs, sex and alcohol, but not the drug that was in my pocket.

And that was the beginning of the big idea, 10 years ago, which was maybe digital wellness is the new wellness, in that as humans, we have to cultivate a healthy relationship with technology if we want to be around for another millennia.

EH: Right. How did it show up for you, when you said that you were kind of feeling sick? LM: Well I think the thing that I’ve learned in the 10 years of exploration is that screens are really just symptoms.

So many young people -- and adults too -- we go to our screens because it's more comfortable than actually dealing with the emotions -- whether it's sadness, depression, anxiety.

And for me, I just didn't have the skills, the emotional resilience in the digital age that I needed.

But I was given a device and was told to, "Hey, go through this life milestone, go to college, figure out how to be a human.

And by the way, you're going to have a stage in your pocket the entire time." And then I started looking into it.

I think most of us, we look around, we see our kids, our parents on their phones. And then I realized, do we want to chase our dreams?

Or do we want to be behind these things that are making billions of dollars for a couple of guys in Silicon Valley?