Ever had one of those weekends where you just can’t get off the couch, scrolling and streaming, thinking it’ll help you relax, but instead, you feel totally wiped out?  In this episode of Babies and Business, Avram and Rachel get real about a weekend spent with way too much screen time and how it left them feeling drained. They open up about the effects of screen overload on their family and share simple ways they’re trying to cut back. Listen in as they chat about getting back to basics, creating screen-free moments, and making more room for family connection.

Show Notes:

Key Highlights from this Episode:

• Avram and Rachel talk about feeling exhausted after a weekend glued to screens.
• They talk about how social media and constant screen time can mess with your mood, even if you’re “just relaxing.”
• Rachel shares her experience with limiting screen time for their toddler, finding creative ways to keep him entertained without the TV.
• Avram reflects on how even small changes, like setting boundaries on screen time, can significantly reduce stress.
• Practical ideas for unplugging a bit more and finding little ways to relax as a family, without constantly reaching for a screen.

Mentions & Resources:

The Power of One Podcast – Episode 755

30-Day Mindset Detox – Avram’s guide to taking a break from mental overload

[tcb-script src=”https://play.pod.co/embed/frame-v1.js”][/tcb-script]

Episode Transcription

Avram Gonzales: This last weekend, Rachel and I spent our time on the couch, watching TV, scrolling social media because our babies were sick and we basically couldn’t do much of anything else. How did we feel after that weekend, Rachel?

Rachel Gonzales: I was so exhausted.

Avram Gonzales: And like, kind of strung out.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Well, you know, I look over at you and I’m like, I don’t have energy to do anything else. And you’re looking at me with kind of the same blank vacant stare. So it’s not like we had much energy to do anything else, but that’s kind of what was going on.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, I mean, it’s like we didn’t expend any energy and yet we felt exhausted.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like when you’re sick. That was how I was equating it for me is, you know, when you’re, you have the flu, your body’s achy, you don’t feel like eating or drinking and your energy is just going lower and lower and you’re kind of getting depressed and you feel terrible, but you’re on the couch because you can’t be anywhere else.

You don’t feel like you can stand up. Maybe you’re dizzy, maybe you’re this or that, whatever that is, but it kind of felt like I had the flu, but it was brought on by all the stuff that we were doing. Like, Watching all the TV and scrolling social media. Terrible decision for myself.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, the, the reason we recorded the podcast this week is because I was listening to another podcast called the Power of One Podcast, episode 755, and they brought up these statistics about Gen Z being the most stressed group of people in all history, like, um, cohort, right? And it’s like, well, why? You know, they went into all these details about how this generation, you know, doesn’t want to work for it.

They want to work less, make more, all this stuff. And I think that the conversation was really looking at things that don’t matter that affect the mental health and wellbeing of anyone. And the question that I had after listening to that podcast and hearing some of those statistics is like, so why are these folks so stressed out?

And they’re pointing the finger at social media and this and that. What I think it really is is simply the overstimulation that comes with screen time.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Well, you know, I also saw something, um, a while back, like, the amount of books out there that you could read and that somebody in their lifetime would never be able to read all of the books that have been written. That’s just baffling to me. And that’s just one facet of the information that you could find on the internet.

And consume. And, and then just multiply that by all the stuff that we do consume. Like, social media is a perfect example of actual lies that are being told as truth. And you really feel like it’s true. Because here you are, you’re getting this snapshot of someone’s life and it looks perfect. And, you know, maybe it’s a mom for me.

Maybe it’s a mom with their toddler and they’re, they’re playing this awesome game. Awesome game on the floor and the behind them is really clean and the shelving is beautifully put together and you know there’s one piece of toy in one side like one little box of the shelf and all these things that you’re looking at and this is their life and you assume that that Is their life day in day out, but you don’t know.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We’re not in that moment thinking. Oh, well, she probably spent three hours cleaning her house before she was able to film that And this only lasted for five seconds, and she’s tried to do this like 60 times to get the kid to actually interact with the toy on camera. So we don’t see those things, but we’re bombarded with things that seem like reality and just simply aren’t.

But we are not using our brains to interpret that it is not accurate all the

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. I mean, that’s,

Rachel Gonzales: We’re just judging.

Avram Gonzales: That’s the aspect of like social media that was really hammered during that podcast that I listened to. And I thought that while that is, one of the things that is going on, it is still not the root cause. I think we have to really take it back to, you know, what were our ancestors doing before screens?

You know, if you, and before telephones and things like that, when you lived in a village and you were doing your things, how much information and new information were you being presented with? And having to filter through your experience,

Rachel Gonzales: Not a lot. Well, you went to grandma’s house to learn how to make bread or to do this thing you went and sought out those people that could teach you this new skill. Because you needed it to survive, really, in those times.

Avram Gonzales: And now when you turn on the TV, you are bombarded with so much information so quickly in the same thing, when you are scrolling your social media.

Rachel Gonzales: Mm hmm.</ p>

Avram Gonzales: I just think that our bodies, our physiology, our brains are not designed to bring in that much information. As adults, we think, and we’re sitting there like, yeah, I can handle this, like, this is, you know, easy to do.

But then you watch your children. interact with screens and you realize really quickly, okay, they, they definitely are feeling the effects of this and you can see it in them.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: So to assume that it wouldn’t affect us.

Rachel Gonzales: I just think that for us, there’s a level of desensitization that we have gone through. To noticing how things affect us. Because if you think about it, I think about our kids, you know, and all of their brain pathways are being created right now when they’re some small, tiny little individuals. I saw this thing again on social media a few days ago, and it was, you know, kids.

They have ears only for decoration because they don’t really sometimes maybe not hear things But it’s really not that it’s it’s that they’re not developed enough to actually be able to have impulse control or reasoning or there’s different things that they just cannot do yet and they’re working on it and they need the environment that we create to help them create those new pathways and and had that ability so I just think that you know as I was looking at our weekend And I look at how I felt and I I really just felt like I had been sick and yeah, I was a little bit run down I might have had a bit of a cold and you know some stuffiness and maybe lack of sleep and all the things that come along with being a mom of five month old and a two and a half year old. But I I looked at Lincoln and it became very clear to me that his experience of exactly what we were going through was magnified probably by a hundredfold.

Because he really does not have the coping mechanisms, he doesn’t have the ability to say, Oh, this is the thing causing me anxiety or stress or frustration. And I’d like to change that. He doesn’t have the words to say that he wants something different. He just wants more of what he’s getting because he’s stimulated by it.

And, uh, well, we just kept giving it to him. And he got more and more TV throughout the weekend, and then come today, and it just felt really cool because I decided, you know, we’re just, we’re not gonna, maybe we’ll watch one episode of something. A bridge to having no screen time. And then we’re gonna sit and we’re gonna color.

And there was this, this box that we have that had um, a little cloud on it. And from one of the shows, you know, he knows that as Mr. Wind. And I was able to say something and we were able to have a whole conversation and then that, that just spurred on his whole creative side. And then he got his cars, and then we were playing, on my legs as mountains and one of the trucks got stuck on the mountain and the other one needed to come up behind it and push it and he was the one pushing it up. And you know, when you give kids opportunities to be creative, they are so creative. That’s what I learned this morning

Just watching him.and allowing him to have that time and space to do that.

Avram Gonzales: I had this aha moment when you were talking and you mentioned desensitization and when you’re in it, you can’t really tell. I think a good example was we’ve talked about this. Maybe you didn’t do it as much as I did growing up, but I drank a lot of soda growing up.

 And I cut soda out of my diet like ten years ago.

I just don’t really drink it. Um, I mean, I probably had two Cokes last year in total. Like, like a Coke and a Sprite. I remember the Sprite because the Sprite, you and I shared that.

Rachel Gonzales: And it was so sweet.

Avram Gonzales: And I couldn’t actually finish it because it was so sweet. So, we went, I went from, you know, chugging that stuff growing up to being pretty almost repulsed by it because it was so intense.

That points to the desensitization. You know, how do I feel now these days because I’m not drinking and consuming all that crap? I feel so much different. And then when I start doing it again, like the other night, we ordered some pizza. And it was later than we normally like to eat, or, I forget, we, we had, and,

Rachel Gonzales: There was a situation around it

Avram Gonzales: And we felt like basically a food hangover the next day because we don’t usually eat like that.

Rachel Gonzales: Right,

Filler: So the desensitization, when you’re going through life, it just seems normal, right? So I think this Gen Z is going through life, looking around at their peers, everybody’s stressed and burned out, this seems normal.

Well, the only thing that they haven’t done, is unplugged from all of this crap to see how they actually feel.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure, absolutely. Well, I’m getting maybe an outside perspective because if you, I just think about it like um, what do you say when you’re, when you surround yourself with all the same people or like views and stuff, you’re kind of in a wind tunnel or what is it? Echo chamber. Echo chamber, so you’re in an echo chamber and I think that, It’s easy to be in an echo chamber when you surround yourselves with just the same type of people or same type of things.

And then when you get outside of that bubble or that echo chamber, then you actually see different things that probably felt like didn’t exist in that echo chamber. Um, and that’s kind of easy, especially in the, um, kind of like the silo that Facebook or Instagram or any of those other social media platforms put you in because if you’re clicking on these things and you’re going to get more of that thing.

So put that into perspective in real life and if you’re always hanging out with the same people and you have the same habits or you stay up late or you’re eating something really late or whatever those habits are, if you just ask the question and well, what would happen if I changed this? Just change one thing.

Keep everything else the same, but change one thing. Maybe put your phone away earlier at night. Or you know, what is that thing? Do you have a ritual around having less of it? Or do you have any awareness that maybe that would be a thing, that you’d like to have less of it?

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, we’re asking that question over on the podcast website, babiesandbiz.com forward slash. I don’t know which episode number this is, but if you put the number in there, it’ll take you to the show notes. We’ve got a question on there for you to answer. What rituals do you have in place to help limit your screen time?

For either you or your family or whatever. So we’ve seen this example in our family with our children. It’s made us pause and reflect. For us, as adults, the realization is all this extra screen time is not helping.

Rachel Gonzales: Right?

Avram Gonzales: It’s not helping. So when you look at your life as an entrepreneur, building a business, raising a family, you’re already on the edge of overwhelm pretty consistently.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes.

Avram Gonzales: So, waking up in the morning and first thing, checking your email, your social media, like whatever it is, you have Instantly let other people, other energies, other thoughts into your world at the start of the day before you’ve even filled your cup. How do you think the rest of the day is going to go? I think that’s like the other aspect of all this like the screen time and yada yada It’s all of the energy that’s getting like like shoved in your direction.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.</p >

Avram Gonzales: That’s hard to handle

Rachel Gonzales: Well, yeah, and I, you know, for me right now, having little kids, I have an app that I track sleep, feeding, and dirty diapers. All those things. I’m constantly tracking it. I’m looking at the time, looking at the time, having my phone on. I mean, uh, Gosh, okay, so I find myself, if I do not close out apps on my phone and the only app that is open is my baby tracking app, I am constantly pulled in.

I pull it up because the baby woke. I pull it up and Facebook is open. So I start scrolling Facebook because I can’t remember why I opened my phone. And then I look back at the monitor and I see, oh, he’s awake. How long was he awake for? I don’t know.

Avram Gonzales: It’s a very real thing

I

Rachel Gonzales: don’t know because I didn’t mentally find out. So what I’m finding for myself is I feel tied to my phone right now, and I actually kind of resent it, in the sense that it’s like I’d really like to be able to put it away on a shelf at a certain time, but I literally have to take it with me everywhere I go, and, and there’s, so, so that’s my predicament right now, but where I want to get to is the ability to Unplug and make conscious decisions about how I use my time and not have my phone, which is a permanent fixture of my life right now, dictate what I’m doing.

And so I, I just make it my ritual right now to cut down on the time that I spend on my phone is to close out every single app except for the baby tracking app that I have. So if you have something in your life right now, A situation, whatever that might be, if it’s like work or whatever, maybe email is the thing that you have to keep open.

Make it the only app that’s open. Maybe that could be a thing

Avram Gonzales: One thing that’s worked for me really well regarding like email and letting other people’s energies into my day too early is simply the decision to not check any of that stuff until I’m in the office for the day. Especially

Rachel Gonzales: I love that,

Avram Gonzales: Slack is another thing we use. Slack to manage inter team communications.

We have folks that live on the other side of the world. I don’t really need to be checking to see if they left any messages or questions for me overnight

Rachel Gonzales: Right, because you’ll get to those when you can.

Avram Gonzales: Because I will get to those when I can. But you know that when you let the genie out of the bottle and you know there’s that you could answer or help with or whatever, suddenly, you’ve lost sovereignty over your own energy and now you’re just dedicating it to other people.

Rachel Gonzales: Well that’s, that’s for me kind of like how I feel as a mom right now. So if Lincoln wakes up and I go in and I immediately get him up, he’s probably going to cry at me for 10 to 15 minutes. If I let him settle in his crib for maybe that time that I would have held him and he would have been crying, then I’m actually able to possibly sit down and have coffee with you or maybe have a conversation about what we’re looking forward to in the day. Some kind of connection. I’ve found, you know, as I’ve looked through and what’s make me anxious through over time being a mom is that I feel like I’m living for my children at a certain point and I don’t, while I don’t resent that, I do want to change that because I want my children to understand healthy boundaries and that while I love them and I am there for them, that they are not the only reason that I exist.

And I want them to be self sufficient too, that they can go and find things to do and all those different things. But, um, that’s another caveat for me is, uh, choosing how you use your time. Like you said, with email for me, it’s my children when I allow the child to get up in the morning, I give them some time in their bed, whatever that is.

Maybe it is me saying I’m going to put August down for sleep and I’m going to go take a shower because I just need five minutes of me time. And I, I smell like B. O. because I haven’t showered today, you know, and so that can really reset my day.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, I think the stimulation piece is really wrecking our nervous systems.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely.

Avram Gonzales: And more important than ever before is, we’ve used this word already, unplug. But it really is to relax. And the only way to do that is to bring silence to your life. And you may not be able to control the volume of your children at home.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: But you can control the outside noise and its influence in your household. And I think that’s what the conversation’s about. It’s about like, how do we limit our exposure to these things that we biologically cannot handle even though we think consciously that we can already proving that it’s not working.

How can we minimize all that extra noise? Let our body go into a state of relaxation. People that say that they’re over overwhelmed, they’re stressed out, they’re burned out. There’s no relaxation. There’s no rest. They’re just on all the time. And I think letting all these other energies in doesn’t ever allow you to rest and relax into who you are.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely. And, you know, I, I just think that it’s really an interesting thing to me when I think about, and again, just social media is an example. Um, so many people, I think, predicted that, you know, social media would help us feel more connected and, and we would feel more maybe like connected to people over on the East Coast if you have family there and you’re on the West Coast or, you know, you’re able to have connection with people in ways that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

And I would, I would actually counter that, that, In our attempt to have more connection, we have actually less connection and we feel more isolated than ever before because as we’re consuming those things and we feel like we’re connecting with people, we’re actually just a fly on the wall and nobody knows that we’re there and we feel invisible.

We can feel invisible and we’re not being enhanced by that situation. We didn’t get to enter that conversation. We didn’t get to experience that. Um, so I just think that that’s also something to consider as we consume. And whatever that is, too. Maybe you’re walking around in your own life and you’re really not participating.

Maybe you are going out to a fun event with your family, but you’re on your phone all the time. So you actually didn’t experience that event with your family. So you could be robbing yourself of physical opportunities with those that you love based on the unknown addiction that we have to technology right now.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. I think the easiest place to start, and we welcome some of your strategies, is don’t touch that phone till, till 9 o’clock or whatever the time is. Yeah. Like try that. Try that for a few days. Let us know how it goes. The other thing you can do is something that Rachel started a while ago. She just set her phone to automatically go on to silent after like 6 o’clock or 7 o’clock.

So that way anybody that’s trying to hit her up with stuff. She will check it at her leisure.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, yeah. If you text me after 7pm or before 7am, it’s not going to come through until my phone actually comes off of silent. And that’s actually really helped me to be present with my kids and with family and, and not feel like I need to give other people my energy. I love the, the talking about the energy thing.

Don’t let people take your energy and don’t give your energy to somebody else, vice
versa. Yeah. it’s a precious thing, our energy.

Avram Gonzales: I’m going to give a plug for something that we did four years ago. It was called the 30-Day Mindset Detox.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: I think we’re going to be considering that or a version of it this December. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. I encourage you to check it out again, babies and biz.com forward slash whatever this episode number is, you’ll find it. The 30-Day Mindset Detox is something I did back in 2010. I reinvented it in 2020, brought it up to, uh, today’s age following the 2020 election, we were so overwhelmed and stressed out by all the media stuff. We’re like, we need to unplug.

And that was such a wonderful exercise to dive in and discover what we’ve been talking about today. It’s like who you really are without all the noise. Who you are without all of the stimulation and overstimulation, you’d be really surprised how transformational a couple of days. And in this case, 30 days can be in today’s era.

Rachel Gonzales: I would love to see what that does for Lincoln.

Avram Gonzales: I know. I

Rachel Gonzales: You know, Lincoln, our family. Yep, no TV. You actually have to spend time.

Avram Gonzales: no social media.

Rachel Gonzales: We had a day of silence. That will not work with a toddler.

Avram Gonzales: No, it won’t. So there’s some things we might have to adjust for our family, but uh, I think you, if you’re feeling it right now, like we’ve been feeling it, it could really be worth taking a look at that 30-Day Mindset Detox and hey, maybe you apply one of the 10 things in there that we did for 30 days.

It might make a big difference for you.

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly. It’s interesting when you just pull something out. When you just change one thing, How it can really just impact the rest of how you’re feeling and also just give you clarity. I know that’s what it gave for me four years ago that I was just able to find out that, um, I think maybe we had taken up reading, uh, at night instead of TV.

And so we really got into, we both love to read and we just weren’t reading before and we just never made time, you know, we’d stay up and watch TV or this or that. And, um, yeah, so check it out. I think you’ll really like it.

Avram Gonzales: So we appreciate you for tuning in to this episode. Again, we’d love to hear your thoughts, comments on the Babies and Business website, babiesandbiz.com forward slash episode number, whatever this is, and go to the bottom. There’s a comment section. We’d love to hear your comments. What rituals do you have in place to help limit screen time for you and your family?

Put it in there. We read all the comments. We’ll check them out. If you haven’t already, We’ve been asking for a lot of reviews on Apple Podcasts, and you’ve been delivering. Thank you. Thank you. But you know where we could use them next? It’s on Spotify. So if you’re listening on Spotify and you haven’t yet given us that five star review or left a cool little comment about what you like about the Babies and Business Podcast, please do that.

It goes a long way in other people discovering our podcast and deciding to tune in. With that, we’ll catch you on the next episode.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.