Welcome to the Scrolling Backlash

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube A lot of people are getting tired of their phone—they’re sick of the algorithms and overwhelmed by what can feel like a loss of control.

The Atlantic staff writer Julie Beck dug into why and how people are trying to renegotiate their relationships with technology.

She and our colleagues just released a five-part podcast series called How to Touch Grass , and in this episode, Galaxy Brain host Charlie Warzel talks with Beck about why people are nostalgic for the pre-internet days, how our brains are changing, and the good that can come from getting lost.

The following is a transcript of the episode: Charlie Warzel: How does the phone make you feel? How does a TikTok binge make you feel, or even just, like, a before-bed scrolling session that we all have? Julie Beck: Oh, sick.

Absolutely sick.

It’s like when the aliens get you, right? They take you up and then they probe you, or they do whatever they do, and then when you come back down, you don’t know what happened.

It’s erased.

It’s lost time.

So I feel like I have emerged from lost time and like what happened during that time is unclear, but I don’t feel good.

Warzel: I don’t know that I have the amnesia part of it, but it promotes self-loathing in a way that like truly no other activity does because it just feels like a deletion of my one precious life.

I’m Charlie Warzel, and this is Galaxy Brain , a show where today we’re gonna answer a question.

Maybe it’s even the question of the online age.

How can we live lives where we use tech and don’t let it use us? This is the animating question of How to Touch Grass , a new podcast series by my colleagues here at The Atlantic .

Over five episodes, Julie Beck and her co-host and producer, Natalie Brennan, explore what exactly is happening in this moment that has so many of us out there feeling like we need to renegotiate our relationships to our technology.