TJ Walker describes a simple experiment: leave your phone at home during meals. Research from University of Essex and Harvard shows a silent phone on the table reduces empathy and connection. He tried it at a neighborhood dinner and found it changed how people engaged with each other.
Questions this video answers
At least 50 ft away with the power turned off.
He turns his phone off and goes for a one-hour walk each day.
They biked (quadricycle) four blocks to the dinner.
Chapters
The Filtered Digital Detox Challenge. Here's the challenge, and it's harder than you think. Next time you have dinner with friends or family, leave your phone at home. Not on the table, not in your pocket at home, or at least 50ft away from where you are when you're having dinner with the power turned off. Call it the filtered with D.J. walker digital detox Channel. But why am I suggesting this? It's because our devices have have rewired how we connect. Research from the University of Essex at Harvard show that even a silent phone on the table lowers empathy, weakens recall, and cuts connection in half. We're so busy documenting our lives. Oh, look at this food. No one's ever seen a picture of a pizza before. Let me take a picture. And you're not talking to the person you're having the pizza with. We forget to actually live with the other people we're dining with. When you remove the glowing distraction, you'll notice people more. You'll listen better. You'll laugh harder. You'll remember conversations instead of checking notifications. So I dare you. One meal, one evening. No screes. See what happens when your full attention becomes the rarest thing in the room? Okay, so what's the real message here? What is the message here? I dare you. I double dare you. Have a meal tonight or this week with some friend. Leave your cell phone at home. No, you can't check your phone when they're checking their phone. No, they go to the bathroom. You can't check. Check. Oh, look at this email from my boss. Just be in the moment. Listen to them, think about them. Rather than, I wonder if I'm missing an important text. I just heard a king. Guess what? You're not that important. You can go several hours without looking at your cell phone. No one else will care. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. Again, this. Why am I talking about this today? Last night, I went to dinner, and I'm ashamed to say I don't do this more often. My family and I were invited to a dinner party in the neighborhood. I consciously left my phone at home. Let me say that again. You're probably thinking, well, TJ what you really mean is you put your phone on silent and you had it in your pocket. No, I literally left my phone at home. My daughter left her phone at home. We went and had dinner with another family. We had a great time. We had real conversations. I wasn't thinking when our dinner hosts were talking about some geopolitical event or what they're doing with their backyard or how their golf game is going, I wasn't thinking about. As soon as they get up to check the kitchen, I'm going to check my email. As soon as they go to the restroom, I'm going to check my text. As soon as they get up to look at the dessert, I'm going to check and see how many likes I have on my Facebook post. I wasn't thinking about any of that because not because I have great self discipline but because I made the decision to simply leave my cell phone home. I'm a tj. How could I possibly drive two blocks to get there? I don't drive anywhere without my cell phone. Use your brain. Print out a map if you have to. Now in my case I said my family and I took my quadricyca and we biked the four blocks to where we had dinner. But you can figure it out and it will change how you listen. It will change how you connect with people. I don't know about you, but I'm frankly sick and tired of getting together with a friend for a dinner or drink and oh yeah, tj. Yeah. And they're looking at their phone. I'm doing it right now because I have to. Because I'm trying to connect and stay connected with my friends on TikTok. And TikTok is telling me if I don't push a button then I will be locked out permanently. So I'm doing this right now to my TikTok friends and welcome back. But when you do that in a conversation, I have some dear friends. I adore them. But one friend in particular who's single. I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with him where he wasn't. Yeah, that's Great. Gives me 30 seconds and then 30 seconds to swiping on Match.com and Bumble. You know all the other places single people are on. And I just want to say Jim, we'll call him Jim. Jim, can we just have a conversation for once? I haven't seen you in three months. It's awkward to say. There's no doubt about it. You can't necessarily control other people. Although you can if it's your child and you're paying for the cell phone. But you can lead by example. I'm trying to lead by example. You've heard me say before. One of the reasons I feel like I'm successful and have at least a level of wealth that makes me happy is that I consciously turn my cell phone off and go for a one hour walk each day to give my brain time to think of new ideas. Ideas for courses, ideas for books, creations that ultimately end up making me money. Wouldn't happen if I were just connected every second of the day. And now I want to expand that even more. Family time, meal time, entertainment time, socializing party. So I urge you to give some thought. I challenge you. So please take the filtered digital detox challenge in the next week. Do something maybe you haven't done in years, but go have a meal with someone. Don't even take your phone. If it's a lunchtime meal and it's lunch at the office and you're used to checking an email, just leave it in your office and go down the block. Have lunch someplace else. Come back an hour later. It's highly unlikely you'll be fired because you didn't respond to an email or a call that hour. Again, if you're an emergency room doctor in a small town and you're the only doctor who can perform life saving surgery, okay, you have an exception. But most of us aren't like that. I'm not that important. And chances are you're not that important. And when I got home last night, it still wasn't late. I did check my email, I did check my phone. I did turn it on. Guess what I missed? The three hours I was gone, absolutely nothing.
