How to Touch Grass

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What It Takes to Reclaim Your Attention Span

August 24, 2026

Of all the potential effects of using smartphones, the one that seems to inspire the most anxiety is what scrolling could be doing to people’s attention. On social media (ironically), many people express a desire to “heal” their attention spans from the damage they feel technology has done. They’re picking up on something real. In one 2025 study, researchers found that blocking the internet on people’s phones for two weeks led to improvements in sustained attention equivalent to reversing 10 ...

Why Learn Something That a Machine Can Do for You?

August 17, 2026

Children still learn long division even though calculators exist, and many people continue to study languages even as AI translation becomes faster and more accurate. Is there a deeper purpose for learning that technology will never touch? In this episode of How to Touch Grass, hosts Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck hear from Michelle Miller, a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University who studies technology and learning. She explains that although the changing tides of tech may sh...

The Internet Is More Image-Focused Than Ever

August 10, 2026

It wasn’t that long ago that “body positivity” was all over the internet. Oppressive beauty standards hadn’t gone away by any stretch, but many people on social media were pushing against limits on what an “ideal” body could look like. Now, things have swung in the opposite direction, with the rapid uptake of GLP-1s and the resurgence of a skinny ideal, combined with a new frankness about plastic surgery. The calls for “self-love” and “health at any size” can be harder to hear these days over...