ABOUT

Hi, I’m Catherine

I’m an award-winning health and science journalist, speaker, founder of Screen/Life Balance®, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of books including How to Break Up With Your Phone®, The Power of Fun, The Amazing Generation (co-authored with Jonathan Haidt), and Vitamania. My work has been featured in outlets including The Best American Science Writing, NPR, The New York Times, Good Morning America, CNN, The Today Show, The Wall Street Journal, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, Oprah Daily, and TIME Magazine, among many others. I write the Substack newsletter, "How to Feel Alive," and my TED talk on fun has been viewed more than 5 million times.

I speak and lead conversations about fun, phone breakups, creativity, productivity, and screen/life balance for clients including major conferences, Fortune 500 companies, business organizations, schools, health organizations, community groups, and hotels and retreat centers, among others.

As a leading voice in the national conversation about technology and human flourishing, my goal is to help people of all ages scroll less and live more.

For speaking inquiries please contact The Harry Walker Agency.
View fullsize Delight! Every year I organize a summer camp weekend for my friends and their families. There are always lots of moments of spontaneous fun, but this year we took it to a new level: we spent THREE HOURS trying to catch two tennis balls while jumping
View fullsize When was the last time you did something just for YOU? Not for your job. Not for your partner. Not for your kids. For YOU. For me, it’s dance camp — four days of swing music, sweaty strangers, and staying up way past my bedtime. It leav
View fullsize Delight! (And also, does anyone else find this doorknob vaguely naughty?) Context: Ever since reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, I’ve made a point of trying to notice small things each day that delight me or that make me laugh. Noticin
View fullsize Phones do not belong at the dinner table. End stop. (And you can tell your spouse/partner/child/teenager I said so!) Instead, use meals as a chance to actually connect with the people you love. One easy way to do so? Use conversation prompts. My fam
View fullsize A recent delight: coming home at the end of a long day of editing to have my husband greet me with a homemade cocktail, complete with foam art. (Who knew he could do that?) Ever since reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, I’ve made a point
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View fullsize Thinking of getting your kid a phone this school year? Before you cave to the pressure of a full-blown smartphone, know this: there are better options. As I wrote on Substack: “These devices can give your child more real-world independence &m
View fullsize One table. Zero phones. Two conversation starters. That’s it. That’s the challenge. Ready to try? Have you done this before? Share how it went! If not, get more tips like this in my book “How To Break Up With Your Phone.”
View fullsize Take a look at how many accounts you’re following. Then consider this: each one of those accounts is another person (or brand!) whose voice you’re allowing into your head. I personally find it tough to just manage my own thoughts. That&r
View fullsize A couple months ago, the @nytimes reached out to me to ask if I had any unusual advice for how to create more distance from your phone. The piece was just published this week, and I was thrilled to see that it also included suggestions from some of m
View fullsize A friend of mine recently did something both simple and revolutionary: She got her 5th grade daughter a landline. Why? Because FaceTime calls were turning into self-facing beauty contests, and she wanted her kid to actually talk to her friends &mda
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