Smartphone Nation
Why We're All Addicted to Our Screens and What You and Your Family Can Do About It
May 27, 2025
By Dr. Kaitlyn Regehr
Knopf Canada | Hardcover | $36.00 CAD | August 12, 2025
A refreshingly candid guide to gaining agency with your smartphone, filled with exercises and science-backed strategies to help you and your children become healthy and informed digital citizens in the age of the smartphone, social media and AI.
How many times have you looked at your phone today? Or rather, how many times did you look at your phone to do one thing, only to find yourself looking at something completely different ten minutes later? We’re all addicted to screens, but what can you do about it?
Whether we like it or not, our lives and careers, as well as those of our children, will be shaped by social media, apps, and AI. In today’s attention economy, our minds and our attention equal the product that is sold to advertisers. Only those who learn how to navigate our digital world effectively will thrive.
Dr. Kaitlyn Regehr breaks digital consumption into an accessible structure of the food pyramid we all grew up on and frames it into five digital nutrition categories: education and learning, at the bottom of the pyramid, where the most time should be spent; creativity, including interests like reading, music, or drawing; communication with friends and family; participation, such as searching and gaming; and passive, the activities we should do the least, like doomscrolling.
Smartphone Nation encourages and supports readers, showing you how to:
- Game your algorithm
- Catch misinformation
- Spot and tackle "microdosing" of harmful content
- Navigate the attention economy, which prioritizes engagement at any cost
- Improve your digital nutrition for better mental health
- Spring clean your online viewing experience
Uplifting and empowering, this pioneering, practical book will equip you—and your family—not only to survive in the digital space, but to thrive.
About the Author:
DR. KAITLYN REGEHR is a leading expert on the cultural impacts of social media. She is an Associate Professor at University College London, lecturing on digital literacy, a prominent voice in the media, a key influence in policy circles, and a mother of two. Dr. Regehr has provided consultation to members of the House of Lords, to Members of Parliament, the Metropolitan Police, and the Scottish Government. Her research fed into the Online Safety Act and cyberflashing legislation in the UK. She appears regularly in the media as an expert on this subject, including on BBC News, ITV, BBC Woman’s Hour, Channel 4, and in The Economist. Originally from Toronto, she is now based in London.
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