This week we’re trying something a bit different for the Two Dads in Tech newsletter, and we’d love your feedback.

This week’s episode was our most important episode yet, with Nir Eyal, a two-time best selling author all about how we can become indistractable parents in the age of technology.

It was so good that we wanted to write WAY more about than we usually do. So we’re here with a long form piece of content to accompany the podcast.

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and episode as much as we did.

And while you’re at it, check out the full episode and please, please, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We’re on a sprint to reach 1k YouTube subscribers and we need your help!

This episode is maybe our best one yet. I promise you’ll leave feeling inspired.

When Nir Eyal tells the story about the “superpower moment” with his daughter, it doesn’t land with fireworks. It starts small. Just an ordinary afternoon, a dad and his kid flipping through a book of activities: paper airplane contests, puzzles, goofy little games designed to kill time. They get to one prompt that cuts deeper than the rest: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

That’s a question kids light up for. It’s the kind of question that opens doors to imagination and laughter, and maybe even the kind of offhand answer you carry with you forever. Except Nir doesn’t remember what his daughter said. Not because the answer wasn’t interesting. Not because she mumbled it. But because in the space where she answered, he did what millions of us have done: he glanced at his phone. A quick check. A swipe. And in that instant, the memory was gone.

That’s the sting of distraction. It’s not just that technology steals our seconds. It’s that it quietly robs us of stories we never even realize we’re missing until they’re gone.

And if I’m honest, it was like holding a mirror up to my own worst habits. My son yells “Daddy, watch!” while I’m still halfway down an email thread or scrolling through a meaningless highlight reel on Instagram. I mutter “hold on,” which sounds harmless, but kids don’t hit pause. They move forward, and when they do, so does the moment. It’s easy to think you’ll get another chance.

You usually don’t.

Nir’s way of cutting through the noise is to draw a line between use and abuse. We’ve gotten lazy and bundled it all under “screen time,” as if that one phrase could capture the full spectrum of digital life. FaceTiming with a grandparent and bingeing TikTok both count as screen time, but only one strengthens the fabric of your relationships.

The other frays it.

That simple reframing—use versus abuse—changes the entire conversation. Suddenly, tech isn’t the villain. It’s a tool. And the measure isn’t hours logged, but intent.

What are you trying to do? Is the screen helping you connect, or is it numbing you? It’s not about cutting kids off or throwing our phones in the ocean. It’s about choosing when the tool is serving us and when it’s using us.

Attention is the skill of the century.

The twentieth century rewarded strength. The early twenty-first rewarded information. But in 2025 information is cheap. We’re overflowing with it. The scarce resource now, the thing worth protecting and training, is attention.

That’s not some abstract idea. You see it when your child is telling you about their Lego spaceship and you feel that itch in your chest to grab your phone.

You see it in meetings where nobody can last more than five minutes without checking Slack.

You see it when you finish an hour of scrolling and realize you don’t remember a single thing you saw.

Attention is the difference between consuming data and creating wisdom. And it’s fragile.

Here’s the part that’s hardest to say out loud: being present often feels boring.

Daniel and Troy both admit it. Watching your kid scribble with crayons doesn’t hold a candle to the constant novelty of the internet. Tech is designed to entertain instantly.

Children are not.

But boredom is the price of admission to presence.

If you can resist the pull of the phone long enough to sit through those first restless minutes, something shifts. The crayons stop being circles; they become dragons and maps. The Lego blocks turn into elaborate stories with heroes and villains.

The boredom thins, and connection takes its place, and you start to build lasting bonds and memories that are far more important than any internet experience could possibly do in its place.

But you only get there if you can ride out the initial discomfort.

To make this real, Two Dads in Tech has a 7-Day Digital Disconnect challenge. Day one is simple: no tech at dinner. Just you, your kids, your partner, and some questions.

What made you laugh today? Who did you talk to? What was the weirdest thing you saw?

It’s uncomfortable at first. The silence feels heavy. The questions feel forced. But then something happens—you start to hear the little details you’d normally miss. The kind of small stories that weave together into real family memory.

It reminds me of my own childhood, before screens were a constant hum in the background. We made our own fun—plastic ramps for bikes, backyard football games that ended in bruises, hours of running around until the streetlights came on. Life was rough around the edges, but it was real. And sometimes I wonder if we’re on the brink of swinging back in that direction, craving the kind of messiness that comes from being unmediated, uncurated, alive.

The phone itself isn’t the problem.

We are.

Or rather, the emotions we carry are.

Nir argues that distraction almost always starts inside—with boredom, with loneliness, with stress. The phone just happens to be the easiest salve within arm’s reach.

That shifts the work. It’s not about waging war on apps or disabling every notification. It’s about noticing the moment your hand twitches toward the phone and asking, what am I trying to escape right now?

When I can name it—I’m tired, I’m restless, I don’t want to feel this quiet—it loosens the spell. Naming creates space. And in that space, you actually get to choose.

After all the reflections, challenges, and stories, it circles back to one thing: attention is the superpower. Not invisibility. Not flight. Not mind-reading. Just the ability to give your whole self to what’s right in front of you. It sounds small, but in 2025, it’s revolutionary.

And that’s the work we’re trying to do now. Not to be perfect. Not to build some purist life free of distractions. Just to catch ourselves more often, to put the phone down, to push through the boredom, to make room for the laughter and the Lego spaceships and the tea parties.

To choose presence, again and again, even when it feels hard. Because those are the moments that matter. Those are the ones we don’t want to forget.

And this is all grounded in evidence. A 2012 study found that smartphone use was rarely driven by compelling content. Instead, it was triggered by internal states like boredom and anticipation. Recognizing and naming those urges reduced the compulsion to check devices.

And more recently, a 2023 study published in Nature demonstrated that even the mere presence of a smartphone—turned off, face down—was enough to sap cognitive performance and attention from participants. Simply having the device nearby made people more error-prone and less focused (Nature paper).

Nir’s point holds: it’s not just about the apps or the content. It’s about the way our brains respond to triggers, and the cost we pay when we don’t protect our attention.

Buy Nir’s book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life here.

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If there’s one thing worth taking from this conversation, it’s that the greatest gift you can give your kids isn’t money or gadgets or curated vacations. It’s attention. Whole, messy, imperfect attention. Because that’s the real superpower—not the ability to do more, faster, but the ability to stop, look, and actually be there.

And if you can catch yourself even a little more often—resist the itch to scroll long enough to hear your son’s joke, or your daughter’s dream, or the simple answer to a silly question—then maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s the legacy worth leaving.

—Troy & Daniel

We love to hear from you. Please reply to this email with your own story, or if you disagree with a take, or if you just want to say hi. We read every reply and are always looking for ideas to chat about in the podcast.