NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) -- A Nashville author and podcaster is spreading the word about the impact of excessive screen time after his nearly two-month-long device-free experience.

"Nashville, we're a hustle town. We are creative town. People are going and getting it, and I'm just seeing more and more people fall apart," said Carlos Whittaker. "I think that if people can just get reminded... all I'm doing is reminding people of what's beautiful on the other side."

Whittaker is talking about the "other side" of devices like smart phones, the same phone he uses to make a living.

"I talk to my phone, I sell merch. I sell courses, I sell books."

That phone also connects him to his 320,000-followers-strong "Instafamilia."

"I shared my father's story of dementia through Instagram and caretaking for him. The amount of DMs I got from people that said nobody talks about this. I felt so alone."

That same loneliness that social media helped fill, it was also helping create.

"We're the most connected society every but also the loneliest," said Whittaker.

He explained how an idea from his wife became reality with that weekly screen-time notification for iPhone users.

"Mine said I was averaging seven hours and 23 minutes a day, and I quickly did the math, and that's 49 hours a week. That's three months a year. And if I live to be 85, I'll spend over 12 years of my life looking at my screen."

The Nashville-based author, speaker and podcaster set out to ditch that screen for seven weeks, where he spent time with monks, meaning 23 hours a day of silence.

"The first three days were terrifying. Again, panic, heart palpitations," he recalled. "I was coming off of the drug, and I thought the drug was my screen, but the drug wasn't the screen. The drug was the control that the screen gave me. And so suddenly I realized, wait a second, like it was day three, that it felt like finally, an elephant stepped off my chest, and I could step into the simplicity, the solitude, the savoring that the monastery taught me."

He spent the next two weeks with the Amish, recording video diaries that would become a documentary by looking at a camera lens instead of talking to his phone screen.

"Google became a person. Every time I had a question about something, I'd have to go to somebody, the Amish, I'd have to go to, you know, a farmer or a monk and ask them, and then I'd enter in a conversation, eye to eye contact, things we don't do anymore, and all of these things were just making me more human."

Whittaker spent three weeks at home in Nashville with his wife and children -- still no phone.

"I didn't give them a single rule about their screen time. They could watch Netflix. They could be on all their phones," Whittaker said. "We realized that those three weeks that dad was home with his family without a phone, that their screen time got cut in half without me even telling them to not look at their phones."

He said there was even improvement in his brain's health following the experience.

"I got my brain scanned by neuroscientist before and after, even my brain scans would show you at the end, he was like, Wow, your brain has healed tremendously, more than I've ever seen a brain heal in two months," said Whittaker. "It wasn't a scientific study because I was the only data point. But you did this, you didn't look at the screen, and your brain and body and mental health is this way? One plus one equals two."

Whittaker's assistant now helps reduce his screen time while doing so herself.

"I was in that generation where we all had flip phones in middle school and the iPhone was everywhere by the time we were in high school," said Whitney Wallerius. "I have really strict limits on Instagram."

As someone who connects with thousands of people through his screens and theirs, Whittaker says he's not against them.

"We've got AI, we've got all sorts of things that are really helpful, but they are dehumanizing us a little bit. And when I say that, I mean the lost art of wondering. We've talked about that like, what does it mean to not know something and be okay with not knowing something?"

Whittaker is working to launch a course/community called "human school" where he helps people reconnect with what he calls the lost art of being human.