(bright music) - Remember what life was like before social media?

A nonprofit called REAL Day wants you to experience that time once again, trading screens for real life experiences.

Howard Mitchell and Lorin Palmer join us to chat about this movement.

Welcome.

Thank you for being here.

- Well, thanks for the invite.

Pleasure to be here.

- Tell me about how REAL Day works.

- Well, REAL Day is quite simple.

The idea is, on the first day of every month, you stow the phone and just go out and do something real.

So the idea is rather than having your face in your phone when you're with the people you love and care about in the community, your families, just say, "Hey, it's REAL Day today.

We're just going to go screen-free."

- And one interesting aspect of this is you've gotten so much support from different cities and mayors as well.

Why was this something that you felt was important, not only for your family, but for your community?

- Well, it started with my family.

I took my son out.

I took the challenge, took my son out one day and we went to the Air and Space Museum in Layton, and I was screen-free and then went to a hockey game.

End of the day, he said it was the best day of his life because I was off my screen.

And I saw that and I needed that in my community because I've seen we're stuck in our phones and I just want our youth and the parents out of their phones and experiencing the amazing community that Herriman really is right now.

- Because life goes by so fast and if you're in your phone all the time, you're missing quite a bit.

But I do hear that there are some incentives that cities have signed on to do to encourage people to do REAL Day.

- Well, in meeting with Mayor Palmer, I have a background in cause marketing campaigns, and I said, "You know, it's tough to raise money from individuals to get people to change behavior, unlike helping hospitalized kids or feeding the children."

And I said, "If we could get businesses involved that would reward people who come in on REAL Day."

If I can show this, so we came up with a kind of a poster flyer that the cities, Mayor Palmer and others, send out and they scan a QR code and it's on their phone.

They walk in, it's the last use of their phone that day and say, "I'm doing REAL Day.

Where's my reward?"

And they'll do things like two-for-one or percent off.

- Well, if you'd like to learn more about REAL Day and how you can participate, just head to the website on your screen, realday.org, for more details.

I'm Liz Adeola and thank you for watching "Contact."

(bright music) Philanthropy, Arts, culture.

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Hi, I'm Liz Adeola, the host of Contact, a show that connects you with local events and organizations that serve your community.

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