The One Bad Habit Aaron Paul Is Ditching for His Kids

Aaron Paul just did the painfully relatable parent thing: he looked at his phone, realized he was missing a moment with his kid, and decided to change the habit. The Emmy winner best known as Jesse Pinkman says a small exchange with his daughter flipped a switch for him, and now he is setting a hard rule about screens when he is with his family.

The moment that made it click

In a recent interview, Paul said he was finishing an email on his phone when his daughter, Story Annabelle (he referred to her as Annabelle in the moment), ran in to ask him something. By the time he hit send and looked up, she had already wandered off to play by herself.

That stung. He put the phone down, found her, and apologized. Then he told her he wanted to make a pact: when he is with her, he will not be on his phone. Her response was one word — and it crushed him a little: 'Really?'

She jumped up, threw her arms around him, and hugged him like she had just won something huge. That reaction pretty much sealed it.

His new rule on tech

Paul says the whole point is to model what being present looks like, not just talk about it. He also gave a blunt warning about how easy it is to let screens run the show and miss the real stuff.

'You choose whether the technology controls you. You should control the technology.'

He put it in simple terms: if you do not get a handle on it, life moves on without you.

Why it matters (and why it will land with a lot of parents)

This is not some big celebrity rebrand — it is a basic, tough-to-stick-to boundary that most parents wrestle with. Paul is trying to break the habit so his daughter actually sees him, not the top of his head staring at a screen. As he put it, 'We owe it to our kids to at least give it a shot.'