Why Is My Teen Always On Their Phone Or Devices? Episodes

Wondering when your child should get their first phone? Worried about TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, gaming, sexting, online predators, cyberbullying or screen addiction?You're not alone.Technology is changing faster than most parents can keep up. Every new app, device and social media platform brings fresh opportunities—but also new risks.

This playlist from the award-winning Teenagers Untangled podcast brings together expert interviews and practical parenting advice to answer the biggest questions parents ask about teenagers, phones, apps, gaming, devices and social media.

This playlist will help you think about:
📱 When should a child get their first phone?
📱 How much screen time is too much?
📱 Which social media apps are safest?
📱 TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube—what parents need to know
📱 How to set healthy phone boundaries
📱 Should phones be allowed in bedrooms?
📱 How to protect your child from online grooming and sextortion
📱 Cyberbullying and what to do about it
📱 Online pornography and how to talk about it
📱 Gaming, and online friendships
📱 Helping teenagers build healthy relationships with technology
📱 How to have conversations that work instead of constant battles over phones

These episodes don't rely on fear or scare stories. Instead, they explain the evidence behind today's biggest online risks while giving parents practical tools to build trust, encourage critical thinking and help teenagers become responsible digital citizens.

Whether you're introducing your child's first smartphone, navigating social media, worrying about excessive screen time or trying to keep up with the latest apps, this playlist gives you reliable, research-based guidance you can trust.

April 12, 2026

Phones: Bedtime Battles for Parents of Teens AMA

Ask Rachel anything When taking phones at night turns into a power struggle One of the hardest things about parenting teenagers is that the battles that matter most often happen at exactly the moment we have the least capacity to deal with them. A mum wrote to me about the nightly struggle over handing in her 13-year-old daughter’s phone. She’s exhausted by bedtime. Her daughter pushes back, calls her dad, and suddenly what should be a simple boundary becomes a negotiation, then a row. We’ve ...

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Mental health problems in teenagers. Parents can't just blame phones.

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Oct. 28, 2025

Mental health problems in teenagers. Parents can't just blame phones.

Ask Rachel anything Why is it that so many teenagers today seem to be struggling with mental health? In this conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Matt Richtel reveals the surprising science behind adolescent development, explaining why teens aren't 'difficult' they're doing an important job and how there's a fundamental mismatch between biological adolescent development and the world in which we now life. One of the key problems nowadays is that kids are going into puberty ea...

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Teens Talk: Parents listen. The good and bad of smart phones and social media.

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Sept. 9, 2025

Teens Talk: Parents listen. The good and bad of smart phones and social media.

Ask Rachel anything FREE GUIDE: HOW TO THINK THROUGH DEVICE USE FOR YOUR TEENS https://open.substack.com/pub/teenagersuntangled/p/teens-and-screens-the-big-hug-teenagers Smartphones can be massively problematic in the hands of the young, mainly because of what kids can access through them. Social media can have a magnetic pull for adolescents who're trying to figure out their identity and fit in, meanwhile predators are well aware of the various access points provided. So are there any positi...

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Mental Health, and Teen Phone Use with Oxford Psychologist Lucy Foulkes.

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Aug. 26, 2025

Mental Health, and Teen Phone Use with Oxford Psychologist Lucy Foulkes.

Ask Rachel anything How we parents manage technology in our homes, and what we put in the hands of our kids, has turned into one of the most hotly debated topics amongst parents and experts. In this episode, I talk to Dr. Lucy Foulkes, Oxford academic psychologist and author, about social media’s role in adolescent mental health, challenging the narrative popularized by Jonathan Haidt and exploring why phones and social platforms aren’t the universal villains they’re often made out to b...

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Teens, screens and mobiles: The online safety expert's view of bans and boundaries.

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Aug. 12, 2025

Teens, screens and mobiles: The online safety expert's view of bans and boundaries.

Ask Rachel anything The latest narrative around online safety, phones and devices, is pushing for bans to keep our kids safer and happier. The idea is to give them back their childhood and prevent them from accessing harmful content. Catherine Knibbs, a child psychotherapist and cyber trauma expert argues in her latest book that social media bans won't work because we can't even properly define what it is we want to ban, and when we do ban devices we actually leave our kids vulnerable....

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Parenting teens to get them out of their bedroom, even one who's into gaming.

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April 15, 2025

Parenting teens to get them out of their bedroom, even one who's into gaming.

Ask Rachel anything So many parents feel a deep loss when their teenager begins to separate from them; staying in their room and behaving as if the person they used to adore is the most embarassing thing they have ever witnessed. In today's episode I brought in Anita Cleare, author of How to Get Your Teenager Out of Their Bedroom, to discuss the challenges of parenting teenagers. In her book she covers the key things that drive adolescents to push against us: 1. Sepa...

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Adolescence: Help for parents with the core themes.

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April 1, 2025

Adolescence: Help for parents with the core themes.

Ask Rachel anything The mini-series, Adolescence, is a global hit, topping Netflix charts in 71 countries and amassing 24.3 million views in its first four days. It's sparked a global conversation about parenting, masculinity, and the impact of social media on young people. It's brilliance rests on holding up a mirror to everyone in society, showing us the complex factors that cause toxic ideas to take root. When I started this podcast I set out to create somewhere that is a safe...

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June 25, 2024

Screen time advice for parenting teens & tweens: What works and what doesn't.

Ask Rachel anything If you're a bit confused about how much you should be wading in on your young adolescent's screen time then you're not alone. The truth is, there's been very little clear data to prove what we should and shouldn't be doing. Jonathan Haidt's book Anxiety Generation has turned the dial up on the whole subject and he's pushing hard for a ban on social media for younger teens because of the impact he says it has on them. Meanwhile, Natasha Devon is more keen on getting us pare...

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May 7, 2024

Nagging: Using routine to reduce the friction of parenting teens.

Ask Rachel anything Is it a constant battle to get your teens to do the right thing? Getting them to bed on time, eating healthily, keeping their screen time to an acceptable level are all problems that come up regularly. So when a listener asked for a script to use to get her teens into bed I decided that it was worth delving into what other parents are doing right and how we can adapt their behaviour to our own households. The research has made me rethink my own life structure and the imp...

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Oct. 17, 2023

Triggers and emotional spirals, mobile phone bans and do schools know what to teach kids anymore?

Ask Rachel anything In most episodes Rachel uses her journalistic background to trawl through studies and find out what a range of experts think about a topic. Susie brings her wealth of knowledge and experience of mindfulness and parenting to the microphone. Together, the two of us talk about the reality of parenting. We're going to continue with that, but thought it might be nice to broaden the format to talk about current affairs topics, and how they affect us and our listeners. In this...

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July 23, 2023

Parenting teens with a Snapchat addiction; why tweens and teens want it so much

Ask Rachel anything Snapchat has become a must-have for most teens, because it's now the way they stay in touch with their friends. The filters make it fun, they can see where their friends are on Snapmaps, and the instant photos give them a quick and easy contact point. But one of our listeners has contacted us asking for help with it. She says her teen son was already struggling to control himself when it comes to screens so she's delayed allowing him to have Snapchat, but caved because a...

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June 5, 2023

Social media: help your teens be their best selves online.

Ask Rachel anything An interview with Natasha Devon MBE: We parents often struggle with our fears about how to protect our teens when they're online. So when I received Natasha’s book written for teenagers, 'Clicks; How to be Your Best Self Online', I read it cover to cover. It's a great book to give your teens to help them navigate their online world in a way that's genuinely positive, because it covers things like avoiding tech addiction, swerving fake news, who to follow, online safety, a...

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