Did you know that teens pick up their phones 72 times a day and receive a median of 237 notifications? Those numbers from Common Sense Media stunned me. And Dr. Brad Marshall helped me realize something in this episode: we’re not dealing with a bad habit anymore. We’re dealing with something designed to override the developing brain. And as Dr. Brad Marshall, an Australian psychologist who’s worked with over 2,500 families affected by phone and screen addiction, says — we adults share the blame.
In today’s episode, Dr. Marshall shares his evidence-based, no-judgment approach to helping teens break free from phone addiction. (He includes a surprising “handbrake rule” that actually works when parental controls don’t.)
He explains why expecting teens to self-regulate their phone use is, in his words, “neurologically ridiculous,” and what parents and educators can do instead. Whether you’re driving to school, grading papers, or unwinding after a long day, this episode is for you.
Here is a visual overview of the key ideas from this episode created from the transcript using Google Notebook LM. Then, I downloaded and edited it with Canva.
Dr Brad Marshall (AKA The Unplugged Psychologist) is recognized as one of Australia’s leading experts in excessive internet and screen use otherwise known as Internet Addiction or Gaming Disorder. As the Director of The Screen & Gaming Disorder Clinic; Australia’s first established specialty clinic, he is a well-respected presenter and speaker on the topic, frequenting schools, health, and corporate organizations around Australia.
He is the author of three best-selling international books that have been published in over a dozen languages and 30 countries world-wide. In his spare time Brad conducts research with world leading academics at Macquarie University and published Australia’s first ever clinical treatment trials for smartphone addiction and gaming disorder. Brad is an Adjunct Fellow at the School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University.
Books by Dr. Brad Marshall:
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This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain.
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Vicki Davis: Today we’re talking with Dr. Brad Marshall. He’s an Australian psychologist, researcher, and author who has worked for more than two decades with young people and families affected by screen overuse and technology dependence. He is known internationally as the Unplugged Psychologist, Director for the Screens and Gaming Disorder Clinic in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Marshall is the co-author of Do Not Disturb. Now, for my international listeners, the name of this book outside the US is How to Say No to Your Phone.
How does your advice differ from all the detox advice that seems to be rolling around the internet right now?
Dr. Brad Marshall: Yeah, thanks very much, Vicki, for having me. It’s great to be here. I think the way that my advice differs is just given my background. I’ve been working with kids and families in screen addiction and gaming addiction, phone addiction. That term “addiction” — 10 or 15 years ago, people would get very angry at me for using that. But now we all accept that it can get to that level in some kids.
Because of my clinical background, I’ve seen over two and a half thousand families in my clinic from around the world. And so this comes from a practical sense. Many people can think in an academic way or in theoretical ways of, “Just take that device from your teenager.” But I’ve been there and I’ve done that with all of these families and I’ve trialed all of these techniques as to what works.
And then on top of that, in the last five years in my research lab at Macquarie University in Sydney, we’ve evidence-based all of the techniques that are in this book. So that’s a short answer as to how this is different — because in a practical sense, these are things that we know actually work.
Vicki Davis: You know, there are some interesting statistics that I was digging into to prepare for today. There’s a significant association between four plus hours of daily screen time and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Common Sense Media says that kids in the US pick up their phones 72 times a day. They use their phones 43 minutes during school on the average. Now, some of us — like my school — have banned phones, which has been great.
But they receive a median of 237 notifications a day. Teens say they’re afraid of missing out, but they also want boundaries. And educators and parents want to empower kids, not restrict them. You really talk about a no-judgment approach. How do we start from a no-judgment approach? Because when I hear these numbers, this is not what being a teenager or tween-ager should be.
Dr. Brad Marshall: I want to be really clear. I am all for boundaries. And in fact, all of my research papers and books are around the effective way to put in place boundaries and safeguards in this. But what comes with that is that we have to have that non-judgmental approach with our teens and tweens. And what it ultimately boils down to, Vicki, is we failed our kids. Everyone in this field and everyone who didn’t act, we failed them.
One of my biggest regrets in my career — I gave testimony to the Australian Parliament inquiries into the social media bans, which we are rolling out in Australia for under 16s in December. I gave testimony to that Senate inquiry in Australia, and I said exactly that. We are at fault here. We all complain kids are on their phones too much and the impact that is on mental health. But number one, we allowed that to happen. That was on our watch. Number two, we have systematically gone about reducing their options outside of screens. We shut down their sporting fields, we stop them from being in communities, we stop them from going outside, and then we wonder why they’re inside so much on screens. So it has to be a non-judgmental approach from my perspective, because we’re at fault.
Vicki Davis: I have to admit, I was in the cell phone business. My first job out of college, ’91 to ’94, I was the general manager. And people kept saying, “I want to get my kids phones for safety.” Those days, you couldn’t text, you couldn’t do anything. Yeah, it made some sense. In a rural area, a flat tire, getting stuck in a ditch is a real issue.
But now it almost feels like the safest kids are the ones who don’t have phones. That should bother us. Like, what do we do if we’ve already bought our child phones and we’re like, okay, this is not going the right direction? How do you advise parents? What do they do that fits with your evidence-based approach?
Dr. Brad Marshall: In Australia, we are leading the world on this in many different facets. We banned phones two years ago in schools, every school. And we saw at the time that the lobbyists from the tech industries were very up in arms about that. All these terrible outcomes are going to happen. Well, hey, guess what? All of the evidence says that was beneficial. Teachers tell us that kids are actually listening.
Kids say, “I enjoy lunch. The older kids talk to me. I have more friends. I do more outside of school now. I’m using my phone less because I’m actually making human connections instead of walking down the hall with my nose in my phone.” So absolutely, I am a big fan of the ban.
And look, there are many, many steps that we’ve proven in lab and in my books. But if I give one specific to phones, because we’re talking about Do Not Disturb, ultimately what it boils down to is one of the things you can do to protect your kids is limit their amount of cell phone data. What I mean by this is most families will have tried to use software parental controls on their child’s phone.
And most of them will have figured out they don’t work. The reason they don’t work is quite simply because that is the tech company self-regulating. It is not in their best interests for that to work. Unfortunately, what we had to do for parents is really apply the handbrake rule here. So the handbrake rule is: if you only have five to ten gigabytes of data, you’re going to use that very sparingly. And you can still talk and text, of course. But the cell phone companies make this very difficult around the world because they continue to increase the data plans.
Vicki Davis: What is a practical first step for a teen or a tween who feels like they’re too far gone in their cell phone use?
Dr. Brad Marshall: As a first point, it’s fantastic when you hear a teen or tween actually recognize that. But what we should warn the educators and the parents out there is that sometimes that insight comes and goes. You might have them acknowledge that, but then a day later they back away from it. And that’s a classic sort of addiction model anyway. But what I would say is that any teen or tween in my clinic that has acknowledged that, what I’m trying to do is build on that motivation and talk about the areas of life that it’s impacting. Is it impacting friendships, relationships with mom and dad or family? Is it impacting sleep? Is it impacting sport? There is a whole range of areas that excessive phone use and screen use impacts. And what we do from there is we talk about the psychological science behind it.
We talk about the areas that it impacts, also about the persuasive design that tech companies use to hook you in, to spend more time on that phone. Because it moves the child or the teen and tween away from feeling like “I’m the problem” into actually “you’re the victim of this.” And we all are as adults as well, by the way, because this is predatory behavior from the algorithms and the persuasive design. It is meant to do this.
So don’t feel like a failure if you’re spending too much time on your phone because ultimately it is doing exactly what it is designed to do.
Vicki Davis: What roles do schools and families play in shaping better tech habits with our teens? I mean, I’m getting ready to help a session with parents next week on this very topic. So I’m saying, what message can I give parents and what do we say?
Dr. Brad Marshall: There are so many messages. If I just have to pick a few here, the number one issue that I’ve seen in my clinic is sleep. When screens and phones impact sleep, everything will go downhill very quickly. All of the developmental and psychological impacts snowball. I talk about this in my 2019 book, The Tech Diet for Your Child and Teen, which is a parenting book.
As parents and as educators, we do have a role to put healthy boundaries around this. Why? Not because I’m treating children and teens like they don’t have any agency and they shouldn’t have any say, but quite simply, the brain is developing at that age, as we know. The areas of the brain — the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala — they don’t fully develop for females in their early 20s, males late 20s. So this idea that they should be able to self-regulate their phone use by age 12, 14, 16 is neurologically ridiculous. And that is akin to me giving a 12- or 14-year-old a six-pack of beer and a set of car keys and hoping they don’t crash. They’re going to make some poor decisions.
Self-regulation of tech use — you know, “it’s a technological world, we all need to help our kids self-regulate their tech use” — I would put it to you that that is probably a marketing ploy by a technology lobbyist because there’s no science in that. So we have to really help educators and parents understand that self-regulation is something that most kids are not going to be able to achieve.
Vicki Davis: This is just so spot on. Thank you for bringing both of these issues to the forefront. It’s encouraging to know that there are people studying it and that parents can have hope. So Dr. Brad Marshall, thanks for coming on the show.
Dr. Brad Marshall: Thanks, Vicki.
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