Instant Genius - Why smartphones really aren’t that bad for your kids

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Thanks to the advent of the smartphone, we now have in our pockets more computing power than NASA needed to put human beings on the Moon. With it comes access to vast amounts of information, both good and bad, and the ability to communicate like never before. But what impact is this having on our children’s lives and how should we approach their smartphone use? In this episode, we’re joined by neuroscientist, author and BBC Science Focus columnist Dr Dean Burnett to talk about his latest book Why Your Parents Are Hung Up On Your Phone And What To Do About It. He tells us why screen time isn’t anywhere near as bad for your kids as people say, why using search engines isn’t rotting their brains and how, far from being antisocial, phones can actually help younger people to develop and maintain their social lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every Monday and Friday you'll hear we're leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. Thanks to the advent of the smartphone, we now have in our pockets more computing power than NASA needed to put human beings on the moon. With it comes access to vast amounts of information, both good and bad, and the ability to communicate like never before. But what impact is this having on our children's lives? And how should we approach their smartphone use? In this episode, we're joined by neuroscientist author and BBC science focus columnist,

Dr Dean Burnett to talk about his latest book, Why Your Parents Are Hung Up on Your Phone and What to Do About It. He tells us why screen time isn't anywhere near as bad for your kids as people say, why using search engines isn't rotting their brains. And how, far from being antisocial, phones can actually help young people to develop and maintain their social lives. Dean, welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Again, I was appreciated. So today we're talking about your new book, why your parents are hung up on your phone and what to do about it. So we're talking about something now that most parents and younger children these days will have discussed, if not, argued about to be honest. And that's the use of smartphones.

So why has this become such an issue as a starter? There's a lot of different factors which contribute to this. I mean, if you look at it's sort of like a step back and look at the big picture, that smartphones have become ubiquitous relatively quickly. They were introduced, what, maybe 10, 15 years ago, and I think it's quite uncommon for a technology to be introduced and suddenly become a default norm so rapidly.

And as a result, obviously, we do not know what the long-term impacts of smartphone use are on people in general. And obviously, that'll particularly be focused on younger people and know their habits, their behaviours, their tendencies. So we all tend to essentially run an elaborate civilisation-wide experiment if you're looking at it that way. So, you know, it's a big change which has happened quickly. And I think as I explained in that book, it's a typical adult's brain.

Like we have a sort of like a mental model in the world developed over childhood. And it's sort of very much, okay, this is how the world should work. I mean, Douglas Adams sort of, I think something that are best. Like, anything which you grow up, you know, encountering is normal. Anything which new between age of like 15 and 30 is new and exciting. And anything happens after the age of 30 is against an natural order of things. That is sort of just how we work. You know, we form this mental modern of the world, and when you fit full of adulthood,

that's how things should be. And, you know, smartphones have obviously changed that because most parents at the moment did not grow up with them and their children are going up with them. I think I've heard someone summarize it really well as in we have a presumably once in history a situation whereby we have digital immigrants, people who grew up without the internet and now have it, raised into children, being born with the internet is always there. Like, I got kids my own. I've told them that we didn't have the internet grown up and we think I just told them

we didn't have trees grown up. They just don't understand that that's even vaguely possible. You can see right, obviously, this means there's going to be a stark different perspective from parents and teens. But it is also, the mainstream discourse is very heavily centered on the fears of parents, the paranoias of parents.

And a lot of us have amplified that. I mean, I've had a lot of people tell me when I talk about this online, oh, you should read Jonathan Hates, The Anxious Generation. I have read it. This is very much my world. Thank you for getting involved.

That is a sensationalist book. It's not the best research. have many issues with it, but I've tried to sort of counter that. These are the actual facts as we see them. And I would argue that as opposed to teenagers being more anxious, more like mentally unwell or have worse mental well-being, it's actually the parents for all the anxious generation. They're the ones who are more paranoid about what's happening with phones and stuff.

So these amongst many other things. Like, you've got this underlying fear of parents, which is obviously being easily stoked by the mainstream for clicks and stuff, because that's just how we work. So yes, you can have a very, very stark divided opinion between younger people and older people when it comes to what phones are doing to you and to their children. And compared to what the actual evidence says, the assumed wisdom is very, very different. That obviously will lead to a lot of friction.

It seems to be getting worse. So let's have a look at some of these things, some of these common concerns that parents have. I mean, maybe the first big one is screen time. This has been around for a year, like I'm in my mid-40s. I had a ZX spectrum when I was younger. Same, same, yeah. Great stuff. My mom was, oh, you shouldn't spend too much time on that.

You know, like you say, your eyes will go square. That's why you wear glasses, etc. But what's going on our brains when we look at a screen? Well, that's the thing. It's like screen time is taken as this sort of an umbrella term for too much time spent with devices. And I can sort of see why it became like just the default term for that sort of behavior and action. but I do think it's unhelpful in many ways because they put the emphasis on time.

No, the most obvious definition is time spent staying at the screen. And in the very strictest sense, that won't do anything. You're just looking at something. We look at things all the time. That's our eyes work. It's just photons hitting our retina. And well done. That's like, as a most fundamental process,

like, well, that's just how sight works. Why are we panicking about this? Obviously, it's the main concern, factor, problem, whatever you want to define it as, is what you're looking at. What is the content you're being exposed to? And that is, any scientist who has done the research or literature,

that is the thing you should be concerned about, not the screen time. So I think dwelling on screen time is often misleading? And as I explained in the book, even like parents who are always talking about screen time, by their actions, you can tell they don't mean screen time in the purest sense.

Because, like, I took my door to the shops today, just pick up some juice and some apples. Very healthy out. to pursue, but more than the supermarket, they were like 20 screens as by the entrance, advertising screens, like the digital screens, the BPO shopping and stuff and all like the self-service stuff. So if you count like you, you think screen time, you should only have an hour a day looking at the screen time. Is that like five minutes you stayed at those screens? Or is it like 50 minutes because it were 10 screens? Or like, was I supposed to jump in front

of them like some intercept a bullet? So clearly, you know, if you tell your kids, that's enough screen time. But you happen not doing the pandemic, you know, that's enough screen time. Now, get the laptop or do your homework. What? That's not, um, you know, kids aren't stupid. They can recognize, like, well, why is this screen okay? Why is that one not okay? So, parents are, like, at least subconsciously aware that it's what you're looking at, what you do with the screen, which is the big thing. And that's where, you know, the issues can arise. I mean, you make an example a lot, but you can read a book on your phone. You're spending, like, two hours looking at your screen reading a book. That's a healthy pursuit by all people's standards.

You can spend, like, three hours watching back-to-back-to-back nature documentaries or, like, educational, content, that's good, that's a good thing. Spend 10 minutes looking at explicit material or violent goring material, that's bad. That's totally valid, or like misinformation or like toxic content about men or women which is deeply harmful and psychologically dark. And that's bad. But again, it's very much what you're doing the screen, which has the effect on you, not the screen itself.

I think that's a misleading sort of emphasis we put on screen time. So screen content would probably be better. Yeah, absolutely. We'll get into that in a minute. So going back to my childhood, so my mum would say, stop playing the spectrum, go out and play.

Should we? I mean, if you can find a kid now who's got a spectrum, I'd be more impressed than anything. My parents were going, where do you get that? Chuckie Egg, what is this? Yeah, it's like dizzy. What is this?

A lot of eggs on the spectrum. To be a screen sort of an emphasis, egg games. But yeah, that's sort of a very modern concern as well in that, you know, you think we just had the summer of encouraging kids, put your phone down, go outside. And that is also another, I think, misconception. I don't think it's deliberate per se, but there's this like, there's a dichotomy, like kids are either inside playing on their phones or they're outside doing healthy stuff. That's not the case. The whole point of a mobile phone is,

it's mobile, you take it up with you, it goes where you go. And if you look at the actual, you know, the evidence, the data and, you know, speak to kids themselves, like I have done, like some people write about this. A lot of use their phones to arrange meetups with friends and stuff. And that's a big part of, you know, what younger people use phones for. It's to stay in touch with their classmates, colleagues, friends, social grouping. And that involves, you know, going up to meet them in person. Because they just, you know, sometimes you will get people who are more focused on their online relationships

than their real world ones. But for younger people, like, there's usually not much of a divide. You know, your friends online are the ones you've been. meet in school, the ones you meet around your neighbourhood and stuff. When you're a child, you don't get to sort of meet people virtually in most cases. I mean, that's always the concern parents will have. What if they do meet someone online who isn't a safe person to be around? Yes, that's a very rare occurrence. It's not like the norm. But this is also this idea that phones are sort of stopping kids from going outside. But whatever incident is suggests that it's the

other way around. For many, many years now, a few decades even, parents have been more and more restrictive of where their children can go. Like you say, back when we were young, like in the 80s, it was normal for children just wander off for hours and end and come back when it's dinner time or just go play football on the street. And that's not so much the case anymore. Like a lot of that has to do with urban buildup, you know, like the development. There's a lot more cars around now, a lot more sort of, you know, gated communities. There's a lot fewer places you can just wander around. But also, you know, parent concerns have changed and shifted. Parents are far more fearful of something happened

to their child. You can argue like many, many years of news of the super coverage of, you know, there's predators in every corner and like all those public safety films on the 80s. Like, you know, if you go outside, you will fall into an abandoned fridge,

which I've never seen, actually, at any point ever, but apparently that was a weekly occurrence when I was growing up. Don't go near power lines. Don't go on trains. Don't go near water. Okay, you're right. We'll stay inside then, fine.

Calm down. But, yeah, that was the sort of cultural shift. Like, parents were and are more concerned about their children's safety, which obviously isn't a bad thing, but it does mean their freedom to move around was constricted, and that's been, you know, their freedom to move has been declining year on year and year for many years,

but it's started going back up again recently, and the evidence is because children have phones now, so parents don't have to think, oh, they've gone on my sight, I don't know where they are what's happening. Now they know they can contact their child and child contact them or even track them, if they're not a parent, and so children can have this autonomy of movement

because their parents do know where they are, and they have the ability to contact them. That sort of makes them feel safer. It's a lot more reassuring. And it shows that phones are actually helpful when it comes to them, children go outside and play, not the other way around.

And yet, this idea that there's a binary choice between phones or outside healthy pursuits is a very strong misconception or misleading at the very least. There's a new way to Sweet Green. Meet, Raps, hand-hand-help, party, and made-for-life-on-the-move. With bold chef-crafted flavors, fresh ingredients, and over 40 grams of protein,

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precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist's Focal, Name Audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. Many children go through a period of thinking that their parents just don't understand them. Because their childhood experiences are so different. You know, you don't know you're born. Back in my day, we played with spinning tops and couldn't afford shoes. Yes.

What's going on there? It's a really weird neurological phenomenon. It's something that happens in your brain called the fading affect bias, whereby your recent memories will have a sort of usual mix of bad memories and good memories. Because obviously, day-to-day life, bad stuff happens. We ideally want more good stuff than bad stuff. You know, life is like that. Stuff happens. Not anything can be good all the time.

If you want to be happy at all times, that's unsustainable. That's the old toxic positivity thing. That's a whole other rant I've had elsewhere. But as you grow, as you sort of age, this bias kicks in. So what happens is in the brain, negative memories, the negative emotions associated with memories, they fade faster than positive ones. Does it involve self-defense mechanism? Because obviously, we need to have some sort of sense of self-worth, some sense of motivation.

So if your head's filled with bad memories, you don't have that. You need to have confidence in your ability to make decisions. and this is one thing your brain does to ensure that happens more often than not, of self-belief, self-worth and all that. So if you smooth out all the negative memories and keep the positive ones, you'll have that. You think, oh, I was right about that.

I am capable, I'm competent, which is a necessary thing in order to function to make decisions. But it does mean the further back your memories go, the more positive they'll be, even if they weren't at the time. But so obviously, most adults will have a very positive view of their own childhood,

even when objectively, they shouldn't. Because you get a lot of parents now say, we didn't have any of this in my day, none of this like anxiety or mental health stuff. But you grew up in the 70s and 80s, it was the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. How did you forget that happened? But they seem to have done.

Like most parents have just gone, oh yeah, that was the thing, was it? Yes. You could evaporate at any second and that was a constant fear and dread everyone had. It manifested in a culture everywhere, but it was so long ago. People have smoothed that out.

their brains don't remember that bit. They remember the good stuff. And it does, but you can remember the facts of it, to the actual details and not the negative motion, which I sort of quoted the book, like, a lot of kids that get confused by this. Like, I had my grandparents, too, they would say things like,

we had buses to take us to the school who's lived in a remote valley, and they were talking about it recently. They were very, well, they wouldn't be allowed now, shall we say. I'm sure if any inspectors got a hold of them, they would have been sent straight to the scrapies because they were death traps,

but they were what we had to take us a school in that. Because we were only school kids, we weren't important back then, apparently, back to the whole, you know, like kids are more free now, shall we say. But I was talking about this, and like my grandparents were listening, and they say, oh, I didn't know you're born, like you say. Like, you know, we used to walk 10 miles of school every day, no shoes, over broken glass and dogma. I don't think you did. But, you know, like, every day in the wind and snow and cold. And within like five or six minutes later, like, oh, school days, best days of your life, mind. just like, wow, like, how hard has your life been if that was your best? Like, I've seen your life now.

You garden and drink tea. How is that worse of what you were going through then? Bit of our memory sort of work. And again, kids aren't stupid. The discourse is always about them. And it doesn't really involves them as if they are like a problem to be solved or like cattle to be herded. They notice this. They pick up on this. Like, they can hear what you're saying, understand and put two and two together and realize you're making five. And I don't think that's helpful. I think, though, like include them in the discourse. Don't sort of just talk. them and tell them what's what. That's no. If you ever met a teenager, that's never going to work. And we forget our teenage years, the angst we went through because of the same effect. But we all went through it, and it's a shame our brains don't it as retain it.

Yeah, having said that, do you think every adult should remember that there were a child once? Yeah, I do think that's something we, we all remember we were a child, but I think we ever sort of think about what that actually means or what that was like. You can sort of see why that happens. I don't think anyone's doing on purpose, but, you know, when you are an adult, you have. far more responsibilities, far more stresses, far more important things, more significant things to be aware of. Like I have my own children now and now I'm responsible for their well-being. When I was a child, my parents responsible for my well-being. And it was a different dynamic. And I do think it can be harmful at times, especially when adults, maybe not such parents,

but adults to other kids will dismiss the concerns of younger people because they are, you know, objectively less important than your own. And I guess that's something. something young people will be helpful for them to appreciate to it. And yes, I know this is bothering you, but your parents have to deal with this. Now, if your problem happens, you might be sad for a bit. If their problem isn't resolved, you might lose your house. There's a scale of significance. But if you've never dealt with that, if you've never sort of been in the position of having a mortgage or having a family support, you don't know. You can't, you know, sort of say, oh yes, your stress is

worse than mine, only know is your own stress, and to you, it is master's significant, because, you know, it's your own life, your own baselines are what they are. It's not like saying, like, if I broke my arm tomorrow, I never broke my arm before, I would be, you know, probably the worst pain I've ever had. Some came along with two broken legs and a broken wrist

to say, oh, mine's worse, is, yes, it is. Doesn't mean I'm not hurting now, like, it's just that, no, this is my framework, and, yeah, but I think a lot of pain sort of, because because of subjective experience is like, well, When I was a child, I had the smaller responsibilities, now I got big ones. So, you know, you sort of see your kids now with the same things, and you think, well, no, I know that's not as bad as what I've got now.

I know that's not a significant amount of dealing with now, but your child doesn't know that. And they don't have the ability to recognise that because we don't put these burdens on kids, and rightly so. But that doesn't mean like their own burdens, their own stresses aren't valid to them. It just, know, it can be easy to sort of dismiss and overlook them, but you ideally shouldn't do that. So let's talk about the brain a bit more then. So how about the idea of people saying that children are relying on, in my day, it was calculators, but now Google, and it's stopping the development of their critical thinking and their brains? That is a common complaint you hear now. And I think I mentioned the book, it is extremely established complaint. It goes back thousands of years. and one of the quotes I can clear of the book is Socrates himself

complaining that the invention of writing, put in ink on paper to form words, will destroy the memory abilities of children because they don't have to remember information anymore, you just write it down. So this is how far back this concern goes, and touch wood, it hasn't seemed to have happened yet. It's not been a, it hasn't sort of like manifested those concerns.

Because I do think there's this misconception that, you know, if you stop using this facility in your brain, it'll suddenly go away. Now, the brain does have a sort of use-at-lose-it-approach to an extent when it comes to development, like the more things you... if you use a brain to do something more and more and more, that part of your brain will develop and grow

to make you better of that. But then there are some fundamentals, like you won't stop being able to form memories because you don't tend to rely on your memory system anymore. That's a deeply evolved system. It's really sort of deeply fundamental. It's deeply complex. And this idea that, you know,

just spend a few years looking at your phone rather than trying to remember stuff, isn't going to disrupt that. And even if it did, it's one of those things, like the brain's really quite plastic. So you put your phone away for a few weeks and start doing that. That facility will come back online. The fact that these established brain circuits and networks do, they can go dormant, while they are still there. And it only takes a few bits of stimulation to trigger them again.

That's one only is why addiction is such a problem, because you can sort of be sober and clean for many, many years. But the, sort of the new connections and circuits that fall, in your brain to fuel the addiction. They're still sort of there. They're smaller, they're atrophied a bit, but they're, they don't have gone away. So it doesn't take a lot to fire them up again.

So, you know, in the positive sense, that applies to a lot of our, you know, brain abilities. And, but yes, so Addles back in, you know, 80s and 70s, there was probably more rote learning in schools, like, you know, learning long reams of, you know, text or being able to do that sort of recall or memories at your times table. But that sort of was, like, the, educational standard of the time. That's not like a fundamental ability of the brain. That's not

something we have to do in order to function. Now it's just deemed to be, well, a successful student would be able to do this. That's an arbitrary imposition really. There may be some argument for it, but it's not like a fundamental natural ability. And also when we have a phone, we are presented our brains with a lot more information than ever before. We have internet access to all of mankind's knowledge and be able to sort of pass that rapidly back to the and forward and jump between screens. Some argument, that's actually maybe not better, but it means your brains develop.

That has a particular skill, that has an ability. And maybe that is actually more helpful, especially in the modern world. When everything is digital now, then it's this argument that we used to be able to do this and phone stopped you from doing that. Maybe that's correct. But that thing you used to be able to do,

there's nothing to say that's beyond end all. That's not like some sort of universal truth. That's just what we used to be able to do. Now we can do this. The brain's really plastic. You can do lots of stuff. and phones make it do something different, but not necessarily worse. So that's a sort of a roundabout way of saying,

brains are going to keep braining regardless of where you have a phone or not. So you mentioned Socrates there and the fear of writing, which is fascinating. So how much does sort of fear of new, for one of the better word, technology feed into this? And where does that come from? It is a big part of it, I reckon. I would say that is the neuroses of a lot of modern things. parents because this is a new thing. Not only is a new thing, it is something that my child is really interested in, enthusiastic about, and I don't have, as a parent, full control of what they're doing.

If you look, your child takes up like fishing or some other hobby, you can just be there, you can see what they're doing. They've got a phone. You're sort of, by necessity, shut out. If you could sort of hover over their shoulder, that would be weird. They wouldn't do that. So there is a certain level of anxiety from parents because they can't access or see what their child is doing. Obviously, that's always going to be a bit much. So this is a particular technology for that. But it's a well-established thing. There were plenty of times in the past when parents were deeply upset about rock and roll music.

That's a classic one. It's all about the devil and it's going to encourage children to fornicate or whatever it was. Whatever term they were to the old days to express fire and brimstone sort of ideals. Like, Walkmans are a big problem in my school. Like, no, these kids are got, they're Walkmans now, listen to me. It was so ignorant. They'll walk into the road. It was a thing.

Like, I was, like, a child and teenager doing the whole video games cause violence for roar in the media, which you don't see so much anymore because I think people who are kids then are now writing the stories. Like, they quite like video games. Yeah, like, I'm going to do my job. I can sit and play Eldon Ring for four hours. Oh, great game. I haven't played it.

I just know that's a good reference to you. But, yeah, so, like, you don't see that so much. now. Also, video games are a multi, multi, multi, multi, billion industry, so they've become mainstream in that sense. So phones are like the current target de jure. And yeah, so it comes back to what I said on, like,

no, adults have this idea of how the world should work. And because it was formed when they were very young, it doesn't include smartphones. Whereas young people, people were born since the 2000, their own idea of that world works are still forming and smart phones are very much a part of that.

And that is obviously something which is going to be result in a bit of a dichotomy. It's going to be obviously a bit of friction there because I do feel parents are going to be overly paranoid about the impact of phones and younger people are going to be insufficiently paranoid by the impact of phones because there are obviously risks and dangers and hazards

when you allow your child have access to everything in the world ever because that's just, like, law of averages is going to happen, isn't it? And also there's people who's in charge of social media, the big tech companies or what content they see, and these are all valid concerns. But I think the idea that it's the phone itself, which is doing the harm and causing the problem,

I think that's a misplaced concern. Because, you know, parents will be, most parents at least, will be naturally concerned by their child's safety. And phones are a thing which don't fit into their established worldview and which are still, like, you know, the impact on me is still arguably uncertain. There's plenty of research done into them. And there's no real strong evidence of any harmful effects overall so far. But there are still many cases where it can happen, but also many cases where they can be beneficial. So we're talking about averages, not specific cases here. And yeah, so it is understandable where it comes from, but I do think it is also not the most rational stance.

So parents being concerned about the harm phones are doing to their children is understandable. And I'm sure it's a legitimate from their personal perspective. But scientifically, it's not the most helpful approach. and it does tend to end up with misleading on helpful conclusions and outcomes and decisions, which could potentially make things worse. Yeah, so personally speaking, I don't have children. You know, I have nieces, nephews, friends with children. And the issue that often comes up is, are they too young to have a phone?

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that is a really interesting one. What is the appropriate age for a child of a smartphone? And there is no sort of established body of data which suggests one way or the other. Especially because, you know, children mature at different rates. You know, you will find a nine-year-old who is weirdly mature and savvy and switched on, and you'll find plenty of 13-year-olds who aren't. Let's just go with that.

My son has a few friends. I'm like, okay, I wouldn't trust you with a spoon, let alone a phone. But, you know, east to their own. But, yeah, so, like, it's hard to pin down in that sense. the general sort of cultural or societal trend seems to be 11 years old and I don't think that's necessarily like parents can get together and say okay 11's a good age

I think that stems from that's when children start secondary school so you go from primary school which is like a more childlike place and then they go to a bigger school with more older people and teachers they're more separate so I imagine a lot of parents feel like okay this is a good time because I can keep in touch with them then

it's a really big jump from primary and secondary school. And my son went through it. It was mentally exhausting. He likes this school, but it is a huge sort of change. And I think a lot of parents sort of would gravitate towards, okay, this seems like a good time. So they can help them, you know, I can help them navigate through it and they can be more mature. So you understand why that is. But the thing I found interesting, when I did research the book and spoke to various children of in schools and of various ages,

every sort of aid group you ask, they all seem to think, even like you're talking to like 15-year-olds, 14, 13, 12, they all seem to think anyone younger than them is too young. It's really strange. Like, you ask for 15-year-olds, they say, you shouldn't give a phone to 13-year-olds. They're just too mature.

They can't handle it. And you ask for 13-year-olds, say, oh, yeah, we're fine, but you shouldn't give it to 11-year-old. That's just daft. You ask the 11-olds, yeah, yeah, we can have them. Nine-year-olds, no, that's stupid.

So, like, they all start to sound like their parents straight away. It's really strange. So especially if they have younger siblings. because they can obviously, they got their phone at a certain age. And if either their younger sibling gets one at the same time as them, which means they were younger, which they sort of resent, or they get at the same time at the same age, and then they can look down and say, well, if you're 13 and your siblings are 10,

that's a world of difference, isn't it? It's like, you can't give them that. They're only small, they're only a very childlike. It's all of a subjective perspective, but yet even, you know, there's very small age gaps. Even children think, yeah, everyone else is too young. I'm not, but everyone else is too young. It's a strange sort of, it's hard to pin down.

And the same thing applies to like A's limits, aid restrictions, especially online and stuff, as in how old should someone have to be to witness, you know, like a computer generated graphics, shooting things. Like, a lot of games are, like, involved with shooting, first-person shooters and stuff. And how old should they be? Like, obviously, 18 people will say,

because there's violence and shooting, but also it's clearly virtual. It's not real. It's, you know, not a genuine thing. And, you know, like, you know, explicit content. There's a lot of, you know, 18 is your obvious answer. But, you know, like, a lot of countries have different views on, like, what's the age of consent? Like, some countries say 14, some say 16, some say, like, 17.

And in this country, it's, like, the age of consent for sex is 16, and, you know, the age, you need to be to look at sexual content is 18, which doesn't really match up. Is it like, so you can do it, but you can't see it. That's like, okay, how does that work? That's, you know, you can sort of see, like, it's really hard to pin down this precision of age limits and stuff. You do need to have them, but when you sort of like try to get down to the very specific, like where's the line, whether you go from too young, too old enough, it's really hard to sort of like, bit of exact limits to just kind of impose essentially an arbitrary one, which gets confusing, but you know, you have to have them. It's just hard to pin down where they really should be.

So we've covered a lot there. We're sort of coming to the end of our chat. But by way of summary, do you have any sort of top tips for both children and, grandparents. Yeah, it's a complex subject. It's obviously phones, like I say, they are a single object, but it's not so much the phone itself is what it allows you to do, and it does so much. You know, you can chat with your friends.

You can look stuff up. You can take selfies. You can share yourself. You can link with people, with strangers. You can follow celebrities. You can look up information, which is perhaps not the best information. You can get involved in arguments and so on and so on and so on. So there's a certain idea he's head for treatment.

these things kind of separately. It's like who you talk or doing your phone. If it's your friends, great, if it's, you know, strangers, bad. And that's sort of, you know, make that distinction. But I do think it should be a discussion in that your child has a phone now, and that's going to be a big part of their life. Because that's how the world works now. No, it's impossible to separate your online world from the real world more often than not.

Because a lot of your child's social life will be online to a certain extent. That's why I worry about these ideas of, like, well, from bringing these new laws, is under 16, you can't access messages or social media. All right, is that going to be staggered or is that going to be imposed now? Because that means there are plenty of kids under 16 now who have access to these platforms. Most of their social life will occur on this. We take that away all of a sudden. They've lost a massive chunk of their social circle, which is incredibly mentally taxing for young people.

So this idea that you have to impose rules and restrictions on children's phone use is perhaps an unhelpful way to go about it. I always think it should more of a dialogue, a discussion. Okay, so what are you doing with it? Okay, maybe you shouldn't do that. Maybe we should do this. Try to impose rules and firm boundaries. I do think that's kind of a very limited success in terms of parent and stuff. And with regards to young people, it is, if possible, worth remembering that your parents and adults are older. They have seen more stuff. They know more about how the world does work and what's good or what's bad or what's dangerous and what's not. It's hard to sort of appreciate that when you're a young person and a teenager because

your mind is craving new experiences and independence and autonomy as we've evolved to do. But that will sort of mean you end up making decisions which aren't necessarily the most helpful or healthy and it's good to have your parents as a sort of as a metric or as a sort of way to

calibrate your decisions. So taking what they say or they suggest, at least give it some sort of credence. And yeah, I do think it should be a discussion. It should be a dialogue because you know, phones are now. Phones are part of life. One particular body of them would suggest that the best way to promote good phone use in your children is to model it. So like, I can imagine there's plenty of

adults who have their own phones in the hands at all times, telling the kids off, like, put that phone down, it's bad for you. And it's like, beep, beep, you constantly. And they just say, I'm working. I'm not there, are you? You know you're not. You're just saying that, so they don't bother you about it. But they can see you using it. And again, it's a mixed message. Okay, so I got to put it down, but you don't. Okay, that makes sense. No. Again, kids aren't dumb. They wouldn't see these things. So he might as well involved in the conversation because otherwise they'll make their own conclusions and they might not be the ones you want them to make. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team

behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr Dean Burnett. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out his latest book, Why Your Parents Are Hung Up on Your Phone and What to Do About If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or downloaders on your preferred app store. You can also find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French,

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