Screens and technology
Screens are part of childhood now. The question is how to find the balance.
Most parents I meet are not dealing with a child in trouble. They have no idea whether the amount their child does is fine, they cannot see what their daughter is watching in her room for hours, or they know something needs to change and do not know where to start. The research can answer the first question, and a plan the household can hold answers the rest. I co-wrote the Screen Balance Program with Dr Jennifer Tininenko to give parents both, built on what we use with families in clinic.
One payment, no subscription, 14-day money-back guarantee. I co-own the programme and earn money when it is bought; the full commercial disclosure is further down this page.
Why parents are acting now
This is the first generation raised on screens, and the figures are worth knowing
These are not opinions. They come from Ofcom’s annual survey of UK children and parents, and from national surveys and peer-reviewed studies of tens of thousands of children.
Ofcom, UK, 2026
56%
of ten-year-olds own a mobile phone. By eleven it is 83%, and by sixteen nearly all of them.
Ofcom, UK, 2026
55%
of parents of 8 to 17-year-olds think their child’s screen time is too high, and 32% say they find it hard to control.
Ofcom, UK, 2026
37%
of children aged 8 to 17 say they themselves spend too much time on screens.
Barb, UK, 2026
7 hours
a week on YouTube alone for the average child aged 4 to 15, before any games, apps or television.
CDC, US teenagers
1 in 2
US teenagers spend four or more hours on a typical weekday on screens outside schoolwork.
Pew Research, 2025
48%
of teenagers say social media harms people their age, up from 32% two years earlier.
Sources: Ofcom, Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report, 21 May 2026 (Barb viewing data reported within it); CDC National Health Interview Survey (Teen), 2021 to 2023; Pew Research Center, April 2025.
Explore the research
What the research says at each level of daily screen time
Drag the slider. These are findings from large national studies, shown as they were published: associations across thousands of children, not predictions about any one child.
The reference point in the research
In the largest study of its kind, of more than 40,000 US children, those around one hour a day of entertainment screens showed the lowest rates of anxiety and depression diagnoses, and this is the group every other group is compared against. Zero was not better than one. Light use is ordinary modern childhood.
Twenge and Campbell, 2018, Preventive Medicine Reports
Where most children sit, and where drift begins
Associations with lower wellbeing begin to appear and grow from here: less sleep, fewer offline activities, more conflict around endings. Nothing alarming on its own, but this is the band where habits quietly set, so changes made here are prevention rather than crisis management.
Twenge and Campbell, 2018; Ofcom, Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes, 2026
Where the mental-health gap becomes clear
In CDC survey data, among US teenagers with four or more hours of daily screen time, 27% reported anxiety symptoms against 12% of lower-use peers, and 26% reported depression symptoms against 10%. About half of US teenagers are now in this band or above.
CDC National Health Interview Survey (Teen), 2021 to 2023
The band researchers flag most
Teenagers aged 14 to 17 at seven or more hours a day were about twice as likely to have ever been diagnosed with anxiety or depression as those at one hour, and more likely to show lower self-control and less curiosity. This is the band where professional guidance matters most.
Twenge and Campbell, 2018, Preventive Medicine Reports
These figures describe associations found in cross-sectional and survey research and cannot prove cause and effect for any individual child. Risk also depends heavily on what screen time displaces: sleep, movement, friendships and family time. Protecting those four is what a screen plan is for.
Why screen limits stop working after a few weeks
A timer app and one clear conversation usually hold for two or three weeks, and then screen use drifts back to roughly where it started. That happens in most homes, including homes where the parents are consistent and the rules are fair. The apps and games your child uses are built and continually tuned by large teams whose job is to hold attention on the screen, and one rule agreed once at the kitchen table is not enough on its own to counter that.
What does hold
The method we use with families in clinic. You work out first how screens are actually functioning for your particular child, because the same two hours a day means something different in different homes. Then you change the structure around screens so that the limit is carried by the routine rather than by you enforcing it every evening. That sequence is what the five modules take you through.
The programme
Know what the evidence says, then decide what fits your family
A step-by-step programme built by two clinical psychologists. You get up to speed on what the research actually shows, see where your own child sits, learn how to manage screens in your home and deal with the common problems, and build a screen plan you can hold. Five modules, twenty-nine lessons, eight video walkthroughs, and most lessons are a tool you use rather than a video you watch.
- A real assessment of your child. Thirty items across eight areas give your child a screen profile, so the targets, the plan and the scripts are chosen from their results rather than from general advice.
- The science, made usable. What screens do to a developing brain and why they are so hard for a child to put down, in plain language you can use in your own house.
- Word-for-word scripts. What to say when the answer is no, when the negotiating starts, and when it gets loud.
- A phased family plan. Six intervention targets, worked through one or two at a time in a set order, so the changes hold instead of you changing everything at once and losing all of it in the first week.
- Your family dashboard. Tracks the lessons you have done, stores your child’s profile and results, and shows the next lesson to open. It all stays in your own browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
- Phones and social media, covered properly. A readiness framework rather than an age, the first phone set up right, social media as a separate decision, and ten parental control tools compared with a recommender for the devices you own.
Commercial disclosure: I co-own the Screen Balance Program and earn money when it is bought. It is sold by Elevating Parenthood LLP, a United States business that is separate from Anxiety CBT Ltd. Purchases are made on its website, in US dollars, under its terms and privacy policy, and your information is handled in the United States. It is education for parents, not psychological treatment, and it is not regulated by the HCPC. You never need to buy it to be seen by me, and being a client makes no difference to the price.
See it in action
The First Year: a thirteen-year-old, a new phone, everything switched on
The phone simulator from Module 5 runs on the course site. You set up Alex’s first phone app by app, hand it over, and play the first two months of situations. The risk ratings on the phone show what your settings do. The other ten months are inside the programme.
Try the phone simulatorWalk the trail
Eight of the twenty-nine lessons, running on the page
The course site has the lesson trail from the family dashboard, shortened to eight lessons, so you can see how the programme looks and moves before paying anything.
See the lesson trailHow it works
- Assess. Complete the guided assessment and get your child’s screen profile in about five minutes.
- Understand. Learn why screens hook your particular child, then use the decision tree to narrow the options to the one or two changes worth making first.
- Act. Follow the phased plan, use the scripts, and let the new routine settle so that screens stop being a daily negotiation.
Two clinical psychologists, and two parents
I am an HCPC-registered clinical psychologist, board certified in behavioural and cognitive psychology (ABPP) and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and my postdoctoral training was in child and adolescent anxiety at Evidence Based Treatment Centers of Seattle. Dr Jennifer Tininenko is a clinical child psychologist licensed in the United States and directs the Child Anxiety Center there. We built the programme because the families in our clinics kept asking the same question: what do we actually do about screens? It is not therapy, and no course can diagnose or treat a mental health condition. The methods inside it are the ones with trial evidence in clinic settings, and the research it draws on is cited inside it, but the programme itself has not been through a trial of its own and I do not have outcome data for it.
Questions parents ask, answered free on the course blog
Written by us and open to anyone. They are a fair sample of how the programme reads.
How much screen time is too much?
What the research can and cannot say about hours, by age.
What age should a child get a phone?
Readiness rather than a birthday, and what to switch on first.
Taking the iPad away without a meltdown
The handover, step by step, and what to say when it goes wrong.
My child only wants to play video games
When that is ordinary and when it is doing a job for something else.
Screens before bed
What the sleep research supports and a routine that holds.
Screen time rules that stick
Why rules fade after a few weeks and how to write ones that do not.
Free, and no sign-up to see your results
Not sure yet? Start with the Screen Balance Check
About five minutes. You rate statements about your own child and see your results on screen, with a plan built around what you choose to work on first.
One payment of $99 (about £75) if you go further, with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
When screens are part of something I treat
The programme is for the everyday questions. A smaller number of families need something else: where a screen has pushed out sleep, school attendance, friendships or activities for weeks, where it has become the only thing that settles a child, where searching and checking online is part of OCD or health anxiety, or where a day at home with a console is part of not going to school. In those cases the screen is doing a job for anxiety or low mood, limits on their own tend not to hold, and I treat the problem underneath with the screen rules as one part of the plan. If that sounds closer to your child, treatment for children and teenagers is the page to read, and the free call is the place to talk it through. Where gaming itself is the main problem, with no anxiety behind it, the NHS National Centre for Gaming Disorders (opens in a new tab) is the right service.
Free 20-minute call
Not sure whether this is the right fit?
Start with a free 20-minute call. We talk through what is going on, I answer any questions you have, and I tell you whether I think I can help. If I cannot, I will try to point you to someone who can. The call is free and there is no obligation to book.
Weekdays, 9am to 5pm. No GP referral needed.