October 22, 2025 • 13 mins
A new study is making headlines — not because kids are on screens too much, but because many can’t stop. Dr Justin Coulson unpacks fresh research linking addictive screen use (not screen time itself) with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts in teens. Learn what “addiction” really means, why it’s not an official diagnosis, and how to protect your child without constant conflict.
KEY POINTS
- The latest data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study shows addictive patterns of screen use — not hours online — are tied to poorer mental health.
- “Addictive” use means kids feel distress when not online, use screens to regulate emotions, or can’t stop even when it causes problems.
- There’s no official “screen addiction” diagnosis, but the behaviour patterns are real — and concerning.
- Justin shares practical strategies using the Three E’s of Effective Discipline to reduce conflict and foster healthy habits.
- Real-life example: how the Coulson family handled screen boundaries with collaboration, not control.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“Time on a device isn’t the problem. It’s when kids can’t stop that their mental health starts to suffer.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, JAMA Psychiatry, June 2024
- Screen "addiction" and mental Health - Technosapiens
- Tools: Freedom App, Forest App, Brick, Unplug Childhood
- Framework: The Three E’s of Effective Discipline (Explore, Explain, Empower)
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Have a calm conversation about how and why your child uses screens.
- Model mindful use — show your own limits and honesty about the struggle.
- Create structure, not punishment — consistent times, agreed limits.
- Watch for red flags like irritability, secrecy, or big emotions when screens are removed.
- Offer alternatives — list 10+ enjoyable non-screen activities your child can choose from.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
The research keeps piling up and it continues to tell
a mixed, challenging and nuanced story about kids and their
time on screens. God I and welcome to the Happy
Families Podcast. My name is doctor Justin Coulson. Today it's
a doctor's Desk episode. In just a sec, I'm going
to spend a couple of minutes talking with you about
(00:26):
screen addiction and mental health. There's a reasonably new study
that's been making headlines and it is fascinating. Headlines include
real risk to youth mental health is addictive use, not
screen time alone? Why parents should focus on screen addiction
over screen time. Screen addiction and suicidal behaviors are linked
(00:47):
for teens according to a study. So what do we
make of these findings? What does the research report actually
tell us? Is screen addiction a real diagnosis? Where do
we go from here when it comes to kids and screens.
That's all coming up in just to sec on today's
episode of the Happy Families Podcast, a Doctor's Desk special edition. Gooday,
(01:11):
Welcome to the Happy Familiess podcast, Real parenting solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. I'm doctor Justin Colson. Today.
Unfortunately on my own misus happy families couldn't make it
in for this one. So short, sharp to the point.
A brand new study, a new paper published in I
think it was June in Jammer A researchers at Jammer
is a fairly prestigious publication that scientists love to publish
(01:34):
their stuff so that everyone gets to find out the
latest in research science. Researchers analyzed data from the Adolescent
Brain Cognitive Development Study. It's a massive study happening in
the United States's been going on for a number of years,
following thousands of kids right across the US. This particular
study four two hundred and eighty five tweens. They participated
(01:55):
three different time points between the ages of ten and fourteen.
Break this down and talk about what was measured so
that we can have a look at what the research
has discovered. They looked at addictive screen use, screen time,
mental health symptoms, and suicidal ideation and behavior. Okay, so
(02:15):
two screen measures and two mental health measures. Let's talk
about the two screen measures. First, addictive screen use. We're
talking about where the kids are literally using their screens
in addictive ways, whether they're on phones, social media, and
video games. Okay, so looking at just compulsive use of phone,
compulsive use of social media or addictive use, I should say,
and video games screen time. They just reported the total
(02:39):
number of hours that they spent per day on screens,
not including school activities. Okay, so this is for recreation
use for non school activities. Then they looked at mental health.
Parents were reporting whether or not kids had concerns around depression, anxiety,
and behavior problems. And there was the suicidal ideation and
behavior side of things, where parents and kids were both
(03:00):
interviewed about whether or not the child had any suicidal
thoughts or attempts over the last few years. So we're
looking for patterns here between time on screens, addictive screen use,
and mental health outcomes. Okay, what they find, let's talk
about that. First off, addictive use was very common. To me.
This is the big concern. Addictive use is very common
(03:22):
and it goes up as kids get older. Forty nine
fourteen nine percent of kids showed addictive patterns of phone use. Surprisingly,
only ten percent showed addictive patterns of social media use,
and forty one percent showed addictive patterns of video game use.
Now I'm wondering whether or not, the addictive patterns of
(03:44):
phone use and the addictive patterns of social media use
could have been conflated, and so the forty nine percent
and then down to ten percent, maybe that's not quite accurate.
But what what the researchers did find is that levels
were increasing consistently over time for those things and addictive patterns.
And this is the real take home message. Addictive patterns
(04:05):
of screen use were associated with worse mental health outcomes.
What do I mean by that? Kids who showed highly
addictive social media use or highly addictive video game use
were at greater risk for suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, and
other mental health problems. Okay, if your kids look like
they're highly addicted to social media or video games, you
(04:27):
would expect that there would be an associated increase in
mental health challenges and perhaps even the pointy end, which
I think is really concerning. When it comes to highly
addictive phone use, those children were also a greater use,
a greater risk sorry for suicidal thoughts and behavior as well.
So what's really interesting in this pattern of research is
this the total amount of screen time that you could
(04:49):
just spending in front of the device doesn't seem to
be associated with mental health problems, but when they are addicted,
when there is addictive behavior. So time on device is
not the same as addictive styles of behavior. And I'm
going to break that down in just a sec. So
what that basically means is total screen time not associated
with mental health challenges, but addictive screen news is associated
(05:13):
with mental health concerns. Okay, what I mean by associated
is we're not saying one thing causes the other, and
we're saying when one thing moves, so does the other thing.
So it might be poor emotion regulation, it could be
a lack of sleep, it could be poor diet, it
could be a lack of friendships. It could be any
number of other things that are driving both and we're
just not measuring that in this study. Okay, so what
(05:35):
does addictive screen news actually mean? We need to disentangle
addictive screen use from time on screen. I think that
the two would be correlated, but it seems that in
this study that hasn't been the case. So common criteria
for addictive or compulsive social media use, phone use, video
gaming use number one. I just don't seem to be
(05:57):
able to stop or limit my screen news. Try to
use them less and not able to try to reduce
phone usage's not able to second one feeling distressed or
irritable or anxious or depressed when not on a screen.
Third one using the screen as an emotional regulation tool.
Fourth one, just thinking about being on the screen all
(06:19):
the time, Like what am I supposed to do if
I'm not on a screen? I need to be on
my screen? And fifth causing problems with other activities, So
having an impact on sleep, having an impact on school,
having an impact on relationships, having lots of arguments, those
kinds of things. So that's what we're talking about with
addictive screen use, and that's how it differs from time
on just screen time generally. So after the break, we're
(06:43):
going to talk about whether the screen addiction is a
real diagnosis and what we as parents are supposed to
do when it comes to kicks and screens. This is
the Happy Families podcast. Justin Colson breaking down a recent
study in JAMMA. JAMMA the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study,
(07:07):
a massive ongoing study of child health that's been following
thousands of US kids. Addiction. Addictive screen use, whether it's phone,
whether it's gaming, whether it's social media, is associated with
all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff. Seemingly,
if your child is using a screen a lot but
is not addicted to it, we don't get the same
negative outcomes. So what do we need to know here?
(07:30):
We don't actually have an official definition of screen addiction.
It's not an actual diagnosis. You won't find it in
any of the statistical or diagnostic manuals. And so when
we use this term in association with screens, we could
be conflating a whole lot of different things that operate
differently and require different treatments and essentially not the same thing.
(07:51):
And we could also be pathologizing certain behaviors that are
not pathological. So is it really a disease if if
your child is argumentative about screens? Is it really a
disease if your child is thinking about what they were
doing on their screens? Like I don't have any games
on my device right now, but I used to and
I used to close my eyes and just see the
(08:13):
game playing in my head. Does that mean that I
have a disease? No, it just means that fundamentally, I'm
teaching my brain to seek certain things. My friend Jackie NeSSI,
who runs the Techno Sapiens blog says this. She says,
addiction is convenient shorthand for describing patterns of screen use
that are problematic, but we need to be careful about
what exactly we mean when we say it. So what's
(08:35):
this study mean? What are you supposed to do with
the information? How do we leverage this? Where do we go?
First off, I think that there is a distinction between
overall screen time and addictive patterns of use. But the
more your child is on a screen, the more likely
it is that they're going to get addicted. So all
(08:55):
of this comes back to boundaries, right. We've got an
upcoming social media minimum major legislation intervention that's coming December
ten in this country, which is going to have some impact,
but not a huge amount because kids can still use
their screens a lot, So we need to set clear
boundaries around screen use. The three's of effective discipline would
be the model that I would use. Explore what your
(09:15):
child wants to do on a screen and for how
long and when and how and why and those kinds
of things. Explain what your concerns are, and then empower
them to work with you on a problem solving conversation
to figure out the best way forward. We've recently with
our homeschool daughter. Emily said, we are just tired of
fighting with you about screens so we are deciding now
(09:36):
you are going to get this much screen time every day.
We're not big on screen time, we're more interested in
what you're doing on it, but we're tired of the conversation.
So we're actually going to bring in a time limit
because it just makes life easier. So Emily now knows
that she gets X number of hours of screen time
every single day. It's predictable, it's locked in, it's confirmed,
and she also knows what time of day she's going
(09:56):
to get that screen time. We've put it into a
calendar so she knows, and she also understands that she
has to do X, Y and Z before she gets
that screen time. So if she's choosing to be obstinate
and not do her school work, even though we get
to one pm and she's supposed to get her hour
of screen time, if she hasn't done her lessons for homeschool,
then she does not get the screen time. And what
(10:17):
we found is that she's doing her lessons because she
wants a screen time, and we're not having as many
fights about schoolwork or about screens. It's actually working kind
of well. But please note we haven't been dictatorial here.
We have used the three e's, which means it's a
collaborative problem solving solution rather than a here's how it's
going to be. With the parents, just do as you're told.
(10:38):
Don't think that would have been helpful, Okay. Second thing
that I would emphasize, we've got to be good examples
of how to use our screens. If we are constantly
on our screens, we are modeling all the wrong stuff.
We need to talk to our kids about what we're
doing to curb our use. We need to show them
that we can put their screens down, and if we're
struggling with it, we actually need to be honest with
the kids and say this is hard for me, just
(10:59):
like it's hard for you. The third thing that I'd
encourage is just being aware of the red flags, like
if your child is having these extreme reactions when screen
time is finished, then it's time to go back to
a three e's conversation. This is actually what we've done
with Emily as well, because she started to have some tantrums.
We said every time we have to get mad at
you because you're not turning off the screen even though
(11:21):
your time is up. It means five minutes less the
next day. That's all we've had to do. She's like, Okay,
I don't want to lose five minutes tomorrow. You're telling
me that my time is up. My time is up,
and that's working really, really, really well. We're so happy
with that. Two other things that I'm going to suggest
change the environment, get the kids outside, do things that
are incompatible with screen use. And I think that can
(11:42):
really really make a difference. We use the app or
I use the app Freedom on my devices, and I
just find that is wonderful. There are others I know
that I've been recommended Forest a number of times as well.
I don't find that the inbuilt screen time works so well.
And the last thing is we've put a list together
for Emily of other things that she can do because
(12:03):
she knows she only gets X amount of time per
day on screens, and so we've got a list of
ten or twelve other activities that she can participate in
every single day, and she can feel good about doing
those because she knows she's going to get her time
on screen, and what we've actually found is she's become
more helpful because helping around the house and tid in
the kitchen is one of those things on the list,
and we've just found that we've got a wonderfully helpful child. Okay,
(12:26):
guys that it will link to the study in the
show notes and hopefully there's some food for thought there.
When it comes to kids and screens, it's perennial, it's endemic,
it's ongoing, but hopefully this has been useful. The Happy
Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Mim Hammond's provides admin research and a whole lot of
additional support and if you'd like more information about making
(12:47):
your family happier, visit us at happyfamilies dot com dot au.
Tomorrow on the pod, Kylie will be back with me
for an old Do Better Tomorrow episode as we unpack
the week, have a look at what worked, what didn't,
get intentional about a parenting for next week, and fingers crossed,
get things more right than wrong. Have a great day,
The research keeps piling up and it continues to tell
a mixed, challenging and nuanced story about kids and their
time on screens. God I and welcome to the Happy
Families Podcast. My name is doctor Justin Coulson. Today it's
a doctor's Desk episode. In just a sec, I'm going
to spend a couple of minutes talking with you about
(00:26):
screen addiction and mental health. There's a reasonably new study
that's been making headlines and it is fascinating. Headlines include
real risk to youth mental health is addictive use, not
screen time alone? Why parents should focus on screen addiction
over screen time. Screen addiction and suicidal behaviors are linked
(00:47):
for teens according to a study. So what do we
make of these findings? What does the research report actually
tell us? Is screen addiction a real diagnosis? Where do
we go from here when it comes to kids and screens.
That's all coming up in just to sec on today's
episode of the Happy Families Podcast, a Doctor's Desk special edition. Gooday,
(01:11):
Welcome to the Happy Familiess podcast, Real parenting solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. I'm doctor Justin Colson. Today.
Unfortunately on my own misus happy families couldn't make it
in for this one. So short, sharp to the point.
A brand new study, a new paper published in I
think it was June in Jammer A researchers at Jammer
is a fairly prestigious publication that scientists love to publish
(01:34):
their stuff so that everyone gets to find out the
latest in research science. Researchers analyzed data from the Adolescent
Brain Cognitive Development Study. It's a massive study happening in
the United States's been going on for a number of years,
following thousands of kids right across the US. This particular
study four two hundred and eighty five tweens. They participated
(01:55):
three different time points between the ages of ten and fourteen.
Break this down and talk about what was measured so
that we can have a look at what the research
has discovered. They looked at addictive screen use, screen time,
mental health symptoms, and suicidal ideation and behavior. Okay, so
(02:15):
two screen measures and two mental health measures. Let's talk
about the two screen measures. First, addictive screen use. We're
talking about where the kids are literally using their screens
in addictive ways, whether they're on phones, social media, and
video games. Okay, so looking at just compulsive use of phone,
compulsive use of social media or addictive use, I should say,
and video games screen time. They just reported the total
(02:39):
number of hours that they spent per day on screens,
not including school activities. Okay, so this is for recreation
use for non school activities. Then they looked at mental health.
Parents were reporting whether or not kids had concerns around depression, anxiety,
and behavior problems. And there was the suicidal ideation and
behavior side of things, where parents and kids were both
(03:00):
interviewed about whether or not the child had any suicidal
thoughts or attempts over the last few years. So we're
looking for patterns here between time on screens, addictive screen use,
and mental health outcomes. Okay, what they find, let's talk
about that. First off, addictive use was very common. To me.
This is the big concern. Addictive use is very common
(03:22):
and it goes up as kids get older. Forty nine
fourteen nine percent of kids showed addictive patterns of phone use. Surprisingly,
only ten percent showed addictive patterns of social media use,
and forty one percent showed addictive patterns of video game use.
Now I'm wondering whether or not, the addictive patterns of
(03:44):
phone use and the addictive patterns of social media use
could have been conflated, and so the forty nine percent
and then down to ten percent, maybe that's not quite accurate.
But what what the researchers did find is that levels
were increasing consistently over time for those things and addictive patterns.
And this is the real take home message. Addictive patterns
(04:05):
of screen use were associated with worse mental health outcomes.
What do I mean by that? Kids who showed highly
addictive social media use or highly addictive video game use
were at greater risk for suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, and
other mental health problems. Okay, if your kids look like
they're highly addicted to social media or video games, you
(04:27):
would expect that there would be an associated increase in
mental health challenges and perhaps even the pointy end, which
I think is really concerning. When it comes to highly
addictive phone use, those children were also a greater use,
a greater risk sorry for suicidal thoughts and behavior as well.
So what's really interesting in this pattern of research is
this the total amount of screen time that you could
(04:49):
just spending in front of the device doesn't seem to
be associated with mental health problems, but when they are addicted,
when there is addictive behavior. So time on device is
not the same as addictive styles of behavior. And I'm
going to break that down in just a sec. So
what that basically means is total screen time not associated
with mental health challenges, but addictive screen news is associated
(05:13):
with mental health concerns. Okay, what I mean by associated
is we're not saying one thing causes the other, and
we're saying when one thing moves, so does the other thing.
So it might be poor emotion regulation, it could be
a lack of sleep, it could be poor diet, it
could be a lack of friendships. It could be any
number of other things that are driving both and we're
just not measuring that in this study. Okay, so what
(05:35):
does addictive screen news actually mean? We need to disentangle
addictive screen use from time on screen. I think that
the two would be correlated, but it seems that in
this study that hasn't been the case. So common criteria
for addictive or compulsive social media use, phone use, video
gaming use number one. I just don't seem to be
(05:57):
able to stop or limit my screen news. Try to
use them less and not able to try to reduce
phone usage's not able to second one feeling distressed or
irritable or anxious or depressed when not on a screen.
Third one using the screen as an emotional regulation tool.
Fourth one, just thinking about being on the screen all
(06:19):
the time, Like what am I supposed to do if
I'm not on a screen? I need to be on
my screen? And fifth causing problems with other activities, So
having an impact on sleep, having an impact on school,
having an impact on relationships, having lots of arguments, those
kinds of things. So that's what we're talking about with
addictive screen use, and that's how it differs from time
on just screen time generally. So after the break, we're
(06:43):
going to talk about whether the screen addiction is a
real diagnosis and what we as parents are supposed to
do when it comes to kicks and screens. This is
the Happy Families podcast. Justin Colson breaking down a recent
study in JAMMA. JAMMA the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study,
(07:07):
a massive ongoing study of child health that's been following
thousands of US kids. Addiction. Addictive screen use, whether it's phone,
whether it's gaming, whether it's social media, is associated with
all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff. Seemingly,
if your child is using a screen a lot but
is not addicted to it, we don't get the same
negative outcomes. So what do we need to know here?
(07:30):
We don't actually have an official definition of screen addiction.
It's not an actual diagnosis. You won't find it in
any of the statistical or diagnostic manuals. And so when
we use this term in association with screens, we could
be conflating a whole lot of different things that operate
differently and require different treatments and essentially not the same thing.
(07:51):
And we could also be pathologizing certain behaviors that are
not pathological. So is it really a disease if if
your child is argumentative about screens? Is it really a
disease if your child is thinking about what they were
doing on their screens? Like I don't have any games
on my device right now, but I used to and
I used to close my eyes and just see the
(08:13):
game playing in my head. Does that mean that I
have a disease? No, it just means that fundamentally, I'm
teaching my brain to seek certain things. My friend Jackie NeSSI,
who runs the Techno Sapiens blog says this. She says,
addiction is convenient shorthand for describing patterns of screen use
that are problematic, but we need to be careful about
what exactly we mean when we say it. So what's
(08:35):
this study mean? What are you supposed to do with
the information? How do we leverage this? Where do we go?
First off, I think that there is a distinction between
overall screen time and addictive patterns of use. But the
more your child is on a screen, the more likely
it is that they're going to get addicted. So all
(08:55):
of this comes back to boundaries, right. We've got an
upcoming social media minimum major legislation intervention that's coming December
ten in this country, which is going to have some impact,
but not a huge amount because kids can still use
their screens a lot, So we need to set clear
boundaries around screen use. The three's of effective discipline would
be the model that I would use. Explore what your
(09:15):
child wants to do on a screen and for how
long and when and how and why and those kinds
of things. Explain what your concerns are, and then empower
them to work with you on a problem solving conversation
to figure out the best way forward. We've recently with
our homeschool daughter. Emily said, we are just tired of
fighting with you about screens so we are deciding now
(09:36):
you are going to get this much screen time every day.
We're not big on screen time, we're more interested in
what you're doing on it, but we're tired of the conversation.
So we're actually going to bring in a time limit
because it just makes life easier. So Emily now knows
that she gets X number of hours of screen time
every single day. It's predictable, it's locked in, it's confirmed,
and she also knows what time of day she's going
(09:56):
to get that screen time. We've put it into a
calendar so she knows, and she also understands that she
has to do X, Y and Z before she gets
that screen time. So if she's choosing to be obstinate
and not do her school work, even though we get
to one pm and she's supposed to get her hour
of screen time, if she hasn't done her lessons for homeschool,
then she does not get the screen time. And what
(10:17):
we found is that she's doing her lessons because she
wants a screen time, and we're not having as many
fights about schoolwork or about screens. It's actually working kind
of well. But please note we haven't been dictatorial here.
We have used the three e's, which means it's a
collaborative problem solving solution rather than a here's how it's
going to be. With the parents, just do as you're told.
(10:38):
Don't think that would have been helpful, Okay. Second thing
that I would emphasize, we've got to be good examples
of how to use our screens. If we are constantly
on our screens, we are modeling all the wrong stuff.
We need to talk to our kids about what we're
doing to curb our use. We need to show them
that we can put their screens down, and if we're
struggling with it, we actually need to be honest with
the kids and say this is hard for me, just
(10:59):
like it's hard for you. The third thing that I'd
encourage is just being aware of the red flags, like
if your child is having these extreme reactions when screen
time is finished, then it's time to go back to
a three e's conversation. This is actually what we've done
with Emily as well, because she started to have some tantrums.
We said every time we have to get mad at
you because you're not turning off the screen even though
(11:21):
your time is up. It means five minutes less the
next day. That's all we've had to do. She's like, Okay,
I don't want to lose five minutes tomorrow. You're telling
me that my time is up. My time is up,
and that's working really, really, really well. We're so happy
with that. Two other things that I'm going to suggest
change the environment, get the kids outside, do things that
are incompatible with screen use. And I think that can
(11:42):
really really make a difference. We use the app or
I use the app Freedom on my devices, and I
just find that is wonderful. There are others I know
that I've been recommended Forest a number of times as well.
I don't find that the inbuilt screen time works so well.
And the last thing is we've put a list together
for Emily of other things that she can do because
(12:03):
she knows she only gets X amount of time per
day on screens, and so we've got a list of
ten or twelve other activities that she can participate in
every single day, and she can feel good about doing
those because she knows she's going to get her time
on screen, and what we've actually found is she's become
more helpful because helping around the house and tid in
the kitchen is one of those things on the list,
and we've just found that we've got a wonderfully helpful child. Okay,
(12:26):
guys that it will link to the study in the
show notes and hopefully there's some food for thought there.
When it comes to kids and screens, it's perennial, it's endemic,
it's ongoing, but hopefully this has been useful. The Happy
Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
Mim Hammond's provides admin research and a whole lot of
additional support and if you'd like more information about making
(12:47):
your family happier, visit us at happyfamilies dot com dot au.
Tomorrow on the pod, Kylie will be back with me
for an old Do Better Tomorrow episode as we unpack
the week, have a look at what worked, what didn't,
get intentional about a parenting for next week, and fingers crossed,
get things more right than wrong. Have a great day,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.