Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What to do About It

by Dean Burnett

Maybe you want one, but your parents don’t agree? Or maybe you do have a phone, but your parents think you use it too much. Or even make you leave it downstairs at night when you want to scroll before sleep.

Either way, the result is: arguments. Between you and your parents. About phones.

Meet brain scientist and bestselling author Dean Burnett. He’ll show you why your parents are sometimes wrong about phones (and why, annoyingly, they can be a bit right), how you can both understand them a bit better and how you can stop arguing about them. You’ll learn about:

- Why turning off TikTok can be so hard
- How video games can change your brain for the better
- How Snapchat can make us sad (and lots of other complicated feelings)

Because screens can be a good thing. And a bad thing. But they’re definitely not worth getting hung up about

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

454 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2024

About the author

Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist and psychiatry lecturer at the Centre for Medical Education at Cardiff University and is the author of the Guardian’s most-read science blog, Brain Flapping. He lives in Cardiff.

The following is from his website:

This is the website for Doctor Dean Burnett, neuroscientist, lecturer, author, blogger, media pundit, science communicator, comedian and numerous other things, depending on who’s asking and what they need.

Although employed as a tutor and lecturer by the Cardiff University Centre for Medical Education in his day job, Dean is best known for his satirical science column ‘Brain Flapping‘ at the Guardian, and his internationally acclaimed debut book ‘The Idiot Brain‘.

Dean Burnett was born and raised in Pontycymer, a working-class former mining village in the South Wales valleys, which explains his strong Welsh accent. After completing his A-levels he attended Cardiff University to complete a BSc in Neuroscience. After working several jobs he returned to Cardiff University as part of the Psychology School where he completed a neuroscience PhD in the role of the hippocampus in configural learning.

Alongside his studying, Dean developed an interest in comedy, eventually taking the plunge and trying stand-up in 2004, a hobby he maintains to this day. His interest in comedy and science lead to him combining the two and attempt to write humorous takes on topical science stories. This eventually resulted in a regular blog on the Guardian website in 2012, which is still going strong today.

Dean lives in Cardiff with his wife and children.

Reviews

[Vonprice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chatty non-fiction for teenagers.
You can read my full review here: http://vsviewfromthebookshelves.home....

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

When our children are old enough that this becomes an issue for them, I'll give them this book.

For me, I was hoping essentially for something I could recommend to acquaintances as a sort of more robustly researched neuroscientist's antidote to The Anxious Generation, rather than recommending they listen to a 2-hour episode of a podcast by two rather flippant journalists who are a bit of an acquired taste. This isn't exactly that, though it isn't not that. Maybe more children's books should have footnotes and citations. Anyway, I found this to be balanced and nuanced, not Pollyanna-ish about technology's impact on children but also not as alarmist.

[Febronia · Rating 5 out of 5]

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