For most of the past decade, the conversation about phone and social media addiction has been stuck at a single question: is this real? In March, a California jury answered it. They found Meta and Google liable for designing addictive social media platforms that harmed a young user — the first time at this scale that the companies were ruled responsible for the addictive design choices baked into their products.
In this episode, clinical psychologist and addiction scientist Dr. Suzette Glasner takes the question the verdicts have now opened — what do we actually do about it? — and answers it from inside the science and practice of addiction treatment.
You can watch the full episode here:
Phone addiction, Dr. Glasner argues, is clinically a behavioral addiction with striking similarities to drug and alcohol addiction. It is driven by the same variable reinforcement schedule that makes slot machines and methamphetamine so neurologically compelling, and the same therapeutic principles that work for substance use disorders apply directly to compulsive scrolling.
She walks through evidence-based principles, drawn from the same framework she uses with patients in her private practice. Stimulus control — the family media plan, and why the bedroom and the dining room are the two highest-yield environments for restriction. Why content matters more than minutes — the role of intermittent variable reinforcement. The replacement principle — why removing the phone without replacing the reward fails, and how to match replacement activities to the specific function the phone was serving.
And when self-management isn’t enough — what evidence-based treatment for behavioral addiction actually looks like, and how to recognize when phone overuse is masking depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, body dysmorphic disorder, or trauma.
She also reacts to recent public statements from Lara Trump on her household’s no-screens policy, Bill Gates on his decision not to give his own children phones until age 14, and Jonathan Haidt’s recommendations to keep screens out of bedrooms — translating each of these positions into actionable steps.
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Tools mentioned in the episode: Brick (https://getbrick.com) — physical app blocker. Freedom — phone internet blocking app. Bloom — screen time tool.
Further reading:
Brian X. Chen, Phone Addiction Remedies, New York Times Personal Tech, April 30, 2026.
Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation.
Dr. Glasner’s Addiction Recovery Skills Workbook — available on Amazon.
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The Dr. Suzette Glasner Podcast brings clinical and addiction science to the mental health stories everyone is already discussing.
📩 Questions or topic suggestions: AskDrGlasner@gmail.com
🧩 More: https://drglasner.com
