About Wired Parents

I’m Heidi. I used to help big companies tell their story. Now I check what they tell parents.

I spent years in brand and communications for large organisations, including major telecoms companies. I know how the conversation about technology gets shaped, and who it is shaped for. It is rarely parents.

A few years ago a friend’s son came over to play. He was on his phone from the moment I picked him up, so I asked him to put it away while he was at ours. He did. When I mentioned it to his mum, one small house rule turned into a long conversation about whether we were even allowed to say no, and on what grounds.

That stayed with me, because I kept hearing the same uncertainty everywhere. Parents were being asked to make big decisions about phones, social media, games and now AI, and most of what they were told came from the companies themselves.

So I started Wired Parents. Every Thursday I take the questions parents are really asking and answer them properly: what the platform says, what is actually true, what other countries are doing about it, and the date I checked.

I’m in it too. My eldest got his first phone in 2025, with no apps and no social media, after a long time of saying no. We’re still in the middle of it, like most families.

I don’t think there’s one right answer, but I do think parents deserve the information to make up their own minds.

There are three things here you can use any time.

The newsletter goes out every Thursday. Five minutes, free and worth it. I’d love to have you.

Heidi Stenning

FOUNDER, WIRED PARENTS