Left To Their Own Devices
We gave children the most powerful tools in human history. Then, we left them to their own devices.
When she was 12 years old, Ava Smithing spiraled down a social media rabbit hole that nearly cost her life. A decade later, she discovered she wasn’t alone: Big Tech had rewritten childhood and adolescence for her entire generation. Armed with questions and a year to find answers, Ava embarked on a cross-continent investigation into a hidden digital world. She met teens in 12-step programs for social media addiction, young girls wrestling with compulsive porn use, and boys who had been blackmailed by international cybercriminals.
This isn’t a self-help guide to digital wellness. It’s a survival story from the front lines of 21st century childhood: where young people are re-writing the playbook for what it means to be human in a hyperconnected world.
© 2025 · more info
Artwork and data is from the podcast’s open RSS feed; we link directly to audio · Read our DMCA procedure
This podcast may use dynamic content insertion
Stats: Statistics are produced by Libsyn to help Left To Their Own Devices to understand how many downloads it is getting, or how many people are listening. Your device’s IP address and user agent is used to help calculate this figure. Libsyn is IAB v2 certified. Here is more detail about podcast statistics.
Dynamic content insertion: Libsyn may use limited data that they know about you - the device you’re using, the approximate location you’re in, or other data that can be derived from this, like the current weather forecast for your area - to change parts of the audio. Left To Their Own Devices may do this for advertising or for other forms of content, like news stories.
Left To Their Own Devices is able to use the above tools since its podcast host or measurement company offers this service. It doesn’t mean that this individual podcast uses them, or has access to this functionality. We use open data.
Listen and follow
Information for podcasters
- Podcast GUID:
84fd33fa-2e7c-5300-96ac-f1dcd4579490 - This podcast previously hosted on Libsyn (until Nov 2025), and still hosts with Libsyn with a different RSS address. See changes across podcasting.
- There is a different RSS feed listed in the Podcast Index (here) and our systems (here). Our systems normally pull RSS feed addresses from Apple Podcasts; and it should normally match what’s in the Podcast Index.
- This podcast appears to be missing from Luminary. We list all the podcast directories to be in.
- Validate this podcast’s RSS feed with Livewire, Truefans or CastFeedValidator