Anna Williamson has started a new Channel 4 project tackling a highly controversial topic — here’s all the key information you need.
Presenter Anna Williamson shared her thoughts on the creation of a new Channel 4 show she described as “absolutely astonishing.”
Known for Celebs Go Dating, Anna teamed up with clinical psychologist Dr. Martha Deiros Collado to create The Great British Phone Switch, which looks at how parents and teenagers use today’s technology.
The show, inspired by a 2025 Ofcom report revealing that 91% of kids have their own mobile phone by age 11, experiments with parents and children swapping digital lives.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, Anna said, “As parents, we often worry about our kids’ phone habits—what they should watch, what’s good or bad. There’s a lot of fear around screen time, so we wanted to explore this through an experiment. It was absolutely astonishing.”
The presenter explained that research showed teenagers often don’t share what they do online with their parents because they’re afraid of being misunderstood. She said, “That was the main goal of the social experiment—to help close the gap between parents and teens and allow them to understand each other’s digital lives.”
She added, “We wanted to show in this series that phones and social media aren’t bad. Technology is amazing and an important part of our world.”
“But what’s missing,” she explained, “is that we’re the first generation to use this technology daily, and it has entered our lives with very few boundaries.” She added that their goal was to help establish some guidelines so future generations can have healthier relationships with mobile phones.
Anna explained that the team behind the new Channel 4 show packed a lot into a tight schedule, filming everything over just one weekend.
Anna said, “What was really wonderful was that even though they only had one weekend to learn to work together, some parents who thought it might be a waste of time ended up gaining a new appreciation for their child’s creativity. It definitely challenged some of the negative ideas about phone use.”
She added, “We filmed at a beautiful barn conversion in the countryside, all within just one weekend.” Talking about working with her co-star, Dr. Martha Deiros Collado, Anna said, “We clicked immediately. When you both share the same curiosity and gratitude for the project, the chemistry just happens naturally.”
The Great British Phone Switch, a collaboration between Channel 4 and Tesco Mobile, is now available to stream on Channel 4.