How to Educate a Teenager With the Attention Span of a Jellyfish

At some point between the invention of TikTok and the disappearance of boredom, modern teenagers developed an attention span measurable only in marine biology terms. Specifically: jellyfish.

You may recognise the symptoms. You begin a sentence with “When I was your age...” and by the word “was” your child is no longer with you. Their body remains, eyes glazed, thumbs twitching rhythmically like they’re decoding an alien transmission. You could announce a small fire in the kitchen and they’d ask if it could wait until after this video.

Parents are told this is normal. Reassuringly normal. Entirely developmentally appropriate. This does not make it less maddening. So what, exactly, are you meant to do? Lock away the phones? Move to a yurt? Communicate exclusively via memes?

Possibly. But before you go full off-grid survivalist, there is another option: weaponised curiosity.

Stop Competing With the Internet. You Will Lose.

Many parents attempt to “educate” teenagers by talking at them. This is a noble instinct and a terrible strategy. The internet can deliver faster jokes, louder opinions, better graphics, and a man explaining black holes using Lego. You cannot compete. Accept this. Grieve briefly. Move on. The trick is not to fight the noise, but to redirect it.

Enter: Two Delightfully Nerdy Adults With Microphones

Every so often, something appears that feels like it was designed specifically to smuggle learning past teenage defences. One such object is the Rest is Science podcast, hosted by Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens.

On paper, this sounds like homework. In reality, it’s two highly intelligent, slightly awkward humans being openly curious about the world in a way that feels infectious.

They ask questions teenagers secretly care about but pretend not to. Why do we believe the things we believe? How do we know when something is actually true? Is everyone else just making this up as they go along?

Crucially, they do this without shouting, simplifying, or pretending to be cool, which paradoxically makes them far cooler than anyone trying.

Why This Works on Teenagers (Against All Odds)

Teenagers are not, contrary to popular belief, intellectually vacant. They are simply allergic to being patronised. Years of being “engaged” by brightly coloured slides, forced enthusiasm, and adults who say things like “Let’s unpack that!” have given them a hair-trigger response to anything that smells like disguised instruction. The moment they sense they are being taught at, their brain quietly leaves the room.

What Rest is Science does differently is refuse to perform. Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens don’t simplify their thinking, slow their speech, or pretend the answers are tidy. They model curiosity in real time: interrupting each other, correcting themselves, following tangents, and occasionally admitting they don’t know something yet. That lack of polish is precisely the point. It feels real rather than rehearsed.

Teenagers, who spend much of their lives navigating social artifice, respond instinctively to this honesty. They recognise adults who are thinking rather than instructing, wondering rather than explaining. Instead of being handed conclusions, they are invited into the process itself. And once a teenager feels invited rather than managed, their attention, previously darting like a frightened fish, has a curious tendency to stay put.

Practical Advice for Parents (Yes, Really)

If you decide to attempt this at home, the first and most important rule is restraint. Do not, under any circumstances, present the podcast as “good for them”. The moment you frame it as educational, character-building, or vaguely improving, it will be rejected with the same energy normally reserved for school assemblies and lukewarm vegetables. Curiosity cannot be assigned; it must be accidentally discovered.

The safest approach is quiet exposure. Put it on during car journeys, while cooking, or during those domestic limbo moments where conversation would be awkward but silence feels accusatory. Do not look at them expectantly. Do not pause it to clarify a point. Most importantly, resist the parental urge to test comprehension. Asking what they “took away from it” will ensure they took away nothing at all.

Instead, play the long game. Let questions surface later, often obliquely, sometimes days afterwards, disguised as challenges or half-mocking comments. Treat these moments with unnatural calm. If you respond without triumph, judgement, or visible hope, curiosity is far more likely to return. Consider any engagement, however small, a success. You are not converting them. You are merely leaving intellectual snacks within reach and trusting that hunger will eventually do the rest.

You Are Not Raising a Jellyfish

It’s easy to forget, mid-eye-roll, that teenagers are not stupid or lazy. Their brains are under construction, their attention hijacked by algorithms, and their curiosity often buried under social anxiety and exhaustion.

Give them something that treats their intelligence seriously and their curiosity kindly, and you may be surprised what floats back to the surface.

Worst case scenario? You listen to an excellent science podcast.

Best case? Your teenager discovers that thinking is not only allowed, but enjoyable.

And that’s not a bad outcome for a car ride.