screen time

Why banning social media for under-16s won’t fix “teen screen addiction” (and what actually helps)

Chris Packe Capability

Australia’s done it, and it looks like the UK might follow: banning some of the major social media platforms for under-16s.

Many parents feel relief that the thing they believe is wrecking attention, mental health, and even basic conversation might finally be addressed.

I understand the relief.  Over the last decade I’ve brought countless groups of teenagers into the woods on expeditions and outdoor events. When I speak to parents beforehand, they often describe what they’re seeing as “screen addiction.”  I’m not convinced that’s quite the right word – but it does point to something real.

And it’s not just the parents who feel relief. On these events I’ve noticed a consistent pattern when teenagers walk away from their phones: a visible unwinding.  Nervous energy settles. Many clearly appreciate being phone-free for more than 48 hours.

I’ve also noticed how quickly the phones come back out the moment they get into the car at pickup.

So – a social media ban. OK.

The problem is a familiar one, so allow me a cliché: the ban treats the symptom, not the cause.

What a social media ban might actually do

Restricting social media is probably a worthwhile move.

Tech companies design powerful platforms that are engaging, frictionless, and endlessly novel – that is literally what they exist to do. Teenagers aren’t yet equipped to regulate something that powerful, yet we gave them unrestricted access and were shocked at the problems that emerged.

If the ban is implemented in a way that teenagers don’t immediately bypass (a big assumption), it may create some useful space. Less comparison. Less cyberbullying. Less exposure to genuinely strange and harmful content.  Any clear boundary would be a positive outcome.

But the impact is likely to be limited.

After a ban, many teenagers would still struggle to sit with boredom (the importance of which I have written in a specific post here). They’d still have a low tolerance for difficulty or uncertainty (the importance of hardship I have written about in a post here). And so they’d still reach for distraction the moment something felt uncomfortable.  As far as I can tell, many smartphone-era teenagers haven’t learned what to do with themselves when there’s nothing to do.

And if we’re honest, many adults have forgotten too.

The real addiction: escaping discomfort

Nir Eyal, who researches distraction and wrote Indistractable, makes a crucial point: we don’t get distracted by our devices — we get distracted away from discomfort.  The device is just the escape route.

Teenagers aren’t on social media so much simply because the apps are compelling. They’re constantly there because the apps offer immediate relief from uncomfortable feelings: boredom, loneliness, anxiety, awkwardness, uncertainty.

Those feelings are normal human experiences. Social media didn’t create them – it just became the fastest way to avoid feeling them.  Take the phone away, and the feelings don’t magically disappear. Without new skills, teenagers will simply find the next available escape – whatever is still allowed.

This continues until they learn how to stay present with discomfort without immediately numbing or avoiding it.

How we created the vulnerability

We’ve built a world where discomfort has been steadily engineered out of teenage life.  The house is never too hot or cold.  Boredom is treated as a problem to be solved within seconds.  Physical challenge is limited, so teenagers rarely discover what they’re capable of handling.  Free roaming has shrunk, meaningful risks have diminished, and weekends are scheduled so tightly there’s little room to figure out what to do with themselves.

None of this is malicious. It’s convenience, safety, good intentions – layered over decades. But the result is that external discomfort has been removed almost entirely. And then we handed them a device that provides instant relief from internal discomfort.

Are we really surprised they struggle to put it down?

Why the outdoors helps so much

Outdoor environments remove escape routes and reintroduce manageable discomfort – all at once.

Bored? There’s no phone. But there’s a fire to watch, and it doesn’t look like much until you’ve watched it for a while. Cold? You can’t turn up the heating, but you have that fire, so add a log, add layers, move around.  Tired?  There’s work that still needs doing – shelter, food, water – but you’ll sleep well afterwards.  Socially awkward?  You can’t disappear into a screen, but sitting quietly is also fine.

Outdoors, teenagers can rebuild a skill modern life has made much harder to develop: tolerance for discomfort. Boredom, uncertainty, physical challenge, difficult feelings – all survivable, all developmental, all temporary.  Generally, from what I’m told directly by teenagers, they lead to “the best time ever” (especially on multi-day trips, which have huge benefits that I talk about here).

But you can’t learn any of this with a constant escape route in your pocket.

What parents still need to do after a ban

After a ban, parents would still have real work to do.

Actively teaching tolerance for discomfort matters – modelling it, setting boundaries, resisting the urge to rescue.  But the most effective approach has always been experiential: giving teenagers environments where they learn these skills themselves, through doing rather than being told.

That includes:

  • Unstructured time: no screens, no organised activities.
  • Physical challenge: hiking, camping, building things, long days outdoors.
  • No immediate escapes: phone-free meals, journeys, weekends – for adults too.
  • Room to struggle: resist rescuing them from every hard moment.

Most important of all is modelling. If we reach for our phones at every awkward silence or dull moment, we teach them that discomfort should be avoided.

There’s harder work to be done than banning things

The social media debate is a useful step, but it isn’t a solution. It’s part of a wider pattern of only looking for external forces to blame, while not also looking to individual behaviour and accountability, which I write about here.

The real question is: what do we do with the space a ban creates?

Do we fill it with different screens and distractions, or do we help teenagers rediscover boredom, uncertainty, effort, and the quiet confidence that comes from handling them?

That work can’t be outsourced to policy.  It requires parents to tolerate our own discomfort too: watching our children struggle, stepping back, and – perhaps hardest of all – putting our own phones down.

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About Feral Fathers

This is what happens on our weekends – no phones, no distractions, no escape routes.  Just time in the woods mucking around in a feisty tribe.

Feral Fathers runs lively weekend camps for fathers and children in Sussex woodland (for ages 8+) and multi-day expeditions in the hills (ages 12+).

Learn more about woodland weekends → 
Learn more about expeditions →

Email: cpacke@yahoo.co.uk | WhatsApp: 07940 272474

Why teenage boys need boredom (and how screens prevent it)

Chris Packe Capability, Fathers & sons

Boredom has a terrible reputation.

We treat it as a problem to be solved, a sign that something is wrong, or that we’ve failed to provide enough stimulation. If a teenage boy is bored, our instinct is to fix it quickly.

And now we can… instantly… infinitely!  A few taps and boredom disappears.

From my experience working with teenage boys outdoors over the last decade, I’ve come to think this is one of the most significant but under-the-radar problems we’ve created.

Not because boredom is harmful, but because it’s essential, and we’ve almost completely removed it from boys’ lives.

What boredom actually is

Boredom isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s the uncomfortable feeling that arrives when nothing is demanding your attention – and it used to be one of the most productive states a teenager could find themselves in.

If you don’t rush in to fix it, boredom usually starts doing something valuable.  Anyone who grew up before constant screens will recognise this.  Boredom led to dens, daft games, tinkering, wandering, arguing, inventing things, staring out of windows (I said “valuable”, not “productive”!)

It was the doorway into engagement – not something to be eliminated.

How screens change the equation

Screens short-circuit boredom completely.

They offer constant stimulation and novelty with zero effort, instantly erasing the small gaps where boredom might otherwise do its work.  There’s no need to sit with the uncomfortable gap where something might emerge: the moment boredom appears, it’s gone.

The issue isn’t that screens are evil or uniquely powerful, it’s that they are always available, and they remove the pause where something internal might develop.

Over time, boys don’t learn what boredom turns into — because they never stay in it long enough to find out.

What I see when screens are removed

In the first few hours of a phone-free outdoor weekend, there’s often a low-level restlessness.

It often manifests as walking around, hitting a tree with a stick, which I happen to think is an excellent way to pass the time.  I once found the Chairman of Pret a Manger and Itsu doing just this in my woodland, ten minutes after arriving.

The fire has leaf litter chucked in it a lot at first, and there’s a lot of talk about gaming. Then something shifts.

Alongside tasks, activities and games, I alternate with generous periods of no structure or direction.  And after a while, I notice how they begin to settle into this.  You can tell the shift is happening when the focus moves away from destruction and more towards construction: they ask if they can carve a spoon, they go off to make their own fire, or they see how many people can fit into a precarious quadruple-decker hammock setup they have created.

Unnecessary but fun structures arise when you remove unnecessary and tedious structure

Why teenage boys need boredom specifically

Adolescence brings restlessness, awkwardness, uncertainty, and social self-consciousness – truly the best days of our lives!  Boredom is often the space where boys learn to tolerate these feelings without escaping them immediately.

When boredom is constantly eliminated, something else fills the gap – usually distraction. Not because boys are weak, but because they’ve never had reason to develop an alternative.

Many boys know what Creative Mode feels like in a game – that open-ended state where they build and invent without being told what to do.  Real life has a very good version of this, but screens prevent the boredom that carries them there.

Boredom builds something important.  When boys sit in it long enough, they learn to tolerate discomfort without escaping it – and that tolerance is the foundation everything else rests on.  Focus, initiative, confidence: these can’t be taught directly.  They emerge from the other side of boredom.

This is particularly true on multi-day trips, where real life really has the opportunity to influence the experience.

Adults struggle with this too

Adults aren’t much better. We’re just as awkward with silence, and we’ve dressed our own screen dependency up in more respectable clothing: Important Messages, Vital Googling, Admin.

Teenagers are watching this constantly. If we treat every gap as something to fill, they will too.

Let boredom do its work

Boredom needs two things: time, and the absence of easy escape routes.

The outdoors provides both naturally. Screens are physically absent, with no obvious alternatives. And time stretches – which is how my generation spent entire summer holidays doing ‘nothing.’ Dads can harness this memory and relive it with their sons. It does wonders for the son, and for the father-son relationship, to get outdoors together.

The fire quest – fourteen hours alone in the dark tending a fire – is boredom in its most concentrated form. No phone, no watch, nothing to do except tend the fire and sit with what arrives. (Read about the fire quest here →)

Boredom is where agency begins. It’s the moment a teenager realises: I can do something with this. We don’t give that moment anything like the weight it deserves.

At home, it’s much harder, because screens are everywhere and habits are entrenched.  Lecturing boys about screens or attention won’t get the result we want as parents, it just leads to tantrums.  Energy is better spent on exposing him to constructive discomfort, and resisting the urge to rescue him from it… which is most effectively achieved outside.

Once they’ve discovered what lies on the other side of boredom – in the woods, away from screens – that knowledge comes home with them. It doesn’t solve everything, but it builds a healthy habit to counter the screen effect: to stay in the uncomfortable moment, knowing that it’s a place worth staying.

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If you want to experience this kind of environment directly, Feral Fathers runs woodland weekends for fathers and children (ages 8+) and wild camping expeditions in the hills (ages 12+).

You don’t need to be an outdoorsman. You just need to turn up and muck around.

Learn more about woodland weekends → 
Learn more about expeditions →

Email: cpacke@yahoo.co.uk | WhatsApp: 07940 272474