teenage boys

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 multi-day expeditions work better than day trips for teenagers

Chris Packe Capability, Expeditions

Day trips are the backbone of teenage life: the day at the outdoor activity centre, the forest school session.  They are good. They get you out, and they create memories.

But they don’t change anyone.

Multi-day expeditions – three, four, five days in places like Dartmoor or the Lake District – do something fundamentally different. Not because they are longer versions of the same thing, but because duration itself creates conditions that brief experiences simply cannot.

Teacher James Herndon, writing about education in How to Survive in Your Native Land (a remarkable, irreverent book), observed that schools operate on ‘artificial time’ – bells, lessons, arbitrary schedules disconnected from natural rhythms or real needs.  Learning that matters, he argued, requires proper time to unfold.

The same is true in other experiences, especially in the outdoors.  Day trips operate on borrowed time, while multi-day expeditions operate on lived time. For teenagers discovering who they are, that duration transforms the experience entirely.

The second day is when it actually begins

Day one of any outdoor trip runs on nerves first, and then quickly onto excitement.  Everything is new, there’s a significant undertaking ahead, and adrenaline is at work.  Teenagers are still their ‘weekend selves’, just in a different location (I think of it as an ‘indoors mode’).

Day two is different.

The thrill has worn off.  They’re just… here.  On the ground, in yesterday’s clothes, with a day ahead.

They have now arrived.  This is when the real experience begins.

On day trips, this point is never reached. It’s over before the novelty wears off, before anything uncomfortable has to be fully worked through. (I write here about the importance of boredom and avoiding escape routes).

Multi-day expeditions force teenagers through a wide arc of emotion and experience, varying cycles of highs and lows that accumulate into a layered adventure.  By day two or three, they’re not doing the expedition anymore. They’re living inside it.

Gary Snyder writes about the difference between visiting wilderness and inhabiting wildness.  Day trips are visits. Multi-day, you stop visiting.  You become an inhabitant, temporarily – you begin to integrate with it, and gain a sense of being at home in the world.  For a teenager, that wild feeling of belonging in nature is crucial to wellbeing, and profoundly underrated.

Time reveals who they actually are

Teenagers are trying on identities. Some feel real, while some are provisional. It takes robust challenges that test which identities are genuine and which are just performance.

On day trips, the unripe identities stay intact.  There’s not enough time, discomfort, or consequence for anything deeper to surface.

On multi-day expeditions, something else happens. By the second or third day, maintaining a persona becomes harder than simply being yourself.  Energy is finite – the loud one gets tired, the anxious one discovers they cope, the quiet one finds a moment to step forward.

I love how this unveils itself, without any force applied.  Duration does the work, revealing who the actually are.

For a teenager, discovering who they are when they can’t hide is invaluable.  It helps them find their feet… which, even though they have just grown three sizes in six months, is a surprisingly challenging task.

Consequences stretch across days and actually teach something

Modern teenage life is remarkably forgiving: mistakes get reset overnight, discomfort is usually temporary, and poor choices rarely echo forward, allowing the same mistakes to be repeated with low cost.

School operates on what Herndon called “artificial consequences” – grades, detentions, punishments entirely disconnected from the actions themselves.  Get a bad mark, nothing real changes the next day, because there’s no genuine feedback loop.

School operates on what Herndon called ‘artificial consequences’ – grades and detentions disconnected from the actions that caused them. The feedback arrives later, imposed by authority, unrelated to natural results. Get a bad mark on Thursday, your Friday feels exactly the same.  The feedback loop is broken.

Multi-day expeditions restore natural consequences.

Pack your rucksack poorly on day one (or bring one that doesn’t even fit you), your shoulders hurt on day two.  Smash through your snacks on day one, and you’re reduced to begging by the next day.  Allow your feet to get wet, or don’t dry your socks when you do, and you’ve got cold feet for the remainder.

These aren’t punishments, they’re just reality providing clear feedback.  The magic in this is that there is moral development without any moralising.  And because consequences stretch across time, there’s space to adjust, learn, try again.  This is how humans learned for thousands of years before we built systems that protect us from feedback.

So as much as I would love to teach them that their choices shape tomorrow’s experience, that laziness compounds, that you can’t outsource your comfort, and that cooperation isn’t optional when you’re stuck together, it’s better to leave it to be spoken by the hill.  

Real bonds require time – not bonding exercises

One-day outdoor experiences keep groups polite, and roles stay shallow.  I don’t think many individuals are being their raw selves in one of those “3, 2, 1 Let’s Go!” teambuilding situations.

Multi-day expeditions remove that option.  After a hard day’s walking followed by an iffy night’s sleep under a noisy owl, edges start to show.  Especially when faced with the prospect of the same again today.

This sounds negative, but it’s not.  Although we like to applaud positivity, there’s nothing that unites a group like a good whinge.  So… maybe it is negative, but in such a positive way!

It’s the beginning of honesty.

Because there’s no exit, people have to work through it. No one can retreat into politeness or performance; it wouldn’t work. Shared reality replaces social manoeuvring.

This is how trust actually forms: not through bonding exercises, but through staying when things get uncomfortable – and discovering that the group holds.  The result is earned membership and belonging

Group alchemy only happens when there’s time for things to get real.

The inner clock resets

Remember that bad night I mentioned earlier?  That just tends to be Night 1, when they have yet to fully exit ‘indoors mode,’ which is the one where it’s possible to get mad at an owl.

As indoor mode and artificial time fades, without phones, without schedules, without extraction times… there’s a physiological shift.

Sleep deepens.  Teenagers sleep better than they have in months – they are sleeping because it’s dark and they are tired.

Hunger becomes intelligible. “It’s time to eat” is replaced by “I’m actually hungry now.”

Attention stretches, because there is nothing fixing it in place.

When this happens, they are going beyond merely “slowing down” and into internal regulation.  

Their nervous systems recalibrate in prolonged nature time. Circadian rhythms reset to natural light-dark cycles, away from artificial disruptions.  The result is that they feel different, even if they can’t quite put their finger on it.

It’s great to experience your own biology again.

Why this matters

Institutions are a fact of life.  They are essential at scale. But institutional life is characterised by time management, performance measurement and other group-level objectives, and so it encourages orthodoxy over diversity, conformity over individual pace.

For teenagers who are developing at such a rapid rate, it is essential to have time outside of this. Experiences where the unique, slow or quirky can have their time, where masks drop and systems reset. It’s also where parental relationships can really deepen – in different ways with fathers and sons, and with fathers and daughters.

Healthy adolescence cannot be a factory where grown-ups are forged.  It’s a period of individual transformation—messy, uneven, unpredictable.  Transformation needs time and space, which is not something that institutional settings will provide.

That’s why through human history you have seen teenagers enduring prolonged challenges out in nature… and when I’m around, you’ll still see them.

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I’m a Mountain Leader who runs multi-day expeditions for teenager groups, and for fathers and children (12+) in Dartmoor, Snowdonia, the Peak District, and the Lake District – as well as weekend camps for fathers and children (ages 8+) in Sussex woodland.

These experiences are designed for duration to do its work, and get you fully out of ‘indoor mode’.

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

Why time in nature matters for fathers and sons – and how to make it happen

Chris Packe Fathers & sons

Fathers and sons often struggle to connect. Not from lack of compatibility, but lack of context – most modern life happens indoors, scheduled, distracted by screens.

Time in nature changes this.  Nature is not magical, but it offers important conditions more easily than indoor life: shared challenge, real consequences, space for boredom, situations to problem-solve together.

I’ve run woodland weekends for fathers and sons for over ten years. The same pattern happens every time: anxiety or awkwardness soften, competence emerges, connection deepens. No phones, no agenda, just time together doing real things

There’s plenty of research about how challenge, curiosity, and unstructured, screen-free time outdoors build confidence, resilience, and deeper family bonds.  But honestly, you don’t need the studies. You can feel it in the woods.

So why does this work so reliably? And how can ordinary fathers make it happen with their own sons – even if they’re not “outdoor types”?

Why our sons, in particular, need outdoor time

Physical challenge builds confidence

(Daughters, of course need outdoor time, with their dads, but in a different way that I have written about here)

Many teenage boys are wired for physical challenge and manageable risk. They need to test themselves, push limits, and discover what they can handle.

Modern life offers very few legitimate outlets for this.

School is mostly sitting still. Home is often screen-based. Even organised sport, which can be hugely valuable, is highly structured and supervised. The outcomes are usually known in advance.

Nature offers something different: problems where you don’t already know how it will go.

When a 13-year-old manages to light a fire in the rain, builds a shelter that actually keeps him dry, or navigates a few miles with a map and compass, that competence lands differently. It’s not theoretical, and it’s far from a digital achievement. It’s something he feels in his body.

The same, of course, is true for dads.

Natural consequences teach better than lectures

In the outdoors, consequences are immediate and impersonal.

If you don’t collect firewood, you’re cold. If your shelter leaks, you get wet. If you don’t purify water, you stay thirsty.

There’s no arguing with the wind.  We are in the arena of Type 2 Fun here: experiences that are hard, but deeply satisfying.

Boys respond to this reality better than they do to nagging or lectures from adults.

I’ve regularly seen boys who are described as “difficult” at home or school become focused, capable and cooperative in the woods. The environment demands responsibility, and they meet it.

Side-by-side connection works differently

Fathers and sons connect best side by side – walking, building a den, fixing something together.  Being face-to-face and expecting to “talk about feelings” is pretty unrealistic.

Most men already know this.  Nature just makes it easy: there’s always something to do, and conversation happens as a by-product.

One father once told me that he and his 14-year-old son woke up at dawn in the den they’d built and lay there for a couple of hours, listening to birdsong and watching the light change.

“That was the first time we’d hugged in over two years,” he said.

What a thing to hear from a dad – I shall never forget that.

Why nature changes the dynamic

Shared challenge levels the playing field

At home, fathers usually hold the expertise: they know how things work and they set the rules. The son is the learner.

In the woods, especially if neither of you is particularly experienced, that hierarchy softens. You’re both figuring things out in unfamiliar territory. You fail together and problem-solve together.

Sometimes the son teaches the father: a better knot, a smarter way to split kindling, a shortcut he’s found. So often, young lads are remarkably observant, and can spot a robin’s egg where dad just saw another tree.  That reversal matters more than we tend to realise.

Play matters a lot

One of the things boys consistently remember from Feral Fathers weekends is simply seeing their dad playing – winning, losing, laughing – not managing, teaching or supervising.

They’re shocked and delighted: “I didn’t know my dad could be silly.” Or: “I beat him at something and he loved it.”

Fathers performing competence all the time is exhausting for everyone.  Play gives permission to drop that.

Seriousness can seriously get in the way of people connecting.

The absence of screens changes everything

One of the biggest shifts happens simply because phones aren’t there.

At first there’s often a low-level restlessness: checking pockets, the impulse to photograph everything. Then something settles.

Boys start noticing things: sounds, smells, the feel of the sunshine on his face (or sometimes the rain – equally pleasant but less popular) .  The way a fire behaves. Eventually — and this is the gold standard – they get bored.

That might sound negative, but boredom is the doorway to creativity, presence and genuine engagement. Screens eliminate boredom instantly. Nature doesn’t: it tends to get you exploring and experimenting.  (We never quite manage to attain boredom on a Feral Fathers weekend though).

I could write a whole piece about this. The short version is that when escape routes disappear, something important comes back.

Making it happen without being an expert

The most common concern I hear from fathers is: “I wouldn’t know what I was doing.”

That’s fine. Your son doesn’t need you to be Ray Mears.  He just needs you to give it a go.

Start simple: a day walk to a clear destination – a hilltop, a lake, a landmark, or cook a meal outdoors (by ‘meal’ I mean sausages and marshmallows: that is a meal).  Or – a little more daring – sleep out for a night somewhere sensible and low-key (we call this a “micro-adventure”).

Give your son actual responsibility: let him navigate, light the fire, choose the route. Nature makes trust easy, and boys this age are desperate to be trusted and taken seriously by their dads.

Consistency matters more than ambition. A pattern of do-able trips builds the foundation. Then, when trust and capability are established, elaborate expeditions become possible – and magnificent (and here’s what I think of the benefits of multi-day expeditions).

In the Dolomites climbing via ferrata with my son Finn… the best of times

There’s a window — and it doesn’t stay open forever

There’s a window for this – roughly ages 8 to 15. It doesn’t stay open forever.

If your son is in that space now, this matters. Not next year. Now.

It doesn’t have to be perfect

Getting things right is not the point.

Your son won’t remember whether the tarp was perfect or the fire lit first time. He’ll remember that you tried, that you were there, and that you worked it out together.

That’s what builds the bond… while nature – the outside kind and the inside kind – does the rest.

Where this leads next

There are three threads running through all of this that deserve more space:

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Experience this with your son

Feral Fathers runs woodland weekends (ages 8+) and multi-day expeditions (ages 12+) – small groups, no phones, real challenges.

Not instruction. Not entertainment. Just conditions where fathers and sons (or daughters!) discover what they’re capable of together.

Learn more about woodland weekends → 
Learn more about expeditions →

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