Richard Hogan: Scrolling has killed off the carefree school summer holiday idyll

Find a little job for your teenager this summer — it will get them off their devices, teach them life skills, and earn them some money

'I meet parents who are very worried what the next three months are going to look like. All because of smartphones'

We're only a couple of short weeks away from the summer holidays. Do you remember that feeling as a teenager? Time on your side, swinging on the hours, and looking forward to a summer of lounging around, living by your vagaries, and doing very little.

Those days were so precious: watching Wimbledon, cornflakes in the sun, and knocking into friends and running around the streets. I’d love to be able to step into one of those summers again.

I didn’t have a clue how ephemeral the whole thing was at the time. I thought those summer days would last forever. Getting the bus to Poll Gorm in Crosshaven, listening to T-Rex, probably a little too loudly, and just being teenagers.

But then August would creep in with all her gaudy truth, ‘back to school’. A shiver down my spine. Routine was coming, lunches and uniforms, homework and school bags. No more cornflakes in the sun, just rain and buses to catch to Rochestown. The horror!

But that was the deal — summer was freedom, winter was prison. I tolerated those school days so I could enjoy any scrap of holidays with unabandoned joy.

But something has dramatically changed. I have sat in my clinic, incredulously listening to teenagers as they describe how much they fear the summer coming. Summer now signifies silence and inertia. What has happened to those golden days of freedom? The answer is simple and yet very complicated... devices.

The thing designed to connect us all is, in reality, disconnecting us, and now summer is a casualty in that global phenomenon of endless internet access and ubiquitous smartphones.

I’m looking around and always uttering the same sentence to myself — how have we given away our attention so readily to these devices? We have all been annexed in the most insidious way by big tech. They have trapped us, utterly.

If you really look around, it’s like a dark episode of Black Mirror. Everyone’s head down, zombie scrolling. Nobody in the present. Everyone is somewhere else, unreachable.

You see it on your commute, that is, if you lift your head up. You’ll see it walking around the streets, in restaurants — lovers, heads down scrolling having dinner together. And, more worryingly you see it driving, heads down scrolling as they drive along the road. We are all distracted.

I think that is why we have such high levels of road accidents. It turns out having a computer in a car is not good for keeping human attention where it should be — on the road. We have to look at that and do something about it.

But now that distraction has infiltrated summer holidays. I meet parents who are very worried what the next three months are going to look like. They worry it will be poor sleep, no time anchors, waking up late in the day to spend it in their room, curtains pulled and not going out. And then rinse and repeat, Groundhog Day style!

So parents and teenagers are now worrying about what shape the summer will take. All because of these smartphones.

One of the best tips I could give any parent wondering what to do with their teenager this summer is to think about getting them some light work in a job. I’m not talking about sending them out to a Siberian work camp; I’m on about a job they can do for a couple of days a week and earn a few quid and meet new people.

I know the world has gone mad with rules and laws about children working, and it is more difficult than when I was a kid, but if you have anyone in the family that has a business, or the local shop that might let them stack shelves for a few hours during the week, it would be a great way to break the awful cycle that seems to have taken hold of modern summer holidays.

Summer jobs are so important for teenagers to develop an understanding and appreciation for money. They learn how hard it is to make it but, more importantly, they learn how great it is to earn cash and spend it on what you want.

They will meet new people, make small talk, and interact with the public, who can, at times, be a little rude. Children, today, need those skills more than ever.

We have seen the complete erosion of soft skills like small talk in recent times, so much so children won’t come to school if their best friend is out. They don’t know how to talk with people they are not very friendly with. Now, that is resilience-shattering.

We need to challenge that immediately, and a summer job is the antidote.

Anxiety is one of the biggest issues I work with as a clinician. Anxiety is the fear of an unknown, nebulous future. When children stay in their room all day, don’t go out, and have very poor sleep habits, does that make the future more scary or less scary?

The antidote to that anxiety is exposure to life, and learning they can manage whatever is out there. The future is not something to be fearful of then, it is something to look forward to. A summer job arms them with that insight.

Help them find a little job this summer; believe me, you won’t regret it! They might just meet their life partner... I did!