Take the wifi away from teens, then stand well back

So what happens when a teen’s access to wifi is denied? Suzanne Harrington finds out

There’s a chapter in Johann Hari’s brilliant book Chasing The Scream — the most comprehensive and engaging yet on our pointless ‘war’ on drugs — titled ‘The Grieving Mongoose’ . It describes how throughout the animal kingdom, various mammals display behaviours around mind-altering substances. Like hen parties and football fans, elephants have been known to get drunk and go on the rampage ; a bereaved mongoose was seen deliberately getting off its head on hallucinogenic flowers to take its mind off the loss of its mate; and everyone knows what catnip does to cats. It drives them insane.

As does wifi to teenagers. So what happens when a teen’s access to wifi is denied? Cut off at the source? In a daring experiment, I take a group of wifi-dependent adolescents to a place where there is none: the Great Outdoors. It starts promisingly enough. Distracted by tent pitching, foraging for dinner at the campsite supermarket and squabbling over the washing up, it is almost dark before the first cry plaintively emits: ‘What’s the wifi code in this place?’