Screen-Free Teen - it’s a magazine, much less a movement!

Screen Free Teen magazine started out as a bold ambition - to take the digital childhood back to its analogue roots via the power of printed media.

Over the last few months, the project has attracted the support of a growing number of celebrities including Tom Kerridge and Stephen Fry, both of whom were recently interviewed by teen journalists working behind the scenes to bring this publication - and it’s campaign - to life.

What sets this magazine apart - and what is arguably the key to its appeal with young audiences - is that the content is entirely student-led, with every feature, article and interview having been written, researched and carried out by young aspiring writers and creatives. Not adults with media degrees and vague recollections of what it is to be a teenager, but ACTUAL young people who are living, breathing (and articulating) what it is to live in and navigate the modern world.

In the last week alone, the screen-free groundswell has gathered pace immeasurably thanks to the opinions of 150 clinicians (including paediatricians and GPs) who have warned against the use of technology in schools owing to a ‘crisis’ on physical and developmental health.

The tide on the ‘digital childhood’ is, it seems, beginning to turn, and while a return to printed, tactile reader experiences is only part of the picture when it comes to actioning mass digital-disconnection, the ‘needle-moving’ role of publishing projects such as this are not to be underestimated.

There is a certain irony, some might say, in encouraging more teenagers to embrace journalistic roles which involve writing… on screens. It might seem, at face value, to encourage the very behaviour it is trying to persuade young people against.

To this I would argue (with particular reference to the ‘Otto’s Notebook’ argument) that in this context, technology is acting as a hardware extension to human cognition, rather than an ‘experience blocker’, to coin a phrase from the acclaimed book, ‘The Anxious Generation.’

In this way, Screen Free Teen shines a light on the nuance that is required when scrutinising technology, and the large pinch of salt that ‘Screen Free’ in itself should be interpreted with. After all, ‘Screen-Free’ isn’t about giving up technology, so much as forging a different relationship with it. A relationship which enhances rather than mitigates the everyday experiences through which fulfilment and meaning emerge.

Through this new and improved human-technology dyad, ‘digital disconnection’ looks not so much about the timings of our screen interactions, as the type.

It’s about being free - cognitively, creatively, physically - not just in the absence of screens, but sometimes with the aid of them.

For more details visit www.screenfreeteen.com