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There is growing concern across education, parenting and youth development around children’s ability to focus, regulate emotions and persist through difficulty.
Teachers talk about reduced concentration in classrooms. Employers describe resilience gaps in young people entering work. Parents report increasing difficulty pulling children away from screens, social media and digital stimulation.
Meanwhile, the time children spend online continues to rise.
According to Ofcom, UK children aged 8–14 spend close to three hours a day online on monitored devices alone. Children aged 13–14 spend more than two hours a day on Snapchat, and more than 60% of children aged 8–14 used devices between 11pm and 5am during a four-week study period.
Research presented to Parliament suggested children’s screen time increased by 52% between 2020 and 2022, with nearly a quarter of children showing smartphone usage patterns consistent with behavioural addiction. NHS Digital data from the same period showed probable mental health disorders among 7–16-year-olds rising from 12.1% in 2017 to 18% in 2022.
There is no single explanation for what people are seeing in young people. But one shift is getting harder to ignore.
Young people now experience far less everyday friction than previous generations did.
Less boredom. Less independence. Less unstructured outdoor play. Less time navigating difficulty without immediate stimulation, intervention or escape. As Nigel Miller puts it. “If something was boring when I was younger, it stayed boring until you did something about it. That was it.”
That ability to sit with discomfort matters more than most people realise. Because resilience, confidence and emotional regulation are not built through constant comfort or instant reward. They are built by trying things, getting them wrong, adapting and going again.
“You build resilience by doing difficult things often enough that difficult stops feeling unusual.” Nigel Miller
This is part of why outdoor learning has become increasingly important. Not because nature is magic, but because outdoor environments are harder to escape from. There are fewer shortcuts. Less instant feedback. Fewer chances to disengage the moment something gets uncomfortable.
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Nigel Miller, CEO for Active Learning Group |
“If something was boring when I was younger, it stayed boring until you did something about it.”
“Out there, there isn’t a way out every five minutes. After a while they stop looking for one and just get on with it.” Nigel Miller
The research reflects this. Sport England found that physically active children are significantly more likely to say that when they find something difficult, they keep trying until they can do it. That aligns with what outdoor educators see on the ground -confidence tends to come from doing hard things often enough that they stop feeling quite so hard.
None of this is an argument against technology. Digital platforms bring real opportunities, creativity and connection. But it is an argument for balance.
If childhood becomes entirely frictionless -permanently stimulating, constantly connected, with every moment of discomfort smoothed away -we should not be surprised when patience and tolerance for difficulty become harder to build.
Outdoor education matters because it reintroduces what modern childhood increasingly removes.
Challenge. Responsibility. Discomfort. Teamwork. Problem-solving. Perseverance. Not as punishment. As practice.
The real question for education and youth development is whether we are still giving children enough chances to practise the thing focus is built on -sitting with something hard, long enough to get through it.
