Youth have grown up with the Internet—some learning how to use their parents’ iPhones before they learned to walk—but all that online awareness means that many cannot imagine life without Facebook, Snapchat and “Candy Crush.” According to the Pew Research Center, about a quarter of U.S. teens say they’re online “almost constantly,” and another survey in Great Britain found that youth in the United Kingdom spend eight hours every day online.

However, there’s now an effort afoot to help teens wean themselves off the Internet a bit. Erin Cotter is trying to get English schools to buy into her Disconnect Project. The program begins with teens downloading a program that tracks their online activities. They discuss the positives and negatives of online communication and debate issues such as cyberbullying and sexting. All that discussion culminates in teens trading in their smartphones for old-fashioned talk-and-text only cell phones for a week. They must steer clear of as much online activity as possible, too: They can still use the Internet for homework; but Facebook, gaming and other online activities are forbidden.

While most participating teens dreaded this smartphone-free week, many said afterward that they actually enjoyed it. One boy said he felt “strangely happy.” Others said they felt more productive and, ironically, more connected.

“It’s cheered me up for some reason; I don’t know why,” one boy said. “I feel different. I can concentrate more.”

All of them were still happy to retrieve their smartphones at the end of the week, of course. “All the students were back on their phones straight away,” Cotter admitted, “but they all said—and I want to believe this—that they’ll switch it off once in a while.” (Slate)