FOR today’s teenagers, activities once considered simple can be a mind-bending challenge. Such as these:

Watching a daytime cop drama

Stick on a TV programme designed for the lowest common denominator and it will blow their tiny two-minute attention span minds. Even the most expository sentence, such as ‘Hello brother I haven’t seen in six years’ is basically Proust when you’re used to inane influencer-speak.

Listening to the radio

Don’t underestimate the novelty of music that isn’t clipped into irritating, repetitive soundbites. Each song continues to the end and is paired luxuriously with other, sometimes unexpected, songs. The man reading out people’s tedious text messages is actually a curator of fine art and should be lauded for his services to culture. Unless they’re Scott Mills.

Going for a walk

Rawdogging nature or even just concrete suburbia takes on a semi-divine role when you do it without a phone. Imagine strolling without even a gruesome true crime podcast as an auditory comfort blanket. Today’s youth can barely comprehend such a delight, and would see it as the ultimate exercise of the mind.

Skimming a book

Sure, reading has always been the natural home of the pretentious, but for today’s teens even browsing books is participating in serious academia. Lazily walking through a Waterstones is basically like visiting the world’s most highbrow museum, and even the comic book they eventually choose is precious, non-scrollable content.

Looking through the fridge

Staring idly into the fridge used to be the original dissociating activity, but for teens whose brains have been fried by TikTok it’s now a much more mentally creative process. Looking through which sauces are still in date involves reading, cataloguing, and sorting. They might as well be Rachel Weisz in The Mummy, not that they’d get that brilliant reference.

Visiting the Post Office

For adults, this is rightfully considered a hellish ordeal. But for teens it gives them nostalgia for an era they never lived through, making a trip to the Post Office as exciting as an episode of Stranger Things. Their brains will also be tested as they try to figure out how it takes the person at the front of the queue so f**king long to simply post a letter.