AN experiment in taking technology away from teenagers has seen them turn to mead, chainmail, and riding out under the banner of heaven to cleanse heathen lands. 

A group of teenagers who removed their phones, laptops, and gaming consoles from their bedrooms to see how they would behave found themselves getting into copying manuscripts, weaving, denouncing witches and crusading.

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “The ostensible aim was to monitor how the young coped with losing their technological crutches. Actually, we just thought it would be funny.

“But instead after just two days without phones they were learning Beowulf by heart to recite it in taverns, creating wattle-and-daub dwellings and crapping in buckets before throwing it out the window.

“The experiment officially ended last week but the subjects are still drinking small beer because water has devils in it, keeping pigs indoors and dying of bubonic plague. They say it’s ‘preferable’.”

Jordan Gardner, aged 18, said: “Fie! I shall not hurry back to my slavery to the doomscroll. Instead I take horse and ride for Jerusalem, where our legions battle for the glory of Christendom!

“Let this be instructive to all parents who dare take away the devices of their progeny! I shall return half-crippled from the pox! Huzzah!”