Beyond the Velvet Cage
I came across an experiment called Universe 25 while having a trawl online tonight. In the late 1960s, the American researcher John B. Calhoun put a colony of mice in an enclosure with plenty of food, water and shelter. As the colony grew and the enclosure became crowded, some mice withdrew from social contact. Eventually, breeding ceased. The mice had plenty to live on and nowhere else to go.
There’s only so much we can extrapolate about growing up from a colony of mice. What stayed with me was the idea of the velvet cage. The velvet is the game you play with friends, the group chat where you belong, somewhere to turn when you’re bored or lonely. The cage takes shape when so much of your social life depends on being there. If that’s where plans are made, jokes are shared and friendships are worked out, putting the phone down can feel like leaving the room while everyone else is still talking.
I’ve argued previously in my writing that, in my humble opinion, the most dangerous place for a young person to be can be alone in their bedroom with their phone. From the other side of the door, everything seems quiet. Meanwhile, an argument that started at school can still be going at midnight, or a stranger can be trying to start a private conversation.
Think about what we put in place when young people join a sports club or youth programme. We have Garda vetting or equivalent police checks for relevant roles, safeguarding training and a designated liaison person to bring concerns to. We work out who’s responsible before a young person ever has to ask for help.
Then we hand that same young person a supercomputer and tell them to put it in their pocket. Phone is a misnomer. It’s a portal that opens both ways. They can reach the world, and the world can reach them. Can a stranger message them in the first place? Who acts if something goes wrong? We’d expect answers from the local sports club. We should expect them from the companies running the spaces where young people spend so much of their time.
A joke, a classmate’s bad news, footage of a war. On the feed, they can come at you within seconds of each other. Each asks something different of the young person seeing it, yet the next thing is already waiting. When do they get time to take in what they’ve seen or talk to somebody about it?
For several years now, I’ve applied a principle in trauma-informed practice that I call HOPE — Hearing Other People’s Experiences. It means being present, listening actively and acknowledging what someone has been through. You give them time to tell it in their own words, without judgement or a rush to offer solutions. A message can help a young person begin a difficult conversation. Sitting together with the screens down gives you a chance to hear the hesitation in their voice and wait while they find the next words.
We are failing our young people if all we offer them is an instruction to put the phone away. They need safer spaces online and places to go when the screens are down. They need art, drama and sport. In a rehearsal, you learn to listen for someone else’s line. On a team, you learn what a teammate is like on a bad day. When you’re making something together, a conversation can start because you’ve spent enough time beside each other for it to happen.
What is the next generation going to look like if it’s easier to spend an evening scrolling than to get to a rehearsal, a pitch or a room where you can make something with friends? If we want our young people to have time away from screens, we have to make those places available, make sure they can get there and give them a say in what happens when they walk through the door.