Richard Hogan: Why working on Raised by the Village makes me emotional

When I was asked to be involved, I told the producer that the issues would mostly be based on smartphones.

Sure enough, every teenager we encountered was stuck in their phone, struggling to go to school, and isolated and lonely. The smartphone has done incredible damage to adolescents.

I was talking at a school recently and I was describing my charity in the Philippines, explaining that if they wanted to come and experience working with the Badjao tribe they would have to give up their phone for two weeks.

Several students came up to me afterwards and said they would love to go, just to experience life without phones for two weeks.

I think teenagers want a break from them, but don’t know how to, because nobody else is taking a break. It is a question I always ask students, ‘How many of us here would agree to take a break from the phone if everyone would agree to it?’ The response is always very positive.

When the producers are talking with the teenager about to head off on their adventure in Raised by the Village, one of the first things the teenager says is, “There is no way I’m giving up my phone for a week.”

They can’t envisage life without it. They are disturbed not to know who will keep their winning streak going on whatever gaming app they are on; or how they will go to sleep if the phone isn’t next to them.

These smartphones have enveloped our children’s lives and attention. They are designed to grab the attention and to keep it. ‘Streaks’ are a clever and insidious way to keep users engaged in apps.

A student said to me recently, “If I go to the Philippines, who will keep my streak on Duolingo?”

She was genuinely panicked. Her friend said, “Get your sister to keep the streak going. That’s what I do.” They are being trapped by all the design features of these apps.

Notifications, the ‘like’ button, infinite scrolling, etc, all keep children bringing traffic to the app. That is where all the money is made. So, they are selling your child’s attention.

They are making billions of euro from that and our children are stuck in their bedroom not going to school, and have fewer activities in their life, fewer friends in real life, and are bullied more, excluded more, and swamped with notions of perfect body image. They are being fed more extreme material by the algorithms and recommender systems, because that’s what grabs their attention.

That’s the business model.

So, we, as parents, have to get our arms around this thing. Bringing in a boundary for phone use is vitally important for a peaceful life. What is remarkable about Raised by the Village is that every teenager who takes part in it hasn’t thought about their phone after the first day.

In some cases, we have to remind them that we have their phone. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”

It is always striking how quickly they fall in to life without the phone, and how quickly they go back to life with it. The teenagers on the show love working on the farm. They always sleep so well after their exertions, and get stuck in to all the activities demanded of them.

When I’m chatting with them, I try to show them how incredible they have been over the week; how competent they are and how loved they have been by the family. I always try to show them how they have lived without the phone.

The teenagers talk about the energy they have after sleeping so well, how they feel better in themselves and how they now think they are more capable than they previously thought.

They also talk about being tired in a positive way. They explain that when they are up all night on their phone, it is a different kind of tiredness, whereas working on the farm tires them, but it is a good kind of tired. When I ask them what they will change about their lives after this experience, they always say the same thing, “I’m going to use my phone less.”

That’s an important insight for them to gain.

I have been fortunate, working on this programme, to meet so many farming people around this country. I always say it to my wife, Erica, when I come back from a day’s shooting.

“I met the good people of Ireland again,” I tell her. We are a great people. The hospitality and love the families show the teenagers coming to the farm for a week always gets me in the old rag and bone shop of the heart.

I’m a little emotional when I leave the farm. I think that’s because the farmers connect me to my grandmother and her people. They are loving, caring, genuine country people from Cork. I always loved when they called out to visit my grandmother.

I’d come in and sit with them and chat about life. I might even get a few quid, too.

I was with the Larkin family in Galway over the Christmas break. The father had cooked the most magnificent ham. We were all there, sitting around the ham and chatting and eating. His wife, daughters and son, sitting there, too, chatting away about life and how the experience went.

I was really moved by that experience, because it makes me think about the way life is today: Children stuck up in their rooms, missing out on life all around them.

Working on Raised by the Village has been a remarkable experience. This is all any of us really need: We need to feel supported and heard.