It's interesting to read about the reproduction of the experiment. Some takeaways:

* The number is low, only five, but I think it's enough for an informal experiment of a newspaper (not a peer review article)

* They don't have a control group. What happens if you must log all your activities for 8 hours and feel that someone is looking over your shoulder? (Can you be with your SO?)

* It's not a 100% reproduction. It's nice that here the children were allowed to talk with families/friends, instead of being forced to be alone or with unknown people.

* No suicidal thought. Perhaps the problem with the other experiments was the isolation? Did the subjects in the other experiment have suicidal though before the experiment? Was the suicidal part exaggerated? For example:

- "Do you think that you can survive one week in the conditions of this experiment?" "No, I'd kill myself. (as a figure of speech) [1]"

- "Did you think about suicide?" "No" "Not even a little?" "No" "Not even for one moment?" "OK, whatever, perhaps only once."

* I think that an important quote is:

> "When I wanted to play the guitar, I didn't have my phone to search for new chords. Luckily I had some chords printed out already," she said.

Perhaps doing a two hour rehearsal and repeating the experiment one week after will remove most of the problems due to the lack of preparation. It's like trying to go to a camping without previous experience. You will put the cans, but forget the can opener. (Been there, done that.)

[1] I'm a native Spanish speaker, so I don't know the exact idiom in English. In Spanish from Argentina we sometime use phrases like "Cuando se me cayo el florero me quiería morir." -> "When I drop accidentally the flower pot, I wanted to be dead." but everybody understand that it's a figure of speech and not a real suicidal feeling. I'm not sure how to translate the exact feeling with the right idiom to English. I even had to add the word "accidentally" to the transition to make the first part of the sentence clear.

"When I dropped the flowerpot, (I just died|wanted to die|could have just died)." works.

It still bothers me. I don't know whether I just don't understand the differences in culture (between theirs and mine), or whether I can't remember how I used to socialize back in my high-school days, but the reactions always seems a bit excessive.

I wonder if perhaps misdirection would change things? "You have 8 hours of this remaining" would make one very conscious of the experiment, and when it finishes.

Or make the experiment more extensive, more teens, say a month long. First day of new environment is often the hardest.

They'd know if the experiment is misdesigned if they cannot envision teens staying sane for this long.