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Pilots

We don’t just theorize. We build and test. CTF runs small, sharp pilots to see what actually increases hours of flourishing for teens.

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Shrinking Attention Spans

Why It Matters: Harms school performance (increases parent friction, reduces self-confidence; Also reduces ability to “use boredom,” harms friendships and romance.

What We Will test: The tip of the spear with Attention Span is ADHD teens. By definition, they're the most distracted group of teens - and screens have only worsened their plight. Conventional Wisdom here is murky, with experts disagreeing. CTF is tracking 100 such teens in 2025, all getting 1-1 coaching. We're trying to find 'what works' artisanally, so we can share stories of both success and failure.

Context Link: Paul Tough in New York Times and on NPR.

Related Work: I'll Do It Later by Sean Geraghty and Mike Goldstein, October 2025." Italicize I'll Do It Later since it's the book title.

“Fun isn’t fun” anymore (sports, arts, reading, in-person hangs declining)

1. Research Question: Can you reduce an individual teen’s screen hours per week by increasing fitness, arts, reading, in-person hangs in teens who have already declined these things?

How exactly does one do this? Nobody knows precisely.

Context: Haidt advocates for Digital Sabbath and Disabling Notifications, but that is to reduce screens, not increase flourishing hours. He also argues for Less Parental Overprotection and free play (Let’s Grow). CFT agrees but that’s more for little kids.

One challenge is that neither Languishing Teens nor their parents are typically searching for a solution here. If we offer coaching in this arena, we don’t think anyone would sign up.

2. Side Door: How CFT can explore this question empirically.

a. Many teens struggle with mild anxiety. Unlike any effort to decrease their screen hours (which few teens say they want), many teens would like help with their anxiety.

b. Behavioral Activation Therapy (BAT) is an underrated therapeutic technique to address anxiety.

c. Bonus! BAT not only improves mental health in RCTs—it likely raises Flourishing Hours / week.

That’s because BAT is precisely designed around raising Flourishing Hours (rather than, for example, talking about your stressors). Essentially, raising Flourishing Hours is the mechanism by which teens feel better.

d. Why is BAT underused with teens? BAT is the “phonics” of therapy. Just as phonics is a proven technique that many teachers don’t like doing, BAT is similar, in that many therapists don’t much like using it. The UK Medical Service finds less than 2% of therapy goes towards BAT.

3. CFT Pilot: If mildly anxious teens are offered BAT alongside other options like traditional CBT, first, will they want BAT? We’d like to find out what the Teen Demand Side is for BAT, once they understand what it is, versus other therapies.

Then, among teens who do want BAT, does it have a “Triple Effect” - reducing their anxiety, increasing their Flourishing Hours, and decreasing their phone hours?

4. Ambition: If CFT can show that BAT is a triple win, we could imagine a public service campaign (like with phonics) to increase parent/teen request for BAT as their preferred form of therapy. In parallel, we can take what works with mildly anxious teens and extend to “non-anxious” teens.

Timeline: Spring 2026.

Part-Time Jobs

Why It Matters: Jobs build agency, skill, and social capital—but teen employment has fallen.

Hypothesis: Conventional wisdom on why teen employment has dropped so much - despite its virtues - is: more school, more unpaid internships, higher minimum wages, self-checkout and other technology.

NYU’s Suzy Welch is a contrarian here.

She describes a huge disconnect between employers and Gen Z on VALUES. Employers, she says, want achievement, learning, and unbridled desire to work hard. Only 2% of Gen Z hold those values. From jobs, Gen Z wants self-care, personal pleasure, and voice.

CFT thinks nobody is clearly communicating what employers want to teens. We don't need to adjudicate the value dispute. Teens who are applying for jobs and getting no offers....inherently WANT jobs. So they'd benefit from grasping the disconnect, so they can decide whether to modify their own behavior and message accordingly.

Geordie Brackin is also a contrarian here. His nonprofit 1up has studied 22-year-old job applicants, recent college grads who have applied to dozens of jobs with zero callbacks. Dan Heath profiled 1Up for his book Reset. Heath found 2 key drivers. First, instead of prescribing a fixed “dose” of career support for all students, 1Up inverts the logic: hold the outcome constant, and then vary the dosage as needed to reach that outcome (i.e. “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes”) — in their case, getting someone a new, better job. Second, Geordie asks for permission to speak freely, and once given, he delivers unusually blunt and directive advice.

What We Will Test: We will find teens who want a part-time or summer job, who have applied for many but gotten zero interviews. CFT is working with 1Up Career Coaching to deliver advice that combines the 1Up model with the Welch values. Question: Can 1Up take each teen from unemployed to employed within 4 weeks?

Flourishing Navigators (in development)

Some parents increase Teen Hours Per Flourishing through tireless parent hours spent navigating. These are: finding things Kiddo might want to do; solving the logistics; coaxing them to try it one time; not being discouraged when Kiddo says: “This sucks, I can’t believe I agreed to go”; trying again with a new activity…

Some parents don’t play this role.

Our hypothesis: An investment in 1-1 navigation – a good-natured adult who does this work, in a way that respects the teen – might cost-effectively generate lots of Flourishing Hours. The idea here is the right few hours of navigation might yield, say, a hobby or sport that the teenager then does 100, 200, 500 hours per year. Potential leverage is high.

We’d like to test this with Foster Teens.

Teen Life Report Card (in development)

Parents and teens often struggle to talk about what’s really happening day to day. Our friend Jenny Anderson says her initial book title was 'My Day Was Fine' - about how teens can block parents from grasping what is really happening.

Our test: a structured “report card” process where teens, parents, and a close adult (teacher, friend, coach) are interviewed. Results are delivered by a neutral evaluator— like a pediatrician’s checkup, but focused on flourishing.The question here is whether some sort of concrete process (baseline data that everyone agrees to; discussing implications; making some plans to change things) can actually drive behavior change. Can a few hours spent on Life Report Card, on average, unlock hundreds of additional flourishing hours per year?

Why Pilots?

We don’t expect every pilot to succeed. Some will fail. That’s the point. By sharing results—positive or negative—we move the field forward and open new lanes for helping teens flourish.

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