I was brought on a trip as a teenager in Boy Scouts. I'm so thankful I went. I learned a lot on that trip both about me and the outdoors. It also hooked me and I've been going almost annually ever since.
Now a days I'd bring a teenager to show them what the wildnerness is and what its all about. Show them why it needs to be protected. Show them the stars at night, the smell of bacon on a campfire and the sound of a loon. ALL of those things can change a person for life (usually for the better).
They usually wont realize how nice it is to get away from their computer, phone, video games etc. However they will learn that they can get by with out them and have an awesome time.

For some of them it will be their first chance to pee in the woods (exciting I know  ) It is the experiences like that that can have a profound impact on them.

Make carrying gear a challenge and they will rise to the occassion.
Bring LOTS of food though

All of this BTW coming from someone who isn't too far past his teenage years.

This doesn't add to the thread much, but I was cleaning out a cabinet today and found this photo which had been taken out of my 1988 album and needs to be put back. 

It was taken on Day 6 of our only family trip.  It had rained all morning and we had been cold and wet (notice the bottoms of my cotton pants are wet and our daughter is still wearing her poncho because she was cold.  The sun came out as we made made the portage at Pipestone Dam and then we stopped at the northern campsite on Newton Lake for lunch. 

The kids are eating "Space Food Sticks".  Does anyone remember those?  They came in chocolate and peanut butter.  I bought some from a retro place online this summer to take on our September trip, just for old times' sake, but they aren't as good as I remember!   

There were arguments and little tiffs on this trip.  There were many laughs and a few coughs, like when we all took refuge in OUR tent during a really bad thunderstorm on Wind Lake and we discovered that the 15-year-old teenage boy had feet that smelled so bad it would have been preferable to just be struck by lightning!    There were challenges, and there were times when their canoe got out of my sight that I worried.  It wasn't relaxing like a tandem trip.

But looking at this now, when they are grownups, with families of their own, living hundreds of miles away. . . .it does make me glad that I have this moment frozen in time and can remember sitting there in the sunshine at the end of our trip smiling at Dad, who had picked up the camera (a rare occurrence.)

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I don't feel a lot of nostalgia for blue jeans and plaid cotton flannel shirts, though.     Or those enormous eyeglass frames!

Wow. You can still get space food sticks? Tang is still around I think. Shake a pudding anyone?

I'd take a flannel shirt and even jeans over what looks like that green rubberized raingear any day.

Shaky puddin was Burt's ( Gator) favorite I do believe