An article I wrote for NH Magazine’s Summer Camps Guide, 2024

A 2021 study of media use by teens found the average child received their first cellphone by 12 years old. In another survey in 2019, 42% of children aged 4 to 14 spent 30 hours on their phones each week. Most parents have grown up in a very different world from their children, and technology seems to have developed faster than our ability to understand it. Even now as we begin to see links between excessive screen-use and delays in cognitive and social-emotional development, screens are becoming more and more ubiquitous in everyday life.

I hope I don’t sound like Chicken Little; I acknowledge our devices have benefits, that they help us learn more and learn faster. But most parents seem to share some of the same concerns, and most households have their own systems for managing and monitoring screen-time. But, what happens during the summer, without the routine of school, when children are left to their own devices (literally)? We all know the answer: more time at home = more time on the phone.

There is one last refugee in our chronically-online world, a place still holding-the-line and keeping technology at bay: overnight summer camp. Most camp directors have been saying the same thing for more than 30 years: leave your phone/ipod/tamagotchi at home. Because too often they distract us from the community and nature around us, and the summertime is fleeting so you must cherish every minute of it. These programs have made solemn vows to protect tradition from technology, like Quakers standing against the tide of progress. Not every camp of course, different programs have different policies, but the average camp experience tends to emphasize face-to-face connection over time spent on screens.

You’d think kids today would hate it but they don’t. The last day of camp is always full of tearful goodbyes, children wishing camp would never end. “Something feels different here” they say, but they struggle to explain to it to their family, to their friends. It may be that in the absence of technology, people must rely on each other for entertainment and companionship. In that environment friendships are easier to make, and a spirit of bonhomie pervades.

Returning campers invariably tell the same story, after going home they suddenly realize how addicted they are to their phone. Some of them take the lesson to heart and become more intentional with their screen time, an insight gained after the experience of a summer-long detox. Even the staff say they feel better at the end of the season, that some distance from their devices was freeing.

If you ask every camp director about their technology policy (and you should), you’re likely to get a thoughtful and considered response. Camp people care deeply about serving the needs of all children, and right now all children could use a break from their devices (us adults too).

Twenty years from now the technology will be different; a new generation will have grown up with AI and we’ll be concerned about new things, I’m sure. Hopefully these traditional camp programs will still be around, will remain true to their ideals and provide us with another option, a less plugged-in way of being.

by Curtis Hines