Why Kids Need Summer Camp

A 160-year-old solution to a modern mental health crisis

Intro from Jon Haidt:

In February, I was invited to speak at the annual meeting of the American Camp Association (ACA) in New Orleans. Steve Baskin, who has been a camp director for thirty years and will be the ACA’s next board chair, had reached out to me months earlier to ask to meet with me the night before my talk. This was during the two months when I was having severe vocal cord problems (I’m better now), so we found a quiet part of the hotel lobby and shared ideas about what is happening to young people, how summer camps are addressing the increase in mental health problems among campers, and how to help address rising parental anxiety.

At the talk, It quickly became clear to me that the network of summer camp owners and administrators are the best possible allies for all of us who comprise the movement to “Free the Anxious Generation” and reverse the rising tide of anxiety and depression. (Lenore Skenazy and Let Grow have been saying this for a long time.) Steve lays out the case beautifully and succinctly below. If you have children in elementary or middle school, I urge you to read Steve’s essay and then send your children to a sleepaway camp with a firm “no phones” policy. (I learned that financial aid is often available.) Do it this summer if possible.

Summer camp! It’s the most effective way I know of to reverse the phone-based childhood and restore a playful, real-world childhood, at least for a few weeks each summer. Parents and schools can then build on that detox period to give kids a more joyous and healthy childhood when they return.

– Jon

P.S. The Anxious Generation comes out two weeks from today! Share with your friends and pre-order it now so we can start the movement to end the phone-based childhood. 

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“Just those three short weeks [at summer camp] made such a huge impact on my life and the way I see the world. Suddenly life wasn’t out to get me, but I was out to get life. Not having my phone gave me back so much of the confidence that I had lost over the years.”

– Amelie (age 15, first-time camper)

In 2012, I traveled to San Antonio, Texas to present a TEDx talk on the virtues of “Unplugging at Camp.” In it, I speculated that although modern communication technology (e.g., smartphones) might be connecting us to every idea and person in the world, it is making us more lonely and depressed. 

I had no idea just how much worse it was about to become. 

Last month, I was lucky to get to hear Jonathan Haidt speak at a conference for summer camp professionals (I am the Chair-Elect of the American Camp Association, the largest association of camp professionals). In his keynote, he discussed many of the topics covered in this Substack and his upcoming book, The Anxious Generation. 

His presentation affirmed my hypothesis from 2012. It was concerning to hear his clear, detailed description of the mental health crisis facing our young people. But it also helped convince me and the other camp directors in the room that we have a vital role in addressing this challenge.

In this article, I will argue that summer camps have the exact kinds of features needed to help reverse the two trends that have driven much of the mental health crisis: overprotection in the real world and underprotection online. I believe that camps can—and should—be part of the solution because they take devices away from young people and place them into enriching, face-to-face communities that foster mental, physical, and emotional strength.

Why Young People Are Struggling and Haidt’s Four Norms to Change Course

Since the early 2010s, there has been a rapid growth in adverse mental health outcomes—such as anxiety, depression, and self-harm—among young people. Haidt suggests that this mental health crisis stems from two primary trends:

• The decline of play-based childhoods that began in the 1980s

• The rise of phone-based childhoods that began in the early 2010s

The play-based childhood features small groups that are in-person and synchronous. They are rooted in deep communities that are hard to join or leave. These communities are founded on play-based learning. They reward cooperation and pro-social behavior. 

The phone-based childhood is the opposite, with large groups (sometimes the entire internet) that are mostly disembodied and asynchronous. These communities are often shallow and allow easy entrance and exit with fewer true connections. They generally thrive by fueling outrage and anxiety to keep people “engaged,” something particularly damaging to children. 

The decline of the play-based childhood was driven in large part by a novel parenting trend that reduces children’s resilience: overprotection.¹ Overprotection changes the objective function of parenting from “preparation for life” to “protection from pain.” In short, if we completely shield our children from the struggles of life, then once they leave the nest they will have less capacity to adapt on their own and will experience more anxiety.² 

In a previous After Babel article Why Children Need Risk, Fear, and Excitement in Play, Professor Mariana Brussoni discusses the costs of overprotection and stresses the need for “risky play” as essential to healthy physical, cognitive, and emotional development.³ 

Brussoni explains that by trying to protect our kids from every possible danger (with the best of intentions), we have paradoxically impoverished their childhoods—leaving them less prepared to protect themselves, adapt to new situations, and even share ideas and discussions with anyone with whom they even slightly disagree. In effect, overprotection denies children the experiences they need to thrive as adults.

Phone-based childhoods and overprotection have combined to create generations of kids who are more anxious, more depressed, and more inclined to self-harm. 

Importantly, Haidt argues that the problems our children are facing cannot be solved alone. Parents and teens are caught in a social trap. If any teen puts away their phone and closes down their social media account, they become disconnected from all of their friends. And no parent wants to be the cause of that. Therefore, Haidt has offered four new norms to get teens out of the trap and solve the mental health crisis: No smartphones before high school; no social media until 16; phone-free schools; and more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. 

But I believe that he has missed a crucial fifth norm that can help teens break out of the trap better than any of the rest: phone-free and play-full summer camps.

The Missing Norm: Phone-Free and Play-Full Summer Camps 

During Haidt’s keynote, we as camp professionals realized that we are natural allies in the fight against the phone-based childhood. We are uniquely positioned to deliver tailor-made solutions to kids drowning in the onslaught of social media toxicity, polarization, and emotional isolation. 

In fact, allow me to make a bold statement: Camps may be the perfect experience to address the exact problems of phone-based childhoods and overprotection. Camps are low-tech, but high-impact. They embody the virtues of a play-based childhood. They foster growth and confidence. And they feature four unusual structural advantages compared to home, schools, or other non-camp environments.

Feature 1. Tech-Free 

At most overnight camps, children go weeks at a time without seeing a single electronic screen. Instead, they interact with other people face-to-face for 16 hours a day. This is the normal environment, not a punishment, and so they are all able to “be in it together,” creating a transformative experience in which they bond with their peers. 

This rapid transition from tech-filled days to tech-free days can often be uncomfortable at first. At home, young people use their phones as communication tools, information sources, and solutions to boredom.⁴ New campers often experience a tricky transition period.

As the days pass, however, most discover the joy of living in a tech-free community. They are grateful to be tech-free.

Feature 2. Novelty

Camp activities are novel, creative, and fun. Few children canoe, practice archery, waterski, learn ceramics, or share fireside tales at home. A child may do all three in one day at camp. 

These activities are often so fun that campers forget about their devices and are willing to embrace new challenges in the real world.

Photo by Nathaniel Ashley, Outpost Summer Camps

Feature 3. Mentorship

Camp counselors are uniquely positioned as role models. They are old enough to be adults, but unlike parents, they are cool (sorry mom and dad) and motivating. Campers will embrace challenges at camp that they might eschew elsewhere simply because their counselors encourage them to try.

Additionally, unlike most other adults in children’s lives, counselors are tech-free. This matters because children notice and emulate us adults (and we are always on our phones).  Counselors prove to campers by direct example that adults can live without a constant connection to their devices and still be cool and happy.

Feature 4. Deep Communities

Camps create connected, deep communities. We are together all day for a week or more. We make friends and share experiences. We bond. Campers report feeling especially authentic at camp. Living in community helps our campers and counselors feel more alive and connected.

Photo by Altus Wilder, Camp Champions

The combination of these four factors (tech-free, fun, cool counselors, rich community) enables camps to produce two important outcomes:

• Campers are happy

• Campers become stronger and more resilient 

Although the scientific literature on summer camp's impacts is relatively scarce, the studies that have been conducted back up my claims. Kids who go to camp tend to feel more competent and independent and have a deeper sense of social belonging compared to when they arrived, and these effects tend to persist for months after they return home.

Building Strong Kids

Happiness, strength, and resilience are deeply interconnected. A fragile child sees threats; a confident child sees opportunities. Children who feel agency and mastery of their environment feel free to explore and grow rather than retreat and shrink.

All young people need to overcome obstacles, face adversity, and struggle with challenges. In that process, they come to realize that there is value, even exhilaration, in doing so. They must experience sad and difficult moments so that they will learn the unique power of using their own agency to overcome discomfort, fear, and uncertainty.

The best way to foster this inner strength is simple: we let them overcome problems and learn that they are capable of strength and growth. 

But for parents, this is hard and often painful. 

Luckily, camps have a powerful advantage – we provide a place where kids can experience challenges, joys, setbacks, and triumphs without their parents directly overseeing those experiences. Kids can learn self-reliance, individuation, and how to be part of a larger community. They can then bring those memories and skills back home, proudly displaying that they learned these things “on their own.”

 Photo by Altus Wilder, Camp Champions

Camp is an odd magic trick. When campers overcome a fear (heights) or solve a problem (resolving a conflict with cabin-mates) or experience a triumph (learning to ski), they often think that they are doing so all on their own. No parents are there, so the triumph belongs to them. Here is the trick - while they think they are “all on their own”, they are surrounded by loving counselors who form a supportive community that will spring to action if they truly struggle in a way that becomes destructive or damaging. Campers get the boost of confidence that comes from independent success without the risk of complete and unsupported independence. 

And that magic trick, the invisible scaffolding we provide, is what makes the camp experience a unique and vital part of a child’s development when they are otherwise growing up in an online world. We are a tool that aids parents in raising confident, independent, and anti-fragile kids. 

 Photo by Altus Wilder, Camp Champions

At my camps, we celebrate “reasonable risks” as experiences to be embraced, not avoided. Seen through this lens, it’s easier to understand why it’s a positive that some of the following happen to every camper:

• They are homesick and overcome it, teaching them that they can thrive outside of their parents’ shadows. 

• They have a dispute with a friend, are upset, and eventually craft a resolution. 

• They try something new and fail. And fail a few more times. And then succeed through perseverance.

• They try something and fail without an eventual triumph. We will not always win or succeed. Children should know that they can survive those situations, too. 

• They embrace an activity that is a little scary and overcome that fear, thus fostering courage and confidence. 

Our Kids Deserve Camp Now

Clearly, young people are struggling, becoming more anxious and fragile. Excess technology usage (especially social media) and well-intentioned parental overprotection combine to fuel this crisis. 

Meanwhile, many parents feel insufficiently armed to tackle these trends. They have little to no idea how to reduce their child’s tech usage (in part because everything and everyone is on these devices). They sense that their children lack resilience, but are unsure how to provide safe experiences that foster confidence and strength, especially when their presence impedes these outcomes. 

In an odd irony, an experience created over 160 years ago is ideally crafted to address today's major challenges. Originally designed to instill a love of nature and character, camps now promote a new set of critical skills—the ability to own our technology (rather than be owned by it) and the strength to face difficulties and thrive. 

In my TEDx talk 12 years ago, I paired my concerns about technology with an optimism that camps could serve as an antidote. Both the concern and the optimism are even more true today.  Amelie’s quote that starts this article speaks to her struggles with her phone, but also celebrates her summer liberation and self-rediscovery: “Suddenly life wasn’t out to get me, but I was out to get life.”   

Our young people deserve to share this empowering belief.

(See here and here for some tips on finding the right camp for your child)

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A Note on Camp Access

We camp professionals know that we serve far too few young people. Traditionally, less than one-half of school-age children attend summer camp. For many families, sending a child to camp has seemed strange, even scary. They wonder, “How can I trust that my child will be safe with people I do not know?” Some camps are simply too expensive (Here is a resource from ACA to help families find an affordable camp).

Camp professionals and the American Camp Association are committed to increasing access to the life-changing experience of summer camp. We want caregivers to understand the powerful gifts of camp and then find the right camps to partner with that fit their family’s needs. 

I have deep faith in parents, families, and all the adults who care about children. As parents of four children ourselves, my wife and I know that raising kids to be strong and resilient adults is a moving target. As the camp community has come to better understand the challenges that our children face from over-reliance on technology and overprotection, we hope to work together with parents to help all our kids navigate this rapidly changing world. Camps should be part of that plan.

1. In their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Haidt and Lukianoff refer to this trend as “safetyism.” For this article, I will use the term “overprotection.”

2. To be clear, no parent should long for their child to struggle. But we adults understand that life will provide its challenges, failures, and heartbreaks.

3. As a term of art, we camp professionals prefer “play that features reasonable risks” to “risky play”, but the idea remains the same. Children grow when they embrace the unfamiliar, take risks and learn.

4. Dealing with boredom is a skill itself and can help foster creativity, patience and mental fortitude, but that is a discussion for another day.