Life Without Screens: This Camp Is a Teen’s Worst Nightmare

Summer. For adolescents Not at work, it’s hot, it’s boring, and it’s an ideal moment to close the door and spend every moment to wake up watching, playing, sending sms, broadcasting, except talking about it – on the phone. With almost half of adolescents in the United States, saying that they are almost constantly online, adults in their lives become more desperate to train them. Families establish areas without screen in their homes, states prohibit phones in schools, and a new type of summer camp has emerged: digital detoxification camps, which can cost around $ 2,000 per week, and promise to wean participants out of screens by making cold turkey for the summer.

Wired spoke with the founder and director of one of these organizations. Inspired by your average summer camp, the program forces children to exchange their phones and gaming systems for good old -fashioned social interaction. But in other respects, this is anything but traditional: it has therapists on site equipped to manage dependence on the screen, children take lessons in financial literacy, and almost all campers are completely miserable upon arrival.

Most Children who come to our program are very socially stunted. They don’t communicate very well. Everything is in abbreviations. They do not make visual contact. They cannot finish a full sentence. Everything is mumbled. They don’t want to have dialogue in person. They prefer to do it online or do it via text.

Our camp is around 70% boys, 30% of girls, from 13 to 17 years old. Most boys are players. Most girls are dependent on social networks – aspiring influencers. None of them wants to be there. A child fled, and he actually went down to the highway, which was very unusual because we are not close to the highway. He was picked up by the local and brought back. He then made a hunger strike for three days, and we ended up sending him to the hospital because he needed to eat. And then his mother came to get him.

When the children arrive, we unpacked them to make sure they brought everything they were supposed to bring and that they did not bring things that they were not supposed to bring. Like phones. A child appeared with three mobile phones: when he arrived, he turned one. We found another mobile phone in his bag. And then about three days later, his roommate released it, and we found the third phone. He thought it was funny that he got out for so long. It is most of our children – if they can stick it to man, then they win.

Most children are not aggressive, they do not act. More often, they clean themselves. But once they got out of their dormitory, we lock the doors. I say: “sit in your dormitory dormitory is not a camp activity.”

Their sleep and food habits are horrible. Most children, especially online players, are up until 2 or 3 am. They don’t get up before noon or later. It is a disaster. And their eating habits, they are just as horrible – Doritos and Gatorade, just horrible snacks.

So we have them on a very specific schedule. They are in their dormitories at 9:30 am and have their lights at 10 years old. And then we wake them up at 6:30 am. I always say to my staff: “Plan not to sleep much the first week.”