For years, I fought the urge buy a smart phone. I was quite happy with my simple, no frills flip. Then came a mid-season football game I was watching at a friend’s house. I asked why everyone kept checking their phones.
“Fantasy,” was the response.
A mobile fantasy football machine?! I’ve had a smart phone ever since. For all practical purposes, everyone I know and work with has some form technology. I know that my experience is not isolated.
A handful of us here at camp had the fortune to hear Bob Ditter speak at last year’s Northeast YMCA Camping Conference in which he touched on the “texting machine” and its impact on children’s lives. I was moved then as I was now after reading his article in the last issue of Camping Magazine.
Ditter quotes Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at MIT, as saying, “We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being ‘alone together.’ [W]e are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere.” Ditter goes on to cite some grim statistics about study and class time compared to hours spent “gaming” and how this, among other factors, could be linked to much higher levels of anxiety and depression than found in our recent history.
While technology and screen time has increased, our time outdoors has diminished. Children play much less frequently. All of this electronic connection has detracted from the physical connections that build relationships, strengthens character and increases creativity. The positive relationships between child and counselor can be found nowhere else in modern society. Ditter cites the words of Michael Thompson (mentioned in this month’s Camp Newsletter), “[Counselors] teach character and community, caring and sacrifice. And they do it in an environment free [of the distractions of] electrionics [called] summer camp.”
In a world of virtual engagement parent’s can find summer camp as one of the few places left where vital engagement is so rich and positive in a “safe place for their children to thrive and develop a deeper sense of self” (Ditter 2012).
To read Bob Ditter’s full article or to check out some of the other great minds that he cites along the way go to:
http://www.acacamps.org/campmag/1209/camp-vital-engagement
Just try not to do it from your phone.
Dave