| In 2024, psychologist Jonathan Haidt published New York Times #1 Bestseller The Anxious Generation. It sparked book club discussions, TED talks, and a whole new movement advocating for delaying kids’ first smart phones and encouraging freeplay.
This book and its conclusions have come up for me while on vacation with college friends, phone calls with camp parents, business meetings with other youth development professionals, and in random doctor’s appointments, board meetings, podcasts, and conference sessions.
If you haven’t read it, I do recommend it. In short, it provides a strong argument in support of the exposure to nature, unplugged time, independence, and confidence gained from an experience at summer camp!
A lesser-known book, by the same author, designed for youth themselves and written in a graphic novel style, is called The Amazing Generation.
There is so much I want to highlight about this book that I might have to save some thoughts for another time…but here are a few:
- It compares what we share on social media to telling strangers in person a bunch of personal information, and explains (in ways anyone can understand) how companies exploit our data for their own gain
- It gives tips on strengthening your attention span and how to spend time not on your phone/device
- It gives snippets of personal testimonies from young people (they call “rebels”) who worked hard to retrain their brains for real life vs digital life and how they benefited, learned new skills, grew in confidence, etc
“They train their brains to be in discover mode, and they do lots of things with other people in real life.”
I think the “discover mode” concept is a great one to bring back to camp. At camp, you don’t have your phone! And it’s OK (even encouraged) to be curious, wonder about things, get creative. Camp is the perfect place to discover a new talent (hula hooping?) or hobby (kayaking?) or interest (horses?) or person (cabinmates become friends for life!).
Ernstlove, |
