Getty Images; Alyssa powell/BI
Emma Bobson spends four to six hours a day on her phone.At 13 years old, the middle schooler from Long Island, New York scrolls through TikTok searching shopping hauls, FaceTimes her friends to discuss daily drama, and texts friends (often the same ones) on iMessage.So, for the first few days of summer camp in Pennsylvania — where WiFi is scarce, and tech is barred — she found herself reaching into her pocket for her phone all the time. It took "a few days or a week" for her to quit the reflex.Emma is not alone. Gen Alpha is the first generation to have grown up in the smartphone era. These kids entered early education during the pandemic. They grew up with hybrid school, tech-filled classrooms, tablets on restaurant tables, and parents who sought out screens as their ally.For some Gen Alpha kids, sleepaway camp is one of the few places where they spend weeks without their phones — and camp directors, parents, and kids say you can see the effect immediately.
Emma Bobson, 13, enjoyed her tech-free summer at camp
Courtesy of Jackie Bobson
The thousand-dollar digital detoxPhone bans aren't unusual at summer camps. 90% of these programs prohibit any use of technology, according to a survey done by the American Camp Association. Some of these camps have been in the childcare business for over 85 years and have remained strictly tech-free. This past summer, a camper was suspended for smuggling their phone in and had to leave the premises for three days.Sticking to tradition, the kids write and mail letters to their families, though some camps have started scanning the letters and emailing them to parents instead. For most of the Gen Alpha campers, it's an alien experience; Emma said she has never written a letter outside camp. And while the idea of the exercise is to capture the creative spirit of a bygone era, she finds it annoying — it's a whole process to take out her clipboard and her stationery.At the camps in this story, seven-week tuition runs from roughly $14,600 to $18,975. And yes, each of them takes the phone ban seriously.For parents like Meredith Worth, part of what that money buys is something increasingly difficult to enforce at home: weeks in which their children simply can't reach for a phone. "There's no price tag on the experiences they get at camp," the Long Island mom told Business Insider.Worth sends all three of her kids to a tech-free summer camp in Northeast Pennsylvania. It's the one time her daughter is off social media. "They learn how to be independent, and I hate to say it, but they learn how to network with other people," she added, "people from different states, people from different towns, and doing all of it without a phone."At Greenwood Trails, a sleepaway camp in Connecticut, campers who arrive with their phones must turn them in. "Sometimes saying goodbye to their phone is actually more dramatic than saying goodbye to their parents," Andy Hicks, a director at Greenwood, said.Hicks said he notices the children struggle with in-person interactions during the first meal, when the entire camp gathers to break bread. Sitting around various gingham-clothed tables, there's a notable lull in the dining room that he said is more palpable than in previous generations.Sometimes saying goodbye to their phone is actually more dramatic than saying goodbye to their parentsAndy Hicks, director of Greenwood TrailsAt home, "everybody kind of uses their phone as a safety blanket. You don't have that at camp," Hicks said.This year, to make the kids feel secure, Hicks and the other camp counselors placed a deck of cards on every table, each with a different icebreaker handwritten on the front, like "What are you most looking forward to for the summer?" By the end of dinner, he said, the kids had eased their nerves and established a sense of unity.
