Watching my phone fall from my pocket and sink into the Alpine Lake deep in the Adirondack Mountains – bounce, bounce, plunk – seemed like a perfect way to end camp this year.  Why is that?
First, one of the main things I love about summer camp, and something I spend a lot of time thinking about is disconnection from devices. This is one of the ways the world – and by proxy summer camp – has changed drastically within a generation. As one of my heroes in outdoor education, Richard Louv, writes about in Last Child in the Woods, most kids don’t play outside anymore.  A generation or two ago, the norm was “don’t come in until I call you for dinner.”  Now, parents, as a general rule, are more concerned about leaving their kids unsupervised, and kids have a wide array of electronic devices available to them.  But having just witnessed a group of device-free kids at an Adirondack summer camp, I can tell you this: children and teenagers still love playing outside.  And they need it now more than ever. As Richard Louv asserts – and I concur entirely – kids need to understand and love the outdoor world so they will fight to protect it. It is not enough to learn in a textbook about the burning of the Amazonian rain forests. They must learn to love a particular place on the planet.
When I lost my phone, camp had just ended and I was on a hike with my 3 daughters and my parents.  We all feel fortunate to be able to share the joy of hiking together. I’ve been hiking and canoeing in the Adirondacks my whole life so when I’m leading those activities at camp, it’s something I know and love.  And part of the joy of adventures is the uncertainty.  You might twist an ankle, or get lost, or fail to reach the campsite you intended to; you might drop your new iPhone in the lake.  But on balance, the adventure is worth the risk. I have to say that I feel really bad for any pollution my phone might add to the lake, but aside from that, I would drop 5 new iPhones in the lake for the beautiful day of hiking we had.
Second, life without my phone for a few days was delightful. It was sort of like the universe saying to me, “Ok, you’ve been talking a big game about living without devices, so now do it yourself.” There is no doubt that my phone (and laptop) play a disturbingly large role in my life. And a simple stroll around most public places reveals how many people are like hypnotized robots staring into the screens, rather than interacting with the live humans around them. Another of the things I love about summer camp is watching and taking part in the games and interactions that occur nightly in the absence of devices.  Most nights after dinner, we play games, either board games or air hockey, or something, anything that doesn’t involve a screen.
As a parent, this is a very challenging aspect of life in the 21^st century to manage. Kids get cell phones at younger and younger ages.  Many school districts now have a 1 to 1 policy with students and laptops. Governments seem determined to push kids into tech/science/engineering jobs.  Silicon Valley leaders keep pushing the fantasy that technology can only make our lives better and more efficient and has no negative side effects despite growing evidence to the contrary. Clearly, there are lots of ways that technology has made our lives better. I won’t list them here. My argument is that kids have so much screen time in their lives that being away from it and playing outside for a few weeks in the summer is incredibly beneficial and something that I am grateful to be a part of.