Life without screens: This camp is the worst nightmare in a teenager

summer. For youth Not at work, the atmosphere is hot, it’s boring, and it is an ideal time to close the door and spend every moment of waking up, playing, text messages, and broadcast – anything but talk – on the phone. With nearly half of adolescents in the United States they say they are almost constantly online, adults in their lives are getting more desirable to drag their traction. Families create areas free of screen in their homes, and the states prohibit phones in schools, and a new type of summer camp has appeared: digital toxin disposal camps, which can cost about 2000 dollars a week, and promised to impose attendance from the screens by going to the cold Türkiye for the summer.

Wire spoke to the founder and director of one of these organizations. Take a braid from your Mediterranean camp, the program forces children to switch their phones and games systems for some good old social interaction. But in other ways, nothing is only traditional: it is equipped with the processors on the location equipped to deal with screen addiction, and children have financial literacy courses, and almost all camps are completely miserable when they arrive.

most Children who come to our program are very social. They do not communicate well. Everything is in shortcuts. They do not contact the eye. They cannot end the full sentence. Everything is muttered. They don’t want to get a personal dialogue box. They prefer to do this online or do this through the text.

Our camp is about 70 percent of boys, and 30 percent of girls, from 13 to 17 years old. Most children are players. Most girls are addicted to social media – various contestants. None of them wants to be there. One child escaped, and he actually reached the highway, which is very unusual because we are not close to the highway. It was captured by the local highway patrol and restored. Then he hunted for a three -day hunger, and we already ended up sending him to the hospital because he needed to eat. Then his mother came and moved him.

When children arrive, we have emptying them to make sure they brought everything that they were supposed to bring and that they did not attend the things that they were not supposed to bring. Like phones. A child appeared with three mobile phones: When he arrived, he turned to one. We found another cell phone in his bag. Then after about three days, his roommate wandered around, and we found the third phone. He thought it was funny that he had moved away from him for a long time. This is most of our children – if they can stick to the man, they win.

Most children are not aggressive, they do not behave. Often, they flow. But once they leave their bedroom, we close the doors. I say, “Sitting in your bedroom is not a camp activity.”

The habits of their sleep and their eating are horrific. Most children, especially online players, reach up to 2 or 3 in the morning. They do not wake up until noon or later. It is a disaster. And their own eating habits, they are equally horrific – Doritus and Gatuoride, just a terrible light food.

So we have a very specific schedule. They are in their bedrooms by 9:30 and they take out their lights by 10. Then we wake them up at 6:30. I always tell my employees, “I plan not sleeping in the first week.”