·5 min read
What Is a Phone-Free Summer Camp?
What it means, why camps do it, and how kids stay in touch with home. From a guy who's been to 500+ camps.
Two middle school girls at our camp grabbed clipboards one summer and turned it into a research project. Their question was "Should we have phones at camp?"
They surveyed everyone they could find.
Only one out of dozens said she'd want her phone at camp.
Those are kids who live on their phones the rest of the year. And they voted to keep camp phone-free.
If you've been fighting screen time battles at home, that probably sounds made up. Setting limits, managing apps, negotiating daily usage. It's exhausting, even with ourselves.
A phone-free summer camp is the one place I know where kids end up on your side of that fight.
Full disclosure: I own a phone-free summer camp in New Hampshire. I'll tell you about it at the end. I've also been to more than 500 camps across 47 states, and I've seen just about every version of a phone policy there is.
The Short Answer
At camp, we just take out phones. The system is no phones, no screens, no iPads.
A phone-free summer camp is an overnight camp where kids don't have phones, tablets, or other personal screens for the whole session. Families stay in touch through letters, photos, and scheduled calls instead.
The phone goes away at the bus and comes back at the bus. Call it bus-to-bus.
The surprising part is how fast kids come around. We create a place where kids are grateful to not have screens. They're the most excited about it. By year two, they're begging to make sure no screens are around.
Do Sleepaway Camps Allow Phones?
Some do. A lot of them don't. And "phone-free" means different things depending on which camp you ask.
Here's the range I see, from loosest to strictest:
- Phones allowed. Kids keep them, usually with rules about when.
- Phone hours. Phones live in an office and come out at set times, like an hour on Sundays.
- Phones off during the day only. Kids get them back at night or on weekends.
- Phone-free for the whole session. No personal screens until pickup.
When a camp says it's phone-free, ask which one they mean.
Length matters too. A tech-free weekend is tough because there's a lot of "What am I missing?!" A one-week digital "detox" is better (not my word, but I've seen camps use it). But kids know their phones are waiting. The countdown is on.
A full summer is different. Some adjustment at first, sure. But it doesn't take long for kids to stop thinking about their phones. With time, that mental reach for the device dissolves.
Why Don't Summer Camps Allow Phones?
Most "phone breaks" happen inside places built for phones. Take away the device and the systems stay the same. The restaurant menu is a QR code. The carpool group text still needs a response.
A tech-free Saturday is possible. But it's like trying to eat healthy while living inside a candy store.
At camp, the systems were built differently from the start. Printed schedules, live announcements, bulletin boards. Meals, activities, campfires, and free time were all designed decades before smartphones existed, and they still work perfectly.
Kids aren't resisting the pull of their phones. Their phones have nothing to offer them there.
The kids figure out the other reason on their own. When I asked our oldest boys "What if you could have your phones at camp?", they took some time to think about it. Maybe once a week? Like an hour on Sundays?
After talking it through, they landed here:
"I could handle it, but other people couldn't…"
What they meant was that phones would change a place they love. Phone-free only works if everyone's in. If even a few kids got back on, it would break for all of them.
Even our staff see the difference. These are young folks in their late teens and 20s, living without phones all day, sometimes for the first time ever. They want it that way, too.
What Changes When Nobody Has a Phone?
It isn't the activities. Kids everywhere can put something down for a soccer game or a lake swim.
The difference is the downtime. The dessert line on ice cream night. Rest hour. The walk from the lake to the bunk. Those are the exact moments where, the rest of the year, a phone comes out because there's "nothing happening."
When we get on the bus for a trip, nobody has a phone out. There's nothing to do but talk to your friends and make jokes.
A little bit bored leads to conversations. Conversations lead to jokes. Jokes lead to bonding, and bonding leads to friendships.
Having a conversation is a skill, and nobody learns it by reading about it. Kids learn it by getting a thousand reps every day. That's a lot of what a summer at camp is.
How Do Kids Talk to Parents Without a Phone?
This is the part parents worry about, and it's usually more about us than about the kid.
One mom put it this way on a call with me:
"The only thing I'd be nervous about is the lack of phone calls but that's I think I feel like that's more of my issue unless of his issue."
Most phone-free camps still have a way to stay in touch. It just runs slower, and on paper.
At our camp, kids write letters home all the time, especially during rest hour. Parents send one-way emails that get printed and handed to their kid. We take photos and upload them to an app called Campanion twice a day, so parents can see what's going on.
Kids also call home around weeks 1, 3, and 5. I tell campers that by the middle of the summer, they're going to be annoyed that they have to call home. We still do it, so their parents feel good.
Does It Stick After Camp?
The kids get their phones back at the bus. That's a good thing. I'm glad they're connected again, and I'm right back on mine too.
This isn't anti-tech. Phones aren't evil. I like my phone.
But I hear all the time from parents that when camp friends get together outside of camp, there's way less phone time. They know how to just be together.
Schools are catching on. New Jersey signed a bell-to-bell phone ban for public schools, joining a bunch of other states. Phones away from the first bell to the last one. Camp kids just did the long summer version.
Camp got there early.
6 Questions to Ask a Camp About Phones
Tick them off as you ask. 0 of 6 asked.
About My Camp
Full disclosure again: I own Camps Kenwood & Evergreen, brother-sister overnight camps in New Hampshire. We've always been phone-free. Kids spend 3.5 or 6.5 weeks with no screens.
I'm biased. But I'd tell you the same thing if I didn't own one. Whatever camp you pick, ask the questions above.
If you want to see what a phone-free summer looks like, here's our camp.
You got this,
Jack
P.S. Got a question about phones and camp? Text me at 585-451-5141. I'll give you a straight answer, even if it's not about my camp.
Related: Is there a normal summer camp? What a traditional sleepaway camp looks like