Protecting important habitat (aka, summer camp as a place for teens).

Heading into the summer, I’ve been thinking (and talking) a lot about how summer camp fits into the wider culture in 2024.

Camps have always been a place apart, a bubble, an eddy current aside from the mainstream. Places where the “real world” gives way to a more authentic experience, one more intense and relaxed at the same time.

But I’ve been thinking about it a little differently this summer, so I’ve added a new analogy to my lexicon. I doubt it’s “new” new, but it’s new to me.

I’ve started thinking about camp as something akin to a wildlife reserve, or a national park, set up to preserve a unique and valuable ecosystem that is facing significant habitat destruction.

The ecosystem, or habitat, in this case being childhood and adolescence.  

It is no secret that childhood and adolescence have been under intense pressure for quite a while now, but those pressures are accumulating at an accelerating pace, thanks in large part to the switch from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. (Apple recently took pride in their  part in this destructive switch, releasing an ad showing a giant hydraulic press destroying guitars, paintbrushes, and toys, only to replace them with a iPad). We’ve also lost outdoor, play based time to development, insurance requirements, and media fearmongering.

Previous generations of kids and teens had much more freedom of access to spaces that respected and encouraged play, challenge, peer-to-peer interaction, community mindedness, and more. Today, few places for kids like this still exist, with the exception of camp.

So this summer, we'll keep pushing back the real world. Collectively, camp professionals in Maine have been doing so since the early 20th century. It’s always been important but preserving time and space for childhood and adolescence is more important now than ever. Because outside the camp gates, so much habitat has been lost. Teens need a place to be teens. Even if they can't find a place to be happy, authentic, playful, curious, sociable and challenging elsewhere, they can still find it by the shore of Stanley Pond.