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Writer's pictureMatt Pines

Spending, teens, and technology

Apologies up front. This blog post is not going to be about what you might think from that title. It is about all three of those things, but it's not about spending money, it's not about marketing tech to kids, and it's not about tech upgrade cycles.


What this blog post is about is one of the main reasons behind our strong device-free policy at MTC.


Since the beginning, MTC has been a device-free camp for teens. Up until about 2010, that didn't really mean anything. Sure a camper might try to sneak in a flip phone, but flip phones weren't much more than an irritation - something to lose, or occasionally call home on. If a camper had one, we'd confiscate it, but it wasn't a huge concern.


Since 2010 though, the impact of personal devices, specifically smart phones, on adolescent well being, has accelerated at an alarming rate.

We first started seeing the changes in campers as early as about 2013/14. We didn't really understand what was going on back then, but we knew that no good would come from campers having iPhones in camp, and we started to get a lot more diligent in cracking down on phones in camp.


Over the last several years, we've gained an understanding of one of the major problems smartphones could present in a setting like camp - the opportunity cost of lost (displaced) beneficial activities. We know about this mostly through observation and scientific literature outside of camp, but occasionally with a smuggled smartphone in camp. This opportunity cost of phone use by teens comes is significant, and often ignored.


Other researchers use the term "experience blockers". I like that term too, although I've been thinking about tech in terms of opportunity costs for several years, and am more comfortable with that.


The way I put it most often is that time (and our other innate currency, attention) is finite. You only get so many minutes, and once you spend them, they are gone. Further, despite whatever supplement, app, or gadget my podcast ads are trying to sell might say, you can really only do one thing at a time, at least in a particular domain. So maybe you can listen to a podcast while you walk the dog, but you can't listen to a podcast while you read a book, or walk the dog while you lift weights. Multi-tasking, unfortunately, is a myth. So while we might wish to spend our minutes twice, it's not actually a thing.


(well, it's not walking a dog, but walking a goat is the same idea)

Because of this limitation, every time-use decision comes with a cost. I am going to spend a minute/hour/day. As with money, every spending option precludes another option. "I have $1000. If I buy a new iPhone for $999, I can't also buy a PS5 for $500". The opportunity cost of buying the phone is the PlayStation. Similarly for time. Once spent, it can't be spent again a second time. And unlike money, each of us gets issued the same amount, you can't borrow more from someone else, and you don't get to bank it for the future.

So we are constantly faced with decisions like "am I going to spend the next hour scrolling on that new iPhone, or am I going to do something else". Putting aside the issue of whether or not that scrolling activity is good for you, bad for you, or neutral, the opportunity cost of the something else is most often negative. At least when it comes to device usage, the activities most often displaced are activities with known benefits.


Take an obvious example like sleep. You will not be able to find a single physician, psychologist, therapist, coach (etc etc) on the planet who would advocate for swapping an hours sleep each night in favor of an hour playing a mobile game, watching videos, or scrolling social media. Especially for kids and teens, who need between 9-10 hours sleep every night. The opportunity cost of an hours sleep, paid in exchange for that hour of scrolling, will be measured in poorer physical health (everything from metabolic rate to heart health), cognition, mental health, even traffic accident outcomes.


Less obvious examples might be things like spending un-filtered time in nature, undistracted face-to-face peer interaction, or unstructured play time. Time in nature is shown to improve measures of attention, as well as physical and mental health. The presence of a screen during this time in nature significantly reduces or even eliminates these benefits. Similarly with peer-to-peer interactions, play time, exercise, reading, creative activities. There is a long list. All these activities have a couple of things in common. First, they confer a broad range of mental, social, and physical benefits. Second, they are especially vulnerable to attention grabbing, device-driven activities specifically designed to hijack psychological and physical flaws that make us susceptible to distraction and attention-capture.


So it's actually even a bit worse than the iPhone vs PS5 example. At least on some levels, those two things are on a bit of a level playing field. They have both had endless development cycles and billions of dollars devoted to making them the ideal of attention- and time-capture ecosystems. When it comes to iPhone vs paperback novel, the game is very much rigged. A book won't send you notifications to bring your attention back to it. A book doesn't have the complex algorithm of a mobile game, sensing when you might be about to quit and giving you a small win in order to keep you going that little bit longer, and a book won't change it's content based on other books you looked at in the bookstore, what an advertiser is paying to have you read, or the sweater you purchased from another store.


Which brings us back to camp, and the nature (pardon the pun) of what we do there. We offer, of course, lots of activities. Learning and mastering new physical, social, and creative skills is fun, challenges us in good ways, and gives us new ways to appreciate our world. We also live very close to nature, for weeks at a time. Most of our day and night is spent outdoors, either in the woods or by the lake, with unfettered views of clear Maine skies. We spend amounts of time with peers and caring adult staff that are simply not achievable outside of camp (consider that a camp counselor will spend more time with their campers during a 3.5 week session than an average middle or high school teacher will spend with a class over the span of an entire school year!). We get 9 hours of sleep EVERY night.


And the results of all these things, plus other good stuff (exercise, healthy diet, lots of sunshine, lots of water etc etc) is that our campers reap all kinds of benefits. We've done research at camp showing improvements in a wide range of measures from cognition to ability to make friends, from adaptability/resilience to mind-body connection. These benefits are the direct outcome of time spent at camp, the experiences to be had there.


But we know how fragile some of these experiences have proven in the face of technology. We now how easy it is to pull out a phone in a new, or awkward social setting. We know how tempting the lure of the endless scroll is compared to picking up a book. We understand that sometimes one more game seems more compelling than settling down for the night. We know because we see kids, teens and adults struggle to control their relationship everywhere and at all times. We see it in our own families and selves!


So when we have the chance at MTC to eliminate the struggle, narrow the universe of choices down to just the good ones, we take it. We know the game is rigged, so we try to rig it in the direction of benefit, and away from harm. Not only does this help ensure good outcomes for our campers during the summer, hopefully it gives them a new baseline. A new standard to calibrate their expectations and hopes against. It's not easy to make a better choice if you aren't even aware that choice exists. But once you know, you take some power back. The game becomes a little less rigged.


There are a few other reasons for our device-free camp policy. But this concept of opportunity cost is a big one. We don't have to debate whether online games or social media are harmful or not. We don't have to try and parse the good aspects of device use from the bad, and try to create elaborate policies to shift a balance. We just have to clear the deck for experiences we've known for a very long time are good for us. Camp has a long track record of helping kids be happier and healthier. We're keen to keep it that way....


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