Technology Deprived Kids Nervous About Summer Camp

It's getting to the point that some American kids just simply can not enjoy a full day of outdoors recreation. Now comes to my attention a June 23 article in the Wausau (WI) Daily Herald by reporter D.J. Slater that contends some Wisconsin kids are afraid to attend summer camp because they will not be allowed to use their iPods, email, Twitters and other techno devices.

Slater begins this summer camp story by relating how a 10-year old girl was puzzled by the task of handwriting a letter to her parents and mailing it. She wrote the letter well enough, then had no clue what do next. Hmmm - an elementary school child who has no clue how to produce and mail a simple letter.

Slater then writes in the Daily-Herald story the following:

Most camps in central Wisconsin prohibit modern technology because it distracts campers from daily activities such as kayaking, archery and crafts, said Pat Murphy, the camping service director at the YMCA's Camp Sturtevant in Weston."We focus on recreational activities ... and open their eyes to a world that is beyond the computer or TV screen," Murphy said. "Kids' lives these days are centered around texting and e-mailing."

The story then is concluded on a more upbeat note of how some children seem to enjoy a day of distraction away from their WiFi and other electronic gadgets by enjoying a day full of outdoors activities such as kayaking and swimming.

Now, I could share with you a very lengthy discourse on my feelings and opinions of the subject matter about kids being afraid to go outdoors or to summer camp for fear they will miss their technology. But instead, I will share this thought a good friend of mine shared with me recently, and that is "John, not everyone thinks like you do." It's the only truly decent statement I can recall each day in responding to seemingly endless thoughts about "Boy, how this world of ours has changed in the last thirty or forty years."

I seem to now remember today, at a comfortable mid-life age, that my parents and many others of their generation thought and said precisely the same thing about me and kids of my generation thrity and forty years ago. We weren't hooked then on cellphones, computers, Blackberrys and the like -- no, back then we just sang Beatles songs.

Indeed -- how times have changed.

You may read the full story in the Wausau Daily-Herald online at:
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090623/WDH0101/906230544