For about three weeks last summer at a camp in Maine, 192 teenagers, including some from San Diego, had no phones. No social media. No screens.
Instead, they were spending their days outside.
“Canoeing on the lake, or arts and crafts, learning how to throw a pot on a pottery wheel, or learning how to play guitar,” said Matt Pines, former director of Maine Teen Camp. “All of these things are embodied, they all require movement, they all require the use of your hands as well as your mind.
Pines asked campers last summer what it was like to be without their phones.
“We heard that they felt a lot less pressure on them, socially, in the absence of devices,” Pines said. “I think they felt like they could be themselves without fear of someone recording them being goofy and plastering up all over social media.”
Pines said researchers from Sapien Labs and UC San Diego Health saw the potential of a summer camp environment to study what happens when teenagers spend an extended period device-free.
They published their findings in the Mental Health and Prevention journal this month.
Researchers assessed the teens at the beginning and end of camp using a questionnaire. They looked at areas including mental well-being, social connection, cognition and resilience.
After three weeks at camp, the teens' scores improved by an average of 10 points.
“The young people who came to the camp already at a somewhat higher level of distress, maybe showing some signs of depression, of anxiety, really benefited the most from this sort of detox period,” said Susan Tapert, a UC San Diego psychiatry professor who consulted on the study.
Their scores improved by a median of 27 points.
But Tapert said the study had limitations. The teens weren't randomly assigned, and most came from affluent families.
That means we can't know if taking away the phones alone caused the improvement, Tapert said.
“Sleep, the socialization, being out of your usual environment, being outdoors, a lot of other features were present as well,” she said.
The researchers found that social connection was one of the most noticeable differences between camp and school.
About 80% of campers reported a strong sense of belonging at camp, compared with 65% at school. Forty percent said making friends was easier at camp.
Teens who reported greater social belonging, more physical activity and better sleep also tended to have larger improvements in their scores.
The study ended when camp did, so researchers don't know whether the improvements lasted when teens returned to their normal routines.
Tapert said more research is needed to understand which parts of the experience made the biggest difference.
Still, families can borrow some of the camp's lessons without sending their kids away for weeks, she said.
“Limiting phone use, keeping it to maybe two hours a day, certain times a day, keeping the phone away during mealtimes, and probably most importantly, keeping it inaccessible during the night,” she said.
Tapert said more studies are needed to determine which parts of the experience made the biggest difference, and whether the benefits continue after teens return to their normal routines.
