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A 2018 Pew study found that 54% of 13-to-17 year olds feared they spent too much time with their phones, and a variety of studies over the last five years yield similar results. The current COVID-19-fueled push for students to learn via computer has only added to parent anxiety about too much screen time.
AA-style groups have sprung up for tech-addicted adults, and digital detox summer camps for students are now a thing. Now Penn State is partnering with River Mountain, a south-central PA adventure camp, to provide a “digital wellness program designed to combat the negative impacts technology has on young people’s social, emotional and cognitive development.”
It’s not a new insight that computer apps and games are designed to be addictive, that companies are tapping the expertise of psychologists to create apps that we can’t walk away from. Persuasive design is an integral part of giving an app or game a hard-to-resist hook, a part of design that is literally aimed at getting users to think less. In education, we talk about “gamification,” which is intended to harness the compelling nature of games in the service of learning but which may also push the issues of screen addiction into the classroom.
Penn State’s program is headed up by Dr. Pete Allison, Associate Professor - Values and Experiential Learning (and also a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society). The program is designed both to tap into the powerful impact of adventures out in nature and also to create a better awareness of how technology influences relationships, decisions, and values. The mission: to empower young people to create a more healthy relationship with technology.
That is an awful lot to accomplish in a program that lasts only a week, though the use of university and recreation professionals suggests that the program knows how to make the best use of that small amount of time.
River Mountain is 145 outdoor acres located about halfway between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg; it sits right up against state forest lands. Their activities include caving, hiking, kayaking, snorkeling, and mountain biking, and the program follows an “adventure-based” model, with time for adventure, reflection, and conceptualization so that lessons can be taken home.
Do programs like this work? At this point, nobody knows for sure. One of the principles of addiction recovery is to avoid the environment and associates that enabled your addiction; for teens to come back home and somehow avoid computer tech seems virtually impossible, so a program that aims at having them enter a more mindful relationship with tech seems wise.
As programs like this—and the demand for them—increase, it will be interesting to see how schools respond. Imagine, form instance, a classroom working on an educational program and one of the students interrupts to say, “This is how the programmers are trying to manipulate us.” Imagine parents saying to a district, “My child is a recovering screen addict, and we will not allow her to spend more than a few minutes a day on screen-based activities.” Ed tech may find that it has inherited a need to address some of the issues that tech, in general, has created. The embrace of computer technology to help deal with the pandemic pause in public education has been fairly straightforward and uncomplicated; education’s relationship with ed tech may never be that simple again.
In the meantime, like everything else in the US, the summer schedule for the Penn State/River Mountain program is up in the air. It’s also worth noting that there are adult versions of the program, suitable for corporate retreats. Perhaps some school district officials should consider the trip.
