Summer Camp Helps Professionals Detox From Technology & Social Media
A trip to camp may go a long way for young professionals grappling with tech addictions. The New York Times reports that an increasing number of awareness organizations are addressing the deleterious effects of high-octane tweeting and RSS feed following, with groups like Digital Detox organizing adult summer camps for at-risk news editors, executives and start-up entrepreneurs.
Last month, Oakland-based Digital Detox hosted more than 300 people at Camp Grounded – a three-day, adults-only retreat in Navarro, Calif., where campers trade their Blackberries, iPhones, tablets, watches and computers for group activities, vegan meals, typewriting and bucolic fun in a placid, historic setting.
“My goal now is to connect people,” Levi Felix, Digital Detox’s co-founder, told reporters. “There’s always going to be more media, more to do outside of where you are. The only moment that matters is right now.”
The idea is simple: campers must stay away from digital technology, work talk and titles. In order to ensure a foolproof Kumbaya-setting and sharpen the therapeutic edge, camp rules prohibit the use of real names, with counselors encouraging participants to adopt new ones for the weekend.
The unwavering emphasis on these rules surprised some campers, including Montgomery Kosma – a 45-year-old C.E.O. who initially saw the camp as an opportunity to recruit developers for his new foundation. “I wasn’t aware it was entirely networking-free,” he said after camp. “I was thinking, ‘I’m building a company and need to hire people.’ ”
“My name and my job really form my identity,” he told reporters. “It’s really hard to talk about your job in generic terms. This was the longest I’d been away from e-mail or cellphone literally since 1997. It was strange, but not that strange… I spent a lot of time off thinking and writing.”
According to its website, Camp Grounded offers wide variety of mantric activities – including stargazing, yoga, hiking, meditation and writing sessions – designed to quell the phantom limb sensation that haunts campers forced to resign their digital appendages.
“From the moment that we drove up there, as soon as we met the organizers, they completely made me feel we were at the right place,” said Tatyana Plaksina, a 26-year-old social worker from Los Angeles. “I didn’t expect there to be so much love and freedom and acceptance. It felt like a place where you could be yourself and be accepted for that.”