Wired spoke with the founder and director of one of these organizations. Taking inspiration from your average summer camp, the program forces children to exchange their phones and game systems for a good old -fashioned social interaction. But in other ways, it is far from traditional: it is managed with on -site therapists equipped to manage the screen addiction, children follow financial literacy courses and almost all campers are completely unhappy when they arrive.
Most of the Children who come to our program are very socially stunted. They don’t communicate very well. Everything is in abbreviations. They are not contacting their eyes. A complete phrase cannot end. Everything is mumbled. They don’t want to have a dialogue in person. They would prefer to do it online or do it through the text.
Our field is about 70 % of boys, 30 % of girls, aged 13 to 17. Most of the kids are players. Most girls are dependent on social media: aspiring influencers. None of them want to be there. A child escaped and actually arrived at the highway, which was very unusual because we are not close to the highway. It was collected by the local and reported motorway patrol. He then made a hunger strike for three days and in reality we ended up sending him to the hospital because he needed to eat. And then his mother came to pick him up.
When the children arrive, we divest out them to make sure they brought everything they would have to bring and that they did not bring things that should not have brought. Like phones. A child showed up with three cell phones: when he arrived, he delivered one. We found another cell phone in his bag. And then about three days after his roommate he turned it off and we found the third phone. He thought it was fun that he had gone so long. This is most of our children, if they can attack it to man, then they are winning.
Most children are not aggressive, they don’t act. More often, they are cycling. But once they come out of their dormitory, we close the doors. I say: “sitting in your dormitory cyclist is not a field activity”.
Their habits to sleep and eat are horrible. Most children, especially online players, increased up to 2 or 3 in the morning. They do not get up to noon or later. It is a disaster. And their eating habits are equally horrible: Dori and Gatorade, only horrible snacks.
So we have them with a very specific program. They are in their rooms of the dormitory at 9:30 and the lights go out by 10. And then we wake them up at 6:30. I always say to my staff: “Plan not to sleep a lot the first week”.
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