I’ve been sending daily videos to our camp families throughout the summer.

Today I wanted to put another clip out there. Not from camp, but from comedian/writer/director Bo Burnham.

“They’re coming for every second of your life”

In case you didn’t hit play: Burnham talks about how technology companies are “coming for every second” of our lives.

We used to colonize land for expansion and profit, but now businesses are colonizing human attention instead.

But this post isn’t actually about technology - it’s about camp.

One of the most compelling things about camp is that it gives us a chance to get our seconds, minutes, hours, and days back.

It’s a weird feeling to experience life in three-second bursts of attention, constantly seeking out micro-moments of stimulation.

There used to be “time” to spend afternoons doing, well, just about anything without the need to document it or wonder who’s watching. Doing a craft, going for a walk, or meeting friends at the neighborhood pool.

But year after year, this becomes harder for kids as life is partitioned into the new governing unit of time: seconds.

At camp, our aim is to give those seconds and minutes back.

Those Afternoons

Check out an afternoon at camp.

Between lunch and dinner, there’s Rest Hour: hanging out with your cabinmates, maybe writing a letter home (we try, parents, we try), or just lying on your bunk, talking.

Then it’s Treat Time, where boys’ side and girls’ side gather separately to run around, laugh, and get a snack to recharge.

Then it’s time for 4th Activity. Maybe pottery, maybe archery, maybe pickleball. Whatever you have scheduled. And then we roll into Hypetivity, where you get to decide how to spend the next hour.

You might choose the pool. You go down the slide. You shoot a basketball at the floating hoop. You swim to the deep end, then find your friends over at the shallow end. You float around. You sit in the sun. Maybe you go back down the slide.

The key here is that kids don’t watch a video about what to do in the pool. They don’t share a video of their cannonball. They don’t wonder if the underwater flip is going to go viral.

They just get to spend an afternoon at the pool.

The Reset

Natural dopamine production takes around 72 hours to get back to base levels after overstimulation. Most “digital detoxes” last a weekend or less. Camp is different - it gives kids weeks to recalibrate.

Even outside of scheduled activities, camp is filled with little moments of reset. Walking and talking between activities. Sitting on the porch during rest hour.

When kids first arrive, they’re often operating on that hyper-stimulated frequency. But after a few days without devices, something shifts.

They find satisfaction away from devices: conversations that last more than a few minutes, activities that unfold over the course of an hour.

And part of being on staff at a camp is understanding this is a huge part of the job.

Take Mike Bermejo on the boys’ side. When he’s walking with kids from the waterfront to the dining hall, he’s constantly listening, asking about their day, engaging with whatever’s on their minds.

Or Elizabeth Chamberlain on the girls’ side. When she’s running an activity, it’s all energy, smiles, and attention that make the moments 100% worth it.

These aren’t performances. They’re not trying to create content. They’re just present, engaged, and genuinely interested.

That’s contagious.

Taking Back Seconds, Minutes, Years

During the off-season, I’m plugged in. I do emails, work at my computer, communicate with parents.

But after realizing that getting our moments back is a HUGE part of what happens at camp, I’m going to try something different this upcoming year: spending at least one afternoon a week intentionally living in segments of hours instead of segments of seconds.

Maybe that’s a Saturday afternoon at the park without checking my phone. Maybe it’s reading a book for a couple of hours straight (remember that?). Maybe cooking a slow dinner (with lots of steps).

One of the beautiful things about camp is that we don’t have to search for ways to get these minutes and hours back.

We get to have them just by being here.

And in doing so, campers get to be more active participants in their own lives.

The tech companies won’t like it, but the seconds and minutes at camp aren’t available to be colonized.

And we can create times outside of camp where that’s the case, too.

Happy Friday,

Erec