Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
Parenting = Sharenting
|
There’s a shift happening in how parents experience their kids’ lives. Most camps don’t see it. The ones that do are moving ahead of the others. This is a structural thing. Technology drove it, and it’s reshaping every relationship parents have with their kids’ world. I’m a parent myself. I’m inundated with information about my kids. Everything has an app. Everything has a group chat. And I see camps every week trying to operate as if that’s not the reality. Silence Has a CostNotifications fire dopamine. You know what I’m talking about. An unexpected text, a photo, an update from school. They feel good. The flip side is what’s crushing some camps. When parents expect a message and don’t get one, they don’t return to neutral. They actually feel worse than before. This is where “silence” costs camps. Parents who expected an update and didn’t get one are walking around with a lower baseline. Parents now expect real-time updates. The “near” in “near-real-time” has dropped off. The dopamine is going to happen one way or another. Camps decide whether they’re the source of it, or whether they leave parents in withdrawal. Parenting = SharentingThere’s a word for this: sharenting. Parenting = sharing. Parents are taking the information you give them and immediately resharing it. Think the family group chats or the WhatsApp threads with grandparents. I’m in on this as well. I shared a video of my daughter doing a dance she learned at camp in our family group chat. The chat lit up and then that’s the loop. The share button on your camp’s photo platform is doing real work. It’s the dopamine relay, and parents are socially expected to participate now. Not sharing your kid’s life looks weird. That’s the world we’re in. The InundationEverything has an app. School, classroom, sports, group chats. I get a notification on ClassDojo that my kid got “two points for being quiet, one point for being amazing.” Real notification. I’m like, what is this? But it’s happening. Some childcare centers put a live feed of the classroom on a TV in the lobby. Some sell premium analytics access on your own kid. ClassDojo Plus exists. You can pay extra to see analytics on your child. I’m not agreeing with any of this, necessarily. But it is definitely happening. Parents are inundated with information and inundated with concern. Anxiety, depression, bullying, and much worse. Concerns that didn’t exist to this degree a generation ago. Anxiety is a form of showing love. Parents are concerned and they’re being fed information all day long. It’s not the parents’ fault. The system is set up this way, and people are making money off of it. Where This Leaves CampsCamps have options for how to respond. Three of them, honestly. More on that in a follow-up. For now, the punchline that matters: “If you fill, you can do whatever you want. If you’re not full, you’ve got to adapt. You’ve got to go to where the people are.” That’s the new front door for any camp that isn’t full. Meet parents where the system has put them, or be explicit about the camp you’re running. There isn’t really a middle. Sincerely, Senior Consultant at Immersive1st Learn more about Immersive1st's Approach |
Immersive1st
Subscribe to the Immersive1st newsletter for new openings and smart job search tips. Hiring? The next issue will show how your organization can reach the right candidates.
I was touring a camp last summer with a non-profit CEO. We’d just walked her property together for an hour or so, looking at programs. I told her she was a good CEO who cared about camp. She said, “How do you know that?” I looked down. “Your shoes.” She was wearing sneakers. The Sneakers Test Do sneakers tell the whole story? Yes, I think sneakers tell the whole story. She was dressed to be on the property all day. The tour was the smaller thing she happened to be doing. It doesn’t matter if...
A camp client wanted to know how parents are using AI to research their camp. So we sat down and “pretended” to be a parent (even though I am a parent!) looking for a camp like his. Simple prompt: “Tell me if [Camp X] is the right fit for my 12-year-old daughter.” What came back was eye-opening and definitely something all camps need to understand, and understand quickly. The AI framed its response as “my honest take, parent to parent.” As a reminder, AI is not a parent. The Audit I ran it...
The great John Wooden won 10 NCAA basketball championships 12 years UCLA. Even armchair fans know him as one of the greatest coaches of any sport in history. And he spent a ton of time teaching his players how to put on their socks. You read that right. Putting on socks. The best basketball players in the country. This wasn’t some sports metaphor. He literally sat down and showed them how to put on their socks. Before practices, before games, Wooden would go through properly seating a sock on...