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 Cost

Notifications 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 = Sharenting

There’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 Inundation

Everything 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 Camps

Camps 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,
Dan Weir

Senior Consultant at Immersive1st

dan@immersive1st.com