In the latest Research 360 blog post, ACA research assistant Rob Warner discusses updates from a recent Research Advisory Committee meeting.

Children between eight and ten years old currently spend nearly eight hours a day on media. Adolescents average nearly eleven hours per day, seven days a week, on screens. The negative impact of this digital lifestyle is evident in kids’ expanding waistlines as well as their growing lack of interest in being outdoors. Now there’s an additional worry about the impact of our kids’ excessive screen use: anxiety.

Hello camp evaluators, and happy fall season. While some of you are as busy as ever, others are taking a deep breath for the first time in months. No matter where you are at, you are probably at or soon approaching a point where you will look back on summer 2018 and wonder, How did we do?

While it’s easy to think of ways to teach our kids to do laundry or solve math problems, finding a way to instill important character traits isn’t as simple.

Looking for someone to bring telescopes to an evening camp program, or to give your campers a presentation about the InSight mission landing on Mars this fall? NASA has communities of volunteers across the United States that can help.

Hello!

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer full of excitement and learning! I am new to the ACA Research 360 Blog and would like to introduce myself and share my story with you.

My name is Rob Warner and I am the new research assistant for ACA. I recently began my doctoral studies at the University of Utah and will be involved with ACA in a variety of roles over the next several years. I look forward to being a part of the research efforts and meeting many of you along the way!

One Sunday night this past July, I was with my wife eating dinner when the all-boys sleepaway camp my eight-year-old son Myles was attending for the very first time in his life emailed a few photos. Like the stereotypical parents in the “Refresh, Refresh” viral YouTube video making the rounds, my wife and I had to immediately click and see how he was doing.

Most camps hire college students to work as camp staff — primarily during the summer season, but on occasion throughout the year. When the employment situation is one where the student has no other obligations, the hiring and employment processes can be relatively smooth. However, camps sometimes run into situations where college students are constrained in their ability to work at camp because they are required to do an internship as part of their schooling.

Greetings camp evaluators! Congratulations on making it to the end (or very nearly the end) of your summer season.

Think back to the start of summer—are there things you know now that you wish you knew then?