Summer Camps Sustain High Demand as Key to Child Development in 2025

Post-pandemic, summer camps continue to foster critical life skills, address modern challenges, and provide impactful experiences for millions of children annually.

• Research underscores the lasting developmental benefits of summer camps, including independence, social skills, and resilience, through immersive experiences.
• Approximately 26 million U.S. children attend summer camps each year, with both day and overnight camps offering comparable advantages when programs are high quality.
• Parents increasingly value camps as a remedy for challenges like excessive screen time and social isolation, providing unique and engaging learning opportunities.
• Older teens working as camp staff gain essential life skills such as leadership, teamwork, and responsibility, which are highly sought after by employers.
• High-quality short-term programs, even as brief as three days, can deliver developmental outcomes similar to longer overnight camps.

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