Teens held hostage on cruise ship!

Adults must surely know about this already.  But the teenagers?

A friend shared a recent cruise experience.  The ship had a group of around 30 teens associated with a church or school or some such group.  Anyway, the kids were going into shock, discovering that their iphones, cell phones, etc. did not work at sea.  My friend overheard some of them moaning "what are we going to do?"  She said it costs a fortune to obtain cell phone connection (satellite?) off shore.  Is that right?

Wow, parents paying for their kids to have a fun cruise experience...unappreciated by the little darlings.  Sad.

Unrelated, though slightly related, another friend treated four grandchildren to a Disney World vacation.  After they got there, all the kids wanted to do was stay in the hotel and play on their phones.  Yikes!

It definitely costs a fortune to connect and, truthfully, that's one of the best reasons to go on a cruise. We usually have a period of 24 hours or so during which our creatures (and us, for that matter) experience withdrawal symptoms, and then life goes on. Most of the mass cruise lines have kids' areas, divided up by age. There is ALWAYS one for teenagers, and the activities are usually pretty good. Of course, that would mean having to talk to each other in person... ;)

Cruise lines will sometimes throw in a couple of hundred minutes of free internet as a booking benefit or if you have elite status, but it's so slow that you could barely do email. Forget any games. In other words, even if you have free internet access, it isn't very good. 

Disney: Funny you mention that. My parents just took their four grandchildren (and children plus spouses) to Disney World. Fortunately, they had no interest in phones/iPads during the day and were too tired to use them at night.

Screen time is a constant battle for us. But we always win on vacation by pulling out the parental trump card of "I'm taking it away and you will go outside and enjoy yourselves." And they do.

Mike

For sure, social media addiction is birthing a lot of unhealthy outcomes.  Your observations and strategies are right on...a cruise or other vacation to unplug, get reaquainted with the other side of "social", i.e. human connection, set new limits upon 're-entry.' 

I'm still looking for the instruction manual that was supposed to come with my kids.

Mike