Will the Texas Floods Kill Off (Real) Summer Camps?

It's still unclear how many child/teen campers and staff are dead in Texas after flash flooding. The non-denominational Camp Mystic has confirmed 27 dead, and there are a lot more dead and missing in an area that's home to several other camps.

No, this is not one of those attempts to assign political blame for the tragedy. I doubt there's any such blame to assign, and am really not interested in playing said game. It's just a tragedy that should be respectfully treated as such.

But, I wonder, could the tragedy effectively kill off summer camps?

Microsoft Copilot tells me that summer camp attendance has been growing over the years. That seems counter-intuitive, given the whole "helicopter parenting" era. Likely explanatory: The claim seems to include "day camps," where parents ship their little darlings off for a few hours per day of supervised "socialization" and then bring them home for bed.

When I think of "summer camp," I don't think of Vacation Bible School or of "public" schools feeding some kids lunch and showing them a movie or letting them play flag football, then sending them home for the night. To me "summer camp" involves the kids packing up some clothes, etc. and heading off to either a tent campground, or a remote location with barracks-style accommodation, for several days of outdoor activities.

To be clear, my own "summer camp" experiences were of the tent variety and never more than a few days in length -- church-sponsored things with the "Royal Rangers," the Assemblies of God denomination's riff on the Boy Scouts. I enjoyed them, but they weren't the kind of thing you see in old movies like The Parent Trap, where it's a week long or longer, with dorms, team sports, contests, etc. Probably because my parents couldn't afford the cost of shipping me off for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, in my view, "day camps" aren't camps. They're non-sleepover group babysitting operations.

So when I ask if the flood tragedy is going to hurt "summer camp" as a thing, I'm referring to "at least a week away from home/parents, in a remote area, with a substantial group."

Every kid, and every parent, in America is hearing about the Texas floods and the "summer camp" death toll. And they're going to find that scary, because these days Americans find everything scary, no matter how unlikely it is to actually befall them.

I predict a lot more teenagers sitting at home with their Nintendo consoles or whatever next summer instead of shopping for sturdy boots and backpacks and heading for the woods. Which is a shame, but we were headed in that direction anyway.