Seventeen-year-old Ronin Segrest started working as a lifeguard at Ocean Oasis Water Park in New Jersey during the summer of 2025 and quickly faced the challenge of adhering to the park’s strict no-phone policy. This rule, enforced during six-to-seven-hour shifts, initially created phone withdrawal and distraction for Segrest as he worried about missing texts. Morey’s Piers, which owns Ocean Oasis and employs about 500 teens each summer, implements this ban primarily for safety reasons—employees must be fully attentive while operating or supervising multi-million-dollar equipment and water attractions.

Beyond safety concerns, Morey’s Piers sees the phone restriction as a way to improve workers’ focus and develop professional skills. Denise Beckson, vice president and chief administrative officer at Morey’s Piers and a former teen employee, explains that phones during downtime can hinder learning essential work habits such as restocking condiments or maintaining clean and welcoming stations. The policy helps teens engage more meaningfully with their tasks and customers, boosting productivity and on-the-job growth.

Similar phone bans have been adopted at camps like Red Arrow Camp in Wisconsin, where counselors aged 18 and 19 refrain from phone use to stay present with campers and model behavior that encourages disconnecting from constant screen time. Camp director Rich Pruszynski emphasizes that banning phones enhances focus, enabling staff to fully engage with the responsibilities of overseeing children and fostering teamwork and personal development without distraction.

For young workers like Segrest and counselor Dawson Sennes, the absence of phones during work or camp life ultimately yields profound benefits. Both report improvement in mental clarity, emotional resilience, and the quality of human interaction, discovering greater satisfaction in real-world connections compared to digital distractions. This trend suggests that workplaces enforcing phone restrictions may offer teenagers valuable opportunities to build presence, emotional intelligence, and productivity.