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by Although many parents are concerned about the amount of time their kids spend playing video games, there may be an additional reason to shut off the PS2 - and this one isn't related to the need to do homework. In his book entitled Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv describes what he calls "Nature-Deficit Disorder" - the tendency of young people nowadays to severely lack unstructured outdoor play.
From the article, "Restoring this balance between children and nature may be a key factor in saving our planet from pollution, habitat destruction, overpopulation and help restore the delicate balance of all ecosystems."
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Forgetting or Already Forgotton by gnifyus :: NR7 :: Show
Much like Dwayne Sudduth who wrote this article, I am also a person who also spent most of his play time outside and in the surrounding woods of our neighborhood playing games, exploring, playing in a nearby brook, and doing whatever activities imagination could conjure up along the way.
Play in nature, particularly during the critical period of middle childhood, appears to be an especially important time for developing the capacities for creativity, problem solving, and emotional and intellectual development.
Even in the winter time (I live in the Northeast U.S.) a lot of time was spent outside sledding, making snow forts, etc. The thing is, there was nothing to do inside unless we had a rainy day and someone broke out the monopoly game or something. Now with the advent of computer and video games it seems that given the choice, even on a sunny day most kids opt to stay inside and do that instead, unless forced. The thing is though, in general it was not the 'outside' that we were drawn to as kids. We took that for granted. If no one else were outside with me, pretty soon I would go inside myself. It was the social dynamic of being with the other kids who were doing things outside that kept us out there. I hate to say it, but in some ways I notice the same social dynamic happening when a bunch of teenagers (boys usually) are gathered around a video game cheering and jeering at each other as the game is played, much the same way we did playing at whatever outside game we came up with for the day. So what is lost here? One thing is the fact that they are more or less at the mercy of someone else's imagination when playing a video game. All the imaginative processes are ready-made; the only thing left is the action.
If Nature Deficit Disorder is real, then it may even affect adults living in the world now. Many do seem to live in a bubble, and do not believe anything in nature is necessary for the survival of the world.
Urban life has certainly had an effect on this. When I was a kid, some friends of ours participated in the Fresh Air Fund, where they would take an inner city kid into their family for a few weeks in the summer. The boy they had back year after year was from Harlem. At 10 years old, he thought milk came from a carton, had never seen a live chicken and was fully convinced he could ride one of my parent's cows until he actually came within 100 feet of one. He then changed his mind quickly. One drawback to his 'nature lesson' was that it took him a long time to drink a glass of milk again once he found out where it really came from.
The fact that for years now it has seemed necessary to remind people about the importance of nature in their lives, is evidenced by the fact that coffee cups, signs and bumper stickers saying "Farmers feed you three times a day", had to actually be created for this purpose.