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Kids losing touch with nature, preferring virtual world
Interest wanes in visits to parks, other activities
BY PETER FIMRITE San Francisco Chronicle

    Yosemite National Park may be nice and all, but Tommy Nguyen of San Francisco would much prefer spending his day in front of a new video game or strolling around the mall with his buddies.
    What, after all, is a 15-year-old supposed to do in what John Muir called “the grandest of all special temples of nature” without cellphone service?
    “I’d rather be at the mall because you can enjoy yourself walking around looking at stuff as opposed to the woods,” Nguyen said.
    In Yosemite and other parks, he said, furrowing his brow to emphasize the absurdly lopsided comparison, “the only thing you look at is the trees, grass and sky.”
    The notion of going on a hike, camping, fishing or backpacking is foreign to a growing number of young people in cities and suburbs around the nation, according to several polls and studies.
    State and national parks, it seems, are good places for old folks to go, but the consensus among the younger set is that hiking boots aren’t cool. Besides, images of nature can be downloaded these days.
    It isn’t just national forests and wilderness areas that young people are avoiding, according to the experts. Kids these days aren’t digging holes, building tree houses, catching frogs or lizards, frolicking by the creek or even throwing dirt clods.
    “Nature is increasingly an abstraction you watch on a nature channel,” said Richard Louv, the author of the book “Last Child in the Woods,” an account of how children are slowly disconnecting from the natural world.
    A lot of it has to do with where people live — 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, where the opportunities for outdoor activity apart from supervised playgrounds and playing fields are limited.
    But Louv said the problem runs deeper. Wealthy suburban white youngsters are also succumbing to what he calls “nature deficit disorder.”
    “Anywhere, even in Colorado, the standard answer you get when you ask a kid the last time he was in the mountains is ’I’ve never been to the mountains,’ ” Louv said. “And this is in a place where they can see the mountains outside their windows.”
INDOOR GENERATION
    National polls indicate that children and teenagers play outdoors less than young people did in the past. Between 1997 and 2003, the proportion of children ages 9 to 12 who spent time hiking, walking, fishing, playing on the beach or gardening declined 50 percent, according to a University of Maryland study.
    The lack of outdoor activity is more pronounced in minority and lower-income communities. Latino parents, for example, were twice as likely as white parents to say their child never participated in an outdoor nature activity and three times more likely to say their child did not go to a park, playground or beach this past summer, according to the Public Policy Institute poll.
    Video games, television and electronic entertainment are undoubtedly part of the problem. Nguyen, a high school sophomore, is part of a generation of teenage technophiles who always have a cell phone or iPod in their ear.
    Nguyen said he plays video games two hours a day on average, but has been known to spend the whole day in front of a new game. He doesn’t know anybody who camps, backpacks or who has ever built a tree fort.
    Louv does not believe technology is the only reason for the lack of exposure to the outdoors. He said sensationalistic reporting of rare occurrences is a big reason parents are reluctant to let their children out of the house, let alone wander through the woods or down by the creek.
    Entrance fees at state and national parks also serve as barriers, Louv said. In the inner city, lack of maintenance and violence in the parks deter visitation. In the suburbs, neighborhood regulations discourage young people from using open space, Louv said.
    “Just try to put up a basketball court in one of these gated communities, let alone build a tree house,” Louv said.
INACTIVITY, OBESITY
    The situation has caused great concern among parents, educators and physicians, many of whom believe the epidemic of childhood obesity in America is a direct result of the lack of outdoor activity.
    Environmentalists are worried that the next generation won’t give a hoot about the spotted owl or other species. Others foresee trouble if children continue to be deprived of the many physical and psychological benefits that studies have shown nature and the outdoors provide.
    A nationwide movement has begun to try to reverse the trend.
    California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a proclamation last July recognizing a children’s outdoor bill of rights, which lists 10 activities children should experience by the time they turn 14, including exploring nature and learning how to swim.
    The National Park Service and a variety of environmental organizations, including the Trust for Public Land, Save the Bay, and the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council, have joined the effort.
    Brendan Lin is an example of how such programs can work. He remembers fondly the one time he went camping on a school graduation trip five years ago or so.
    “It was fun because it was quiet and there was no one to bug you. I like that,” he said. “I saw deers, squirrels, and I did a rope course.”
    Louv said he is convinced American youth can once again learn the glory of mucking around in the natural world as opposed to the virtual one.
    “We don’t all get to go to Yosemite, nor do we have to,” he said. “It can be the clump of trees at the end of the cul-de-sac or the ravine by the house. Those places may in terms of biodiversity not be that important, but to a child they can be a whole universe, where they can discover a sense of wonder. That is essential to our humanity, and we can’t deny that to future generations.”

Children eat at a picnic table in Grant Village campground at Yellowstone National Park. Because of increasing interests in video gamees and the Internet, however, today's children are less interested in the outdoors.

Kids don't play outside anymore. And it isn't just because of video games. There are other factors here. Parents aren't home for the kids after school anymore. They are either at babysitters or a day care or home alone. Not to mention the threat of a predator in your neighborhood. Today parents have to schedule play times for their kids. I believe it is called 'play dates'. I guess they feel that it is a safer more controlled way for their children to socialize inside or outside with other children.

Welcome to Logan's Run....or anyother sci-fi movie....anyone ever see 'green' in Alien, Star Trek(not the greenie weenie one).....they are in 'black space'---the only green is that in Survivor and who would find that mud fun??? The virtual world does it safer, cleaner and you can pause it to fit in a call on the cell phone......