Are we raising a generation of nature-phobic kids?
Many children now spend less than 30 minutes per week playing outside.
Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency suggest that adults, too, spend 93% of their lives inside buildings or vehicles, living under what nature writer Richard Louv calls “protective house arrest.”
Biophobia research traditionally focused on specific categories of fears — such as darkness, heights or animals, especially snakes and spiders. Recently, however, researchers whose findings were published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology discovered that modern-day fears of the natural world have no such locus. In children especially, anxiety can be evoked by the most unexceptional circumstances: a flock of noisy birds or a strong wind.
Many children now spend less than 30 minutes per week playing outside.
Statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency suggest that adults, too, spend 93% of their lives inside buildings or vehicles, living under what nature writer Richard Louv calls “protective house arrest.”
Biophobia research traditionally focused on specific categories of fears — such as darkness, heights or animals, especially snakes and spiders. Recently, however, researchers whose findings were published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology discovered that modern-day fears of the natural world have no such locus. In children especially, anxiety can be evoked by the most unexceptional circumstances: a flock of noisy birds or a strong wind.