Parent Talk / August 2006
UnNatural
A study for the Nature Conservancy shows that per-capita visits to national parks have been declining for years, showing a 25 percent drop since 1987. Computer games, TV and
movie rentals were among the top reasons given, indicating a declining interest in nature in
general.
Americans are less interested in spending time in natural surroundings like national parks
because they are spending more time watching television, playing video games and surfing
the Internet. The study found per-capita visits to national parks have been declining for years. National park visitation data starting in 1930 peaked in 1987 at 1.2 visits per person per year. But by 2003 it had declined by about 25 percent to 0.9 visits per person per year.
The data, based on government statistics and other sources, were taken as a proxy for
interest in nature in general. Researchers tested more than two dozen possible explanations
for the trend and found that 98 percent of the drop in national park visits was explained by
video games, movie rentals, going out to movies, Internet use and rising fuel prices. There was
a sufficiently high correlation between declining national park visits and the burgeoning use of
electronic media to lead researchers to believe the two are linked.
The study, to be published in
the Journal of Environmental Management, concludes that the trend has negative implications
for environmental stewardship. “We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from
people’s appreciation of nature to ‘videophilia’, the new human tendency to focus on sedentary
activities involving electronic media,” the researchers said. “Such a shift would not bode well
for the future of biodiversity conservation. When children choose TVs over trees, they lose
touch with the physical world outside and the fundamental connection of those places to our
daily lives.”
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