Losing the Forest for the Screens

There is no better app for connecting with the natural world than not having one.

I’M GETTING USED TO IT NOW: My neighbors often fail to notice me when I greet them on the sidewalk. They walk head down, staring at or fidgeting with a small hand-held object. It’s a new human behavior. Everywhere, anywhere, all the time, anytime, people are oblivious to their physical surroundings, their attention sucked into a three-by-five-inch screen.

In decades past we had a different attention stealer: television. But TV was an indoor phenomenon. When parents deemed their kids’ eyes were too glued to the set, they could turn it off and encourage the kids to go outside. And up until about a decade ago, when kids explored vacant lots, fields, canyons, beaches, parks, and other wild spaces, they met the outdoors more or less on its own terms. The smartphone — which lets people watch television, read the latest news, post to social media, and much, much more wherever they may be — has changed that relationship.

There is considerable evidence that smartphones may be undermining the benefits of human interaction. Less is known about whether pervasive, compulsive screen use outdoors might negatively affect the already tenuous relationship between humans and nature. But it’s easy to infer from existing research that the attention-diverting power of hand-held screens poses threats to at least two valuable results of human interaction with the natural environment: the appreciation of nature and the therapeutic benefits it provides.

Empirical research in environmental psychology indicates that the most important factor in producing pro-environmental attitudes, norms, and behaviors in people is immersive experiences in natural settings, especially when young. These experiences can foster lifelong nature appreciation. Valuing things such as a darting squirrel, the rush of wind in the trees, or the crimson evening light on a mountain peak presupposes noticing them in the first place. With smartphones, the degree to which humans reflexively ignore their physical surroundings is historically unprecedented, at a time when we need more, not less, connection to the natural environment.

Research also shows that immersion in a natural setting encourages reflection, restores concentration, and is calming. Smartphones have almost exactly the opposite effect, providing non-stop stimulation that fragments our attention and often contributes to anxiety. This suggests that many of the psychological benefits of spending time in nature may be blocked by outdoor smartphone use.

A growing number of phone-based apps — from those that help users identify plants, birds, and constellations to those that enlist citizens in scientific research — claim to connect humans and nature. Take Plantsnap.com, which allows users to take a photo of a plant and have it identified instantly.

Technological advancement promises greater speed, ease, and convenience, but it is also important to recognize and respect ethical and aesthetic limits to the technological mindset.

The company’s mission statement is fairly typical: “We want to recreate the connection between people and the amazing natural world around us. Because we believe technology is the answer, we created PlantSnap as the digital interface to bring people and nature together.”

Claims like these are dubious. It is likely that such apps connect people to their digital device more than to the natural world around them, given the compulsive manner in which such devices are typically used. Unlike books or pamphlets, which are discrete, single-purpose objects, smartphones and tablets are inherently networked and multipurpose. They have a high tendency to distract, redirect, and hold our gaze. Screens offering endless rabbit holes of information and entertainment easily compete with our attention for the stillness of a mountain lake, the music of bird song, or clouds drifting over a ridge.

The idea of connecting people to nature through a digital interface is also insidious. With perverse irony, some digital platforms claim to connect people to nature by directly incorporating digital space into the outdoor experience. For example, take Agents of Discovery, “an educational mobile game and game-making platform that uses augmented reality and location-based ‘challenges’ to get people active and exploring their communities and wild places,” including national parks, national monuments, and national forests across the country.

The game is ostensibly intended to get over-technologized youth into the great outdoors, where, by using the geo-location of their phone, they are assigned “missions” specific to their location. What it does, however, is keep digital devices switched on in the outdoors by superimposing virtual images and digital information over real-world objects, thereby pandering to screen addiction and gadget-mania. Such use of screens undermines kids’ appreciative capacities for the natural world by tethering them to their phones and tablets and squanders a great learning opportunity. And if kids are already addicted to video games or can’t put down their smartphones, then getting them to unplug in the backcountry for a week is probably the mission they need most.

If we accept the mindset that “technology is the answer” in the context of nature appreciation, then the logical endpoint of our connection to the natural world will eventually be the “virtual reality” of forests, grasslands, and mountains in 3-D, HD, and 360-degree wraparound while hiking on a treadmill in our living room. There is nothing in the logic of the technology itself that prevents this outcome. Technological advancement promises greater speed, ease, and convenience, but it is also important to recognize and respect ethical and aesthetic limits to the technological mindset.

It is possible to balance speed and convenience with other important values. For example, growing automobile ownership during the 1940s and 1950s greatly increased visitation to National Parks and helped popularize camping and backpacking. However, the same generation also soon recognized that car culture posed a threat to parks and protected areas. These concerns helped spawn the Wilderness Act of 1964, which established a new, stricter standard for nature area protection. A key determinant of “wilderness character” is distance from roads. The values of wilderness, not the needs of the automobile industry, took priority.

Likewise, we need to recognize the threat of screen culture to the human-nature relationship, even though it is not the kind of threat that requires legislation. We can voluntarily treat distance from hand-held screens as a key determinant of appreciating the sound of a waterfall, the sight of wildflowers in a meadow, or the scent of sun-baked pine. These things need no augmentation. In fact, there is no better app for connecting with the natural world than not having one.