Do today's kids have "nature-deficit disorder"?

A new book argues that children desperately need to be able to play in the woods -- and that our culture's sterile rejection of nature is harming them in body and soul.

by Sarah Karnasiewicz

Read more: Parenting, Obesity, Nature, Life

June 2, 2005 | In the not-so-distant past, kids ruled the country's woods and valleys -- running in packs, building secret forts and treehouses, hunting frogs and fish, playing hide-and-seek behind tall grasses. But in the last 30 years, says journalist Richard Louv, children of the digital age have become increasingly alienated from the natural world, with disastrous implications, not only for their physical fitness, but also for their long-term mental and spiritual heath.

In his new book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder," Louv argues that sensationalist media coverage and paranoid parents have literally "scared children straight out of the woods and fields," while promoting a litigious culture of fear that favors "safe" regimented sports over imaginative play. Well-meaning elementary school curricula may teach students everything there is to know about the Amazon rain forest's endangered species, but do little to encourage kids' personal relationship with the world outside their own doors. And advances in technology, while opening up a wealth of "virtual" experiences to the young, have made it easier and easier for children to spend less time outside.

Louv spent 10 years traveling around the country reporting and speaking to parents and children, in both rural and urban areas, about their experiences in nature. In "Last Child in the Woods," he pairs their anecdotes with a growing body of scientific research that suggests children who are given early and ongoing positive exposure to nature thrive in intellectual, spiritual and physical ways that their "shut-in" peers do not. By reducing stress, sharpening concentration, and promoting creative problem solving, "nature-play" is also emerging as a promising therapy for attention-deficit disorder and other childhood maladies. Indeed Louv, in both the book's title and content, suggests that while increased exposure to nature may prove a salve for many of the childhood disorders that now run rampant, the very ubiquity of those disorders is evidence that two generations of alienation from nature may have already resulted in considerable harm to our kids.

Louv recently visited Salon's New York office to discuss the correlation between the decline in kids' contact with nature and the rising obesity epidemic; the criminalization of old-fashioned play; and the simple pleasure of having dirty hands and wet feet.

What is nature-deficit disorder?

It's the cumulative effect of withdrawing nature from children's experiences, but not just individual children. Families too can show the symptoms -- increased feelings of stress, trouble paying attention, feelings of not being rooted in the world. So can communities, so can whole cities. Really, what I'm talking about is a disorder of society -- and children are victimized by it.

Why, in the age of ADHD, did you choose such a loaded name?

Because I do think it is a disorder, just one of society. I am very careful in the book not to give the suggestion that this is some kind of clinical diagnosis. Maybe someday it will be, but until the scientists come up with a better name, that's the one I'm using.

Is this just an urban problem, or does it affect children in suburban and rural areas as well?

For my research, I tried to cross every barrier I could think of -- for instance, I did interviews in more rural areas and suburban areas, like the one I grew up in outside Kansas City, which still has a lot of nature. I went in there thinking, Well, certainly if you have woods next to you, kids will be out in them. But that simply wasn't true. The parents and the kids there were saying the same things as kids in more urban areas. In fact, the amount of nature you have in New York City is actually better than some of the newer suburbs; imagine, today, a city building a Central Park.

A major study came out a few months ago that said that the rate of obesity in children is growing faster in rural areas than it is in cities and suburbs. Again, it seems counterintuitive. But it's not so counterintuitive when you think about the fact that the family farm is fairly nonexistent now. Kids in rural areas are playing the same video games, watching the same television, and they're on longer car rides.

Next page: Strangely, the obesity epidemic has coincided with the greatest increase in organized sports for children in history