Americans prefer video to national parks: study
Well, duh. Sometimes I wonder who they have running studies – they seem to keep coming to obvious conclusions.
The data, based on government statistics and other sources, were taken as a proxy for interest in nature in general.
That doesn’t seem quite right. I have more interest in nature in general than in national parks, if only because national parks generally require planned trips over longer distances. I’d much rather go to a local stable and rent a horse for a trail ride than drive or fly to another state to traipse through the woods. Horses are more fun. On the other hand, I don’t much like the outdoors because my fair skin burns very easily, and because the mosquitoes seem to love me, and because I really hate bugs/spiders/snakes.
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.
Other possible explanations such as family income or the aging population were ruled out.
They may be oversimplifying by leaving income out of it, particularly as fuel prices were being factored in. However, I find myself wondering – why do we really need to have a study on this? Unless we can encourage the federal government to sell some of these parks to private companies? I can’t imagine that all of them are in areas that would be popular for urban development, but large forests would likely be popular with the film industry, especially if they could get a better deal than what is available while the land is under federal control.
Frankly, though, I thought everyone knew our culture is obsessed with movies.
“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,” McCormick said.
He makes it sound as if children will never see plants again. Frankly, the biggest reason K-12 age children lose touch with the world outside is the fact that they ended outdoor recess in the school system! When I was a kid, we went outside at least once a day to play. Sometimes we played on the swings, sometimes we played soccer (and there’s a story, because I had to convince the boys to let me play with them – they didn’t want girls on the field), and sometimes we just ran around playing games we invented ourselves. There was sun, there was grass, and there was even a tree on the playground. If you want kids experiencing nature, you need to set aside a time to let them out and explore it on their own, without teachers hovering and telling them what to think or feel about it.
I grant there is a danger of losing touch with reality if we become too insulated within the worlds of cyberspace and audivisual recordings, but I wouldn’t say the national parks were the primary way of “staying in touch.” It makes a lot more sense for people to experience nature in their own backyards with gardens and pets and ponds.
