
Children who play outside more likely to protect nature as adults - devinp
http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11370.html
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spodek
Saying playing outside leads to protecting nature implies they take effort
from the norm.

I prefer to look at playing outdoors and caring about nature as normal, so I'd
restate it as " _Keeping children indoors too much leads them to harm the
environment more as adults._ "

Anyone can define "normal" for themselves how they want. I find this
perspective leads to going outside more and caring more about the environment.

~~~
mc32
Does this mean that the most vociferous protectors of the environment may come
from farming and rural areas where kids pretty much spend the majority of
their free time outdoors?

I'm not sure there is a connection, or maybe this speaks only to people who
are generally removed from nature and only see it in spurts?

In any event, the more conservationist (within reason) the better --just not
sure these results mean much.

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HenryBemis
There is also a misconception of what "nature" is. Mega-city-dwellers going
for a walk to a park and throwing their empty-soda-can in a bin, think they
are "doing nature good".

If they take a step back and look around they will notice that this human-made
"nature" which consumes massive amounts of water, to sustain the
defined/controlled (human-made) beauty, and think to themselves "oh nature is
perfect, oh how well I am protecting it!".

I don't know many city-dwellers that actually go for a hike on a real mountain
to be in/with nature (and not some 5-star-hotel-private-beach or human-made
green path).

~~~
grardb
I think there's an even bigger misconception of what "protecting nature" is. I
grew up in New York and now live in LA, and I can guarantee you that I do more
to "protect nature" than the average suburbanite/exurbanite/rural
person/whatever:

1\. I'm a vegetarian, potentially transitioning to veganism.

2\. I don't own a car; I mostly take public transit.

3\. I take recycling and composting very seriously.

4\. I pay attention to my purchases (e.g. I don't buy nuts like pistachios and
almonds due to California's drought).

I could go on, but you get the point.

I realize that I'm probably an outlier, but I would argue that many of us
city-dwellers have a head start on "protecting the environment." As a sibling
comment said, living in an urban area is more efficient by default, so I'm
curious to know what lifestyle choices are made by non-city dwellers en masse
that makes you think we are at a disadvantage? A public park might require
tons of water to sustain, but so do golf courses, people's front lawns, and
plenty of similar things typically found outside of cities. Aside from all of
this, one chicken egg requires around 50 gallons of water to produce, so I'm
sure that if you calculated the water needed to sustain non-vegan diets, the
"cost" of upkeep for parks, golf courses, etc. would be negligible.

Not to mention that having low-density, sprawled-out communities literally
inside forests (or deserts, or other biomes) is not good for the ecosystem
either.

~~~
VLM
"A public park might require tons of water to sustain"

Living large in the burbs east of the Mississippi causes less environmental
damage than even the most ascetic life imaginable west of the Mississippi.
More water falls from the skies, for free, without pumping, than we know what
to do with... In theory public parks and front yards in the west could be
xeriscape-d but in practice they seem to mostly try to emulate golf courses in
Florida leading to massive water use in a desert.

~~~
pvaldes
Only if badly designed. Plants store water, shadow the soil and keep the water
in the area. A park "creates" its own water.

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pm90
Anecdotally, it worked for me. My parents did not have the money to purchase
even a computer; the TV which we had was limited to 20 channels. So I ended up
spending a lot of time outside, playing outdoors, exploring nooks and crannies
of our mixed urban neighborhood. What made an immense impact on me was just
how polluted with trash/garbage a lot of the city was (Mumbai, India). So
there was no need for a teacher to tell me to not litter; I could see what
effect cumulative littering had on the environment.

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kleiba
My buddies and I used to play outdoors whenever the weather allowed as kids.
My mom would literally kick me out if I stayed inside on a nice day.

These days, when I walk through the streets of my neighborhood, I don't ever
see any kids play outside, even on the sunniest of days.

In parts I see that one of the reason for that may be that a lot of the open
space we used to have as kids have been built on since. There was an empty lot
to both sides of my parents house in my childhood with trees on them that we
used to climb all the time, surrounded by a wire mesh fence that was used as
our soccer goal. This space is gone, and I wouldn't even know where kids
should even play in my parents' street.

But then, there's also a playground close to my grandparents' house that was
always inhabited by children back in the day. It got renovated a couple of
years ago and is arguably much nice today than it was, yet I _never_ see
anyone there.

Of course, the families that live in that areas had kids at around the same
time that my parents did, so it wouldn't be surprising if not a lot of
children lived in that area today. Perhaps I will have to wait another
generation before younger families move in that area again?

But there are parts of the town where I live that are less old and where I
know that young families live there. Still, no kids in the street, as far as I
can see.

~~~
crooked-v
A bigger factor than lack of open space would probably be things like parents
getting accused of neglect for letting their kids be outside by themselves.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parents...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parents-
investigated-letting-children-walk-alone/25700823/)

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DoodleBuggy
Source study

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/australian-
journal-o...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/australian-journal-of-
environmental-education/article/div-classtitleexploring-the-relations-between-
childhood-experiences-in-nature-and-young-adults-environmental-attitudes-and-
behavioursdiv/029FC630519229DA5744DBFC257C0EA1)

I don't find this surprising. If you have a closer connection to something,
you tend to value it more.

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tradersam
I'm curious to know if there is a correlation between climate change deniers
and playing outside as well.

~~~
arketyp
Would that, so to speak, be a negative correlation? Seeing how today the no-
questions-asked progressive dogma of the deepest concrete city dwellers seems
to be to accept even the worst painted climate change scenarios.

~~~
crooked-v
For city dwellers, seeing the negative effect of mankind on the environment is
as simple as leaving a window open in summer and having to regularly wipe a
coating of black dust off the windowsill.

~~~
arketyp
Yes. I would guess, because of this, city dwellers are more susceptible to the
idea of anthropogenic effects, while people in rural areas in contrast are
used to witnessing a more resilient character in nature.

~~~
sudojudo
Rural anecdote from the northwest:

The stream I played in as a kid is now polluted by a feed lot. Cattle are
everywhere. Invasive weeds are also everywhere. Native insects are dying off,
while their replacements decimate forests, one mountain at a time, heading
north. The rivers and streams are full of plastic and algal bloom. Finding a
tree that's more than fifty years old is neat. There was a giant fish die-off
in the rivers last year. Everyone wants a few acres of their own, but they
also want water and sewer, in a nice neighborhood, not too far from town.
Subdivisions even trump cattle, the only thing that will beat those out is a
natural resource that can be exploited. There are a dozen other environmental
issues I could extrapolate on, that are happening just outside my back door,
and I live in BFE.

Good times in rural America, nature is really holding up.

This whole city vs. country argument is silly. It's not another species out
here; some people care about the environment and some don't, just like
anywhere. Will rural populations stay behind the curve on some issues? Of
course, but they're still people, like you.

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gitpusher
"The correlations between expressed views about caring for the environment and
environmentally friendly actions were surprising, however, as actions did not
necessarily align with beliefs."

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Razengan
I almost never played outside, and I didn't even grow up around "nature" — in
garbage-plagued cities, in fact, but maybe that has made me want to protect
nature anyway.

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jaequery
this more like playing basketball makes you more likely to become a
professional basketball player. i mean, cmon.

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the-dude
Nice result. It feels good too.

