Nature Deficit Disorder in the UK: 25 Percent of British 10-Year-Olds Never Play Outside by Themselves

I used to work in various national parks. One thing we hated was the tourist kids, the Prisoners of the Backseat. Whining, mewling, shrieking, occasionally vomiting–we thought they were remarkably bad-smelling little hominids. Sticky, too, should one happen to touch you. Yuck. We considered them beneath our notice, and were most pleased when they never left the backseat.

It was only quite some time later that I came to see the error in my thinking. But now, I’m not alone in that. People are beginning to notice that kids nowadays don’t get out much; in fact, I took the title of this entry from an entire book on the phenomenon (Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv). We covered the issue in EarthFirst here. It pops up all over now, as in this story from Great Britain that we found in the Daily Mail:

[A] quarter of all children between eight and 10 have never played outside without adult supervision.

Ministers are concerned that children now have fewer opportunities than ever to play outdoors thanks to over-zealous health and safety crackdowns and a “no ball games here” culture….

Research has found that the average age at which children are allowed outside without adult supervision has risen from around seven years in the 1960s and 70s to just over eight years now.

One in three parents will not even allow older children, aged eight to 17, to play outside the house or garden.

It’s not clear what effect this is all going to have on a child’s brain. One can only speculate. But I understand now that those vile kids in the backseat, the ones we used to curse, were the future of the national parks. In the coming years, if they don’t care about the parks, no one else will. I hope someone occasionally opened up the car door and let them out.

Link: [The Daily Mail]

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