Can Smartphones Actually Enable Teens To Get Outside? How Tech Is Empowering Youth To 'Touch Grass'

Can Smartphones Actually Enable Teens To Get Outside? How Tech Is Empowering Youth To 'Touch Grass'

Can Smartphones Actually Enable Teens To Get Outside? How Tech Is Empowering Youth To 'Touch Grass' Screens — and technology more generally — are often seen to be at odds with engagement and connection with nature. Teenagers are implored to put down their phones and go outside instead. This is a key premise in recently announced measures by the U.K. government to “to reconnect young people with the world around them”. Funding for youth clubs and after-school activities is intended to remedy a situation in which young people are “stuck in their bedrooms or behind a screen." Certainly, investment in youth activities, especially those which support young people to build their relationships with nature, is necessary and welcome. But viewing these as merely an antidote to chronic screen use is missing the point entirely. Screens can be an important part of how young people interact with and understand the natural world. Those screens might be the very key to getting teenagers out …