Last Child in the Woods

For my AP Environmental class, we were encouraged to read books regarding the relationship between kids in today's society and cellphone use, describing how this impacts their connection towards nature as well. In today’s day and age, everyone know that technology is improving and increasing in popularity by a ridiculous amount. Technology rules our lives: for the most part, everything we do is dependent on our cellphones. The terrible thing is, this is starting at a very young age for kids. Kids are now getting iPhones and Instagrams and Twitters at age 7, when I didn’t even own a flip phone at that age. The early exposure to technology is having a detrimental effect on these kids which Richard Louv emphasizes in his novel, “Last Child in the Woods”. His novel focuses on the staggering divide between the outdoors and children, linking the extreme lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to disturbing childhood trends which include obesity, attention disorders, and depression at surprisingly lower and lower ages. Louv refers to this national epidemic as nature-deficit, the phenomenon of children spending less levels outdoors, which results in a wide range of behavioral problems. Louv brings together a growing body of research that suggest exposure to nature is essential for a healthy childhood development, not to include physical and emotional health of children and adults. He offers practical solutions and simple ways we can fix to heal the broken bond regarding children and lack of nature. This was a great read and extremely informative, I definitely recommend it to anyone interested learning about these topics.