Getting Outdoors Reduces Smartphone Use—But Only If You Go Wild
hubie writes:
Nature can curb smartphone use, but go beyond your local park and find some wild nature:
While a visit to the great outdoors is a common prescription for reducing screen use, a pioneering new study finds that time outdoors doesn't always reduce smartphone screen time.
The new research, which tracked the smartphone activity of 700 study participants for two years, reveals that participants' smartphone activity actually increased during visits to city parks and other urban green spaces.
With smartphone use rising worldwide, the study identifies a powerful way to reduce screen time: participants who visited nature reserves or forests saw significant declines in screen time over the first three hours, compared to visits to urban locations for the same amount of time.
[...] "Green time, or time outdoors, has long been recommended as a way to restore our attention from the demands of daily life, yet before our study, little was known about whether nature provides a way for people to disconnect from the mobile devices that now follow us into the great outdoors," said lead author Kelton Minor at the Data Science Institute, Columbia University. "While past research suggested that short trips to city parks might provide a digital detox, we saw texting and phone calls actually go up. It was really the longer visits to wilder areas, like forests or nature preserves, that helped people get off their screens and wrest back their attention from their smartphones."
[...] Discussing their findings, the researchers theorize that urban greenspace may instead be useful in enhancing remote social ties-hence the increase in texts and phone calls in urban parks-but may interrupt the individual's opportunity to utilize the attention-restoring properties of nature.
Journal Reference:
Minor, K., Glavind, K. L., Schwartz, A. J., et al. (2023). Nature Exposure is Associated With Reduced Smartphone Use. Environment and Behavior, 55(3), 103-139. https://doi.org/10.1177/00139165231167165
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.