Technology can cause 'environmental amnesia'

Modern technology can provide unprecedented access to images and recreations of nature, but it can’t offer the same benefits as interactions with the real thing, according to researchers at the University of Washington.

In fact, they warn, relying too much on technology to provide a window into nature could lead to “environmental amnesia.”

Developmental psychologist Peter Kahn and two graduate students conducted several experiments to assess how people respond to technology-based views of nature compared to real nature. In one study, they found people dealt better with low-level stress by looking out a window with a view of nature than by viewing a high-definition television scene of nature. In another, they found that, while children treat robot dogs as actual beings, their interactions were not as social or deep as those with real dogs.

“Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children’s interactions with biologically live pets,” said graduate student Jolina Ruckert. “The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call environmental generational amnesia.”

Kahn compared the problem to the efforts to warn people about the threat of climate change. However, he said, technological nature can prove more insidious. “People might think that if technological nature is partly good that that’s good enough,” he said. “But it’s not. Because across generations what will happen is that the good enough will become the good. If we don’t change course, it will impoverish us as a species.”