Dealing with "Nature Deficit Disorder"

If the drug addled counterculture of the '60's was the "tune in, turn on, drop out" generation according to psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, his observation decades later was that the "PC was the LSD of the 90's," and we now "turn on, boot  up, jack in."

Is our youth too hooked into a digitalized world?

The baby boomer generation may very well be the last generation to have played freely outdoors. In Richard Louv's book Last Child in The Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv says "we hear from teachers how the learning capacity of children, especially the ones who have the most difficulty in the classroom, come alive in natural settings."

Generation X, 1965-1976, the first group to be herded into the great indoors, witnessed the birth of the PC and won't live without this baby. The Millennials, 1977-1998, attended institutional day care and harbored irrelevance toward authority, while they grew along with the internet. Generation Z, 1998-2000+  are "digital natives"; they don't know life before mass technology.

While technology has its place in our increasingly complex, globally reaching society, bringing information from around the world quickly to the fore, it should not replace face-to-face play, or, dare I say, skirmishes that take place when kids  interact outside on the playground.

In his book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future,Mark Bauerlein cautions, "Technology and the digital culture are not broadening the horizon of the younger generation; they are narrowing it to a self-absorbed social universe that blocks out virtually everything else.

So, what to do? Make your reality a trip into the great outdoors. Grab your bicycles and head to  Heritage Park in Mount Sinai; jog or walk while the kids bike ahead. It is such a wide open space you can see them from far away.

At the Holtsville Ecology Center, kids and their parents can commune with animals with whom they share the planet. Kids who form relationships with animals are kinder and gentler adults.

The simplest pleasures, like enjoying the environment and interacting with each other and animals may be just what we need to counteract the ill effects of modern life.

Use our local playgrounds like the one at Heritage Park, or Rocket Ship Park in Rocky Point and try your skills on the handball courts.

Make use of our ; we are lucky enough to be coastal dwellers and forget the beauty of these coveted vistas.

Implore your school district to allow our children access to the outdoors during school hours, bring back recess in Middle School as the Rocky Point School has done.

Take kids hiking, biking and swimming. Let them run, jump, swing and slide. When these activities are experienced away from a computer screen in the beauty of  nature, the memories are a scene that is awe inspiring.