Outdoor Recreation: Overview

Introduction

Behavioral scientists and health experts have noted two trends among children and teenagers in the early twenty-first century. The first is that they have been spending considerably more time engaging with technology and being exposed to media influences than in the past. The developmental and social effects of this trend on young people continued to become increasingly clear during the twenty-first century, and it is widely believed that increased exposure to technology like smartphones and social media correspond to negative behavioral problems, including rising rates of anxiety and depression. On the other hand, use of cutting-edge communications technology teaches proficiencies that will likely be valuable later in their lives.

The second trend tracked by experts has been the decreasing amount of time that young people spend engaged in outdoor recreation. Although the amount of time spent engaged in outdoor activities had gone down for all age groups during the early 2000s, interest in outdoor recreation began to rise again following the COVID-19 pandemic, when participation in activities like cycling and hiking surged amid closures of many indoor spaces. However, outdoor recreation among young people has continued to decline in popularity. This decrease in time spent in outdoor activity, and increase in indoor screen time, has put young people at risk for increased levels of obesity, physical weakness, and respiratory problems such as asthma. It may also contribute to social maladjustment, attention deficit disorder, and hyperactivity.

Understanding the Discussion

Childhood obesity: A condition of being seriously overweight. In children, it is computed in terms of body mass index (BMI), which is a ratio based on height and weight. Obesity in children is defined as being above the ninety-fifth percentile of BMI for a specific age and sex category.

Outdoor recreation: A wide category of recreational sporting activities that are enjoyed outside, often in park or wilderness settings. The Outdoor Foundation defines 114 outdoor recreational activities, including running, biking, hiking, skiing, canoeing, mountain climbing, archery, and so on.

Public health: The practice of analyzing diseases, epidemics, and dangers in terms of how they affect populations, not just individuals. Many medical experts consider obesity to be a major public health concern.

History

The Kaiser Family Foundation tracked media behavior among young people for over a decade, and released significant reports in 1999, 2004, and 2009. These studies measured exposure to media such as television, music, computers, and video games among youth aged eight to eighteen. Perhaps the most striking finding of this series of studies was the increased rate of media consumption among young people in the second five-year span. In 1999, this youth demographic was calculated to have spent an average of six hours and nineteen minutes per day exposed to media. In 2004, this number went up to six hours and twenty-one minutes per day. In 2009, by contrast, the demographic spent an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes a day engaged in media consumption. This represents an increase of over 20 percent in the same five-year span. Moreover, the 2009 group commonly consumed more than one form of media at the same time, such as listening to music while using the computer. When this simultaneous media use was considered, it became clear that the 2009 group was actually exposed to eight hours and thirty-three minutes of media a day, more than the average adult spends at work. These figures represent an increase of over 34 percent from the study’s findings in 1999.

The Kaiser Family Foundation report also included clues to how technology use affects behavior in school and social adjustment. It found that only 51 percent of heavy users generally achieved the top two (A or B) grades in school, compared to 66 percent of light users. An even greater divide was noted between heavy users and light users receiving lower grades (C or below). Additionally, 60 percent of heavy technology users were more likely than their light-using peers to report being bored and less likely to enjoy school. Heavy users were reportedly much more likely to get in trouble frequently and slightly more likely to feel unhappy. The study also noted potential correlations between technology use, friendships, and parent-child relationships. However, the researchers explained that these statistical observations cannot be taken as signs of a cause-and-effect relationship between exposure to media technology and academic success or personal satisfaction.

Some analysts of young people’s use of media technology concluded that the Kaiser Family Foundation study was incomplete. It found that in 2009, around 20 percent of media consumption happened on mobile devices, such as cell phones, which young people used to talk for about half an hour every day, and on which they watched or listened to media for over forty-five minutes a day. However, this figure did not include texting, which accounted for a significant amount of daily technology use among this youth demographic. A 2010 Pew Research Center report found that 54 percent of teens texted daily in 2009, that 50 percent sent fifty or more texts per day, and that 33 percent sent over one hundred texts per day. The Pew Research report concluded that texting was the primary means by which teens interacted with their friends, surpassing even face-to-face contact, a trend that would continue to grow over the subsequent decades as smartphones became ubiquitous in American culture.

The rise in media technology use by young people corresponded with, and arguably caused, a decrease in the amount of time this demographic spent engaged in outdoor activities in the early 2000s. The Outdoor Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching outdoor recreation trends in the United States, has researched this phenomenon since 2006, surveying 40,000 Americans ages six and up. The Outdoor Foundation reports tracked a significant decline in outdoor youth activity over a four-year period. In 2006, 78 percent of young people aged six to twelve reported participating in outdoor recreation activity. By 2008, this number had decreased to 64 percent, causing alarm among public health analysts. In 2009, only 62 percent of this same age group reported outdoor activity participation. Although the smaller drop from 64 to 62 percent between 2008 and 2009 may represent a slowing of this downward trend in outdoor youth recreation, it remained clear that something had dramatically changed in the lives of young people during this period.

The Outdoor Foundation reports also demonstrated a strong social component to young people’s outdoor recreation. For younger children, participation is most influenced by their parents. For children six to twelve, 42 percent stated that parental participation influenced them to engage in outdoor recreation. For children over twelve, the participation of friends was a more important factor in choosing how to spend free time. Exposure to physical education class in school also emerged as a meaningful factor, with a significant percentage of children and teenagers who participated in outdoor recreation saying they had attended PE classes. One notable finding of the Outdoor Foundation reports was that people develop interests in outdoor activities when they are young. Young people under eighteen have always been the most active in outdoor recreation, relative to other age groups. As early exposure to such activities dwindles, health experts worried that the dramatic decrease that began in 2006 would show a corresponding drop in overall levels of adult participation.

The Outdoor Foundation studies consistently found a strong correlation between participation in outdoor recreation and fitness and health among young people. Those who had at least some level of participation in outdoor activities reported an average fitness level of 6.4 out of 10. In contrast, those who did not participate in outdoor activities averaged only 5.1 out of 10. Outdoor recreation also seems to have significant benefits for overall quality of health. Outdoor recreation participants rated their overall health at an average of 7.5 out of 10, whereas nonparticipants were only at 6.5 out of 10.

At the same time, obesity among young people rose during the early 2000s. A major public health crisis, obesity in childhood is strongly correlated to obesity in adulthood, and children of parents with obesity are generally considered to be more at risk of obesity themselves. Obesity is a major risk factor in a number of serious diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and asthma. In the United States, significant costs are associated with obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity levels have increased dramatically since the 1980s. In its 2007–8 report, the CDC stated that approximately 17 percent of children of all ages were obese. Among preschool children (two to five years) the rate went up from 5 to 10.4 percent. For ages six to eleven, this jumped from 6.5 to 19.6 percent. Among teenagers, obesity rose from 5 to 18.1 percent between 1976 and 2008.

Outdoor Recreation Today

Many of the trends that began with the increase in smartphones and other technology during the early 2000s continued into the twenty-first century and became even more significant, exacerbated by the rise in popularity of social media. The Pew Research Center reported in its 2023 Teens, Social Media and Technology report that nearly all teens had access to a smartphone by 2023 and that the number of teens who reported being online "almost constantly" doubled between 2014 and 2023, from about 24 percent to 46 percent. Similarly, rates of obesity continued to increase among both children and adults in the US. According to the CDC, in 2020, 18.5 percent of children and adolescents were considered obese and 41.9 percent of adults over the age of nineteen were obese.

One bright spot of the COVID-19 pandemic was that the number of Americans participating in outdoor recreation increased, even as pandemic safety restrictions limited indoor entertainment such as sporting events. According to the Outdoor Foundation's 2023 Outdoor Participation Trends Report, a record 168.1 million, or 55 percent of, Americans ages six and older took part in outdoor recreational activities at least once in 2022. The number of participants had grown by over 7 percent since the pandemic began in March 2020. However, the Outdoor Foundation also noted that while the number of participants had increased, the overall frequency of outdoor recreational activities was "declining significantly." Furthermore, the number of high-frequency participants, those who took part in outdoor activities fifty-one times or more each year, had declined from 99.5 million in 2007 to 96.4 million in 2021. Another key finding of the 2023 report was that first-time outdoor participants were more diverse in terms of ethnicity and age group than outdoor participants overall.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

Bibliography

“Active Healthy Living: Prevention of Childhood Obesity through Increased Physical Activity.” Pediatrics, vol. 117, no. 5, 2006, pp. 1834–1842. Accessed 14 Aug. 2012.

Anderson, Monica, et al. "Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023." Pew Research Center, 11 Dec. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/12/11/teens-social-media-and-technology-2023/. Accessed 21 May 2024.

Carey, John. “Nature’s Long-Term Benefits.” National Wildlife, Nov. 2013. Points of View Reference Center. Accessed 3 Dec. 2014.

“Childhood Obesity Facts.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 Apr. 2024, www.cdc.gov/obesity/php/data-research/childhood-obesity-facts.html. Accessed 21 May 2024.

“Fact Sheet: Children’s Health and Nature.” National Environmental Education Foundation, 24 Apr. 2020, www.neefusa.org/sites/default/files/resources/NEEF-Childrens-Health-and-Nature-Fact-Sheet-2020.pdf. Accessed 21 May 2024.

Ghimire, Ramesh, et al. “An Analysis of Perceived Constraints to Outdoor Recreation.” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, vol. 32, no. 4, 2014, pp. 52–67. Academic Search Complete. Accessed 3 Dec. 2014.

Lenhart, Amanda, et al. “Teens and Mobile Phones.” Pew Research Center, 20 Apr. 2010. Accessed 15 Aug. 2012.

Millar, Heather. “Letting Children Go Wild.” National Wildlife, vol. 51, no. 1. Points of View Reference Center. Accessed 10 Nov. 2015.

Ogden, Cynthia, and Margaret Carroll. Prevalence of Obesity among Children and Adolescents: United States, Trends 1963–1965 through 2007–2008. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 2010.

Rideout, Victoria, Ulla G. Foehr, and Donald F. Roberts. Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds; A Kaiser Family Foundation Study. Menlo Park: Kaiser, 2010.

2022 Outdoor Participation Trends Report. Outdoor Foundation, 2022, outdoorindustry.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2022-Outdoor-Participation-Trends-Report-1.pdf. Accessed 21 Sept. 2023.