Children's growing disconnection from nature raises concerns over emotional and developmental health

As screen time eclipses outdoor play, experts warn that children’s limited contact with the natural world risks impairing their physical, emotional, and cognitive development, prompting calls for renewed focus on outdoor activities in childhood.

A child who cannot bear the sight of an insect in a school garden may sound like a one-off classroom episode. Yet, as Angéla Stipkovits argues in an edited extract from HVG Könyvek’s “Láthatatlan szálak”, it can also be a warning sign of how far many children have drifted from direct contact with the natural world. In her account, the boy’s panic during an outdoor story session was not linked to a traumatic incident, but to a family life in which journeys were made by car, outings into nature were rare and even school trips were avoided.

That distance matters, she writes, because children cannot easily build a healthy relationship with their surroundings if they spend little time outdoors. Stipkovits says teachers now have to work harder than ever to create those encounters, despite forest schools, sustainability projects, themed camps and school gardens. She points to survey data from May 2025 showing that children aged eight to 12 spend more than five and a half hours a day in front of screens, while teenagers average eight hours. Against that backdrop, time in the open air appears to be shrinking, even as children’s digital lives expand.

The concern is not simply that children are missing fresh air. According to the edited book extract, some pupils struggle to judge distances, move confidently through uneven ground or understand the limits of their own bodies when they are taken into natural settings. Teachers report falls and collisions with branches, stones and mounds, problems that become less common when children are given more time for unstructured play outdoors. The book argues that activities once considered ordinary , climbing trees, building dens, hiding among the undergrowth and learning how to move safely in space , are now unfamiliar to many children.

Research cited in the article suggests that the effects may reach further than clumsiness or inexperience. A doctoral study by Somogyi Angéla found that many urban Hungarian children did not draw nature-based images when asked to imagine a safe place after a relaxation exercise in a forest school, and that emotional responses to the natural environment were often muted or absent. The article also says children interviewed in the study struggled to describe experiences such as rolling in grass or walking through autumn leaves, and many admitted they did not go on family hikes. The broader picture, Stipkovits writes, is one of growing emotional and psychological distance from the natural world.

That concern is echoed by international research. The US National Park Service says time outdoors can improve concentration and support attention in children, while the Children & Nature Network links nature exposure with better mood, healthier activity levels and stronger immune function. A systematic review in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found small but positive cognitive effects from nature exposure in experimental studies, particularly in attention and executive function, and a separate review in PLOS One associated “green time” with lower stress and anxiety. Another meta-analysis in the same field found that exposure to nature can improve self-regulation, including cognitive, emotional and behavioural control. Health officials in Minnesota likewise say even brief periods in natural settings can ease stress and lift mood. Stipkovits presents that body of evidence as part of a broader argument: if children are to develop resilience, better self-control and a healthier sense of balance, the natural world cannot remain an optional extra.