This experiment reinforces the ideas that being more exposed to nature does have significant health benefits on humans. Even though this experiment only focused on improved affect and cognition, it gives an easy to understand experimental design and produced results that clearly showed some benefits for people who are around nature more. I really enjoyed how the experiment was structured and also the tests the researchers used to measure the affect and cognition levels within the participants. The experimental tests really weren’t hard to understand, but still tested certain areas of the human brain such as memory, anxiety, and mood levels within the participants. People today always complain about their stress levels and poor mood, so maybe they just need to get outside more and stop staying indoors or in the office most of the time.
Another area of the study I found to be impressive was how the researchers pointed out some of the possible flaws within the experiment, which included the small and narrow sample size and also just focusing on one park being used in their study. Even the cognition tests weren’t absolutely perfect with their hypothesis and they brought that up within the paper saying that only some parts of cognition correlated positively with the nature walk group, while other parts seemed to have no benefits correlated to being exposed to nature. Looking towards the future, perhaps there should be larger scale experiments done in different areas of the United States to see if nature really improves health for people of all age groups across the country, and there might even be new benefits to health that we previously did not know of.
Today, more and more people are locking themselves indoors whether due to their jobs or the increase of new forms of technological entertainment. For a lot of children growing up today, they are spending more time on their technological devices and less time outdoors. Parents are also forcing them to go to more prep classes and other indoor activity instead of letting their kids just spend free time outdoors exploring what is around them. If these kids never experience the benefits of nature, as adults they also won’t know the benefits of nature towards their health and will likely live their whole life spending most of it indoors. It might be important for the education systems across the world to stress the importance of getting exposure to nature, so people will know what benefits they can receive from being outdoors.
