Attendance has been falling at America’s National Parks since 1987. Blame videophilia, says a Nature Conservancy report.

Videophilia is the love of electronic media. Those screens may be showing Internet, video games, movies or just plain TV. Young Americans are so glued to video that many rarely venture into the natural world outside. That troubles environmentalists, who see a growing estrangement from nature in high-tech societies. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the new study reported a similar trend in Japan and Spain. [...]

Author Richard Louv sees this as a sickness and has a name for it: “nature deficit disorder.”

Parents don’t encourage leisurely exploration of undeveloped landscapes. Some feel it wastes precious time.

“They’re afraid that if they don’t get the kids in Suzuki violin lessons they won’t get into Harvard,” said Louv, who wrote a book on nature-poor upbringings, “Last Child in the Woods.”

Many parents also have a primal fear that a child in the wilds will be kidnapped or otherwise victimized by adults. Such cases are very rare, but the cable channels grab them and play the stories over and over - suggesting an epidemic of crime against children. As a result, Louv says, entire generations are being raised under “protective house arrest.” [link]