Program on the Environment

Technology use has become an addiction for many people, especially adolescents. This addiction negatively affects a person’s relationships, academic success, and overall health. Improving methods to educate and prevent the public from experiencing this addiction is extremely valuable in order to cultivate care for the environment, which in turn may improve mitigation efforts towards climate change issues. reSTART Life provided me with the opportunity to teach horticulture education to youth residential clients receiving therapy for technology addiction, while improving their curriculum as a deliverable. The aim of my research was to explore the relationship between environmental exposure and the amount of time using technology, and if either correlated with climate change knowledge.  For this study I created an online and in-person survey, and randomly collected responses from UW students. My results showed that students who spend more time outdoors tend to spend less time using their devices. I also found that higher amounts of outdoor exposure may not necessarily mean that students are likely to have more climate change knowledge. Instead, I discovered that students who spent more time using technology had more climate change knowledge than others. These unpredicted results are important to consider because they show that technology may be used as a tool to enhance climate change knowledge. This may also serve as a method to influence increased outdoor exposure to enhance human-nature connections and encourage climate change action.