High vulnerability of children’s wildlife-oriented outdoor activities to urbanization and digital media use

• We assessed the frequency of major nature-based activities among children across Japan. • Wildlife-related activities were less common in urbanized areas. • Other general recreational activities were more common in urbanized areas. • Urbanization likely alters the composition of people’s nature experiences. Children’s direct experiences with nature are crucial for their health, development, and the cultivation of pro-conservation attitudes and behavior. However, there is growing evidence that these experiences are declining across many regions worldwide, contributing to what is known as the extinction of experience. Urbanization and increased digital media use have been suggested as major drivers of this decline. While these factors likely affect different aspects of nature experiences in distinct ways, their differential impacts have yet to be formally tested. Using data from a nationwide survey of children’s and adolescents’ nature experiences in Japan, we investigated how urbanization and digital media use influence nature-based activities that require attention to and engagement with wildlife (wildlife-oriented outdoor activities) versus those that do not (general outdoor activities). We found that urbanization and digital media use reduce participation in wildlife-oriented outdoor activities, and that children in highly urbanized areas or with frequent smartphone use were less likely to engage in activities such as bird watching and insect catching. However, general outdoor activities like camping and wild swimming were more frequently reported among children living in more urbanized areas and those more engaged with digital media. These findings suggest that wildlife-related experiences are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of urbanization and increased digital media use compared to general outdoor activities, highlighting the need to consider the diversity of nature experiences when evaluating the extinction of experience and designing strategies to mitigate its impacts.