If you’re reading this column online right now, you probably don’t care about the environment.

At least The National Academy of Sciences thinks so. The academy performed a study that showed a decline in ‘nature participation’ has caused people to put less value in nature. The main culprit, according to the study? Videophilia.

Videophilia is the scientific name for a love of sitting at your computer or TV, playing video games, browsing the Web, watching a clip on YouTube, etc. That’s right, video clips of hilarious cats are reducing the amount you care about conserving biodiversity.

OK, that may be a bit extreme, but videophilia is a legitimate scientific word and phenomenon. Its documented effects include obesity, weak social skills, learning disorders and poor school performance, and videophilia is especially damaging to youngsters as well.

In fact, videophilia affects a large part of the population – a number that surely grows every year as more children are brought up in a computers-centric society – and doesn’t need to turn you into a Dungeons & Dragons playing fifth-level dark mage in order to have an adverse affect on the ecosystem.

In a way, it’s a subconscious mob mentality. A collective amnesia. It says the more our culture migrates toward a digital existence, the less attention we’ll pay to what’s outside our window. In a real way, our virtual world is affecting our actual world.

The study examined the link between computer, TV, electronics usage and statistics on various outdoor activities collected from The National Park’s system, and the outlook is not good.

More time online equates to less time outside, and the study shows that link leads to a decrease in caring about environmental issues like conservation, biodiversity and the ecosystem.

I’m sure I agree. While I readily admit to my marathon computer usage sessions, I try to be active outdoors year-round as well. However, I have noticed firsthand my own lack of motivation to do things outside, and have seen my exercise routine drop dramatically when I began to spend a lot more time on my computer for class, work and funny cat videos.

My belief is that any way you slice it, the more we as a culture use technology, the worse off our planet will be. Not only will overuse of the virtual realm lead toward a lack of knowledge and an apathy of all things outdoors, this only will compound as time goes on.

The reason I like hiking, biking, climbing and boarding so much is because I had parents who liked those things. However, my father also loves gadgets, gizmos and computers, but not all people have that balance. While our generation is often criticized and stereotyped as the ‘Facebook’ or ‘MySpace’ generation, most of us didn’t even use the Internet or a computer regularly until high school or college.

Think of your younger siblings or cousins and how young they were when they started using computers. Odds are it was way earlier than you.

So now it seems the more our population grows, the more messed up our planet becomes. After all, future generations will care less and less about the environment until we live in a barren wasteland that looks like the moon, or New Jersey.

But that’s not all. Along with our culture’s technology fetish comes the byproducts of the industry itself, and believe me, there is no computer out there that is environmentally friendly when you’re throwing it out.

My prediction is it’s not just apathy, but the pollution from our brain-implanted supercomputers that will incur the death throes of our environment. So what do we do? Well luckily it’s not black or white. The key, I would assume, is moderation.

Thank goodness America is known for its moderation.

A.J. Chavar is a tech columnist for The Daily Orange where his columns appear every Wednesday. He can also be pretty sarcastic when he wants to. E-mail him pictures of you being naughty with the environment (or comments) at ajchavar@syr.edu.

Computer Usage versus Time outdoors

To prevent a dystopian Mad-Max-like future, you’ll need to balance your computer and television time with outdoor activities that benefit you and the environment.

For your health, I have made a simple (non-scientific) conversion scale.

For every. . .

5 hours of TV, go for a 30-60 minute walk.

3 hours spent on YouTube, ride your bike to campus for a day.

1 hour spent on Facebook, get exercise by stalking someone in real life.

1 hour on MySpace, delete your MySpace account.

1 movie that you see, smell some flowers next time you walk to class (wait till spring)

6 hours you spend listening to iTunes and uploading photos from the weekend, plant a tree.

48 hour World of Warcraft binge, donate $1000 of your money (or your guild’s money) to a National Park.

compiled by AJ Chavar

Published on February 5, 2008 at 12:00 pm