Nature-Based Education and Well-Being among Youth: Comparison
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TDuring recent decades, the world has changed radically, and people now live in an era of an abundance of information and contacts. The standard of living has never before been so high in many Western countries, but at the same time, the first quarter of the 21st century has been turbulent in many ways and is characterized by an increasingly harsh social climate. Public debate has hardened, and polarization has increased. The world and everyday life have changed significantly in a short time. These are aspects that also affect the everyday lives of our young people and, thus, their opportunities for well-being. The range of choices for young people has never been so wide as today, but this seems to come with a price, as our individual choices and actions are portrayed as crucial to our future. Many young people feel that it has become more difficult to make the right choices in life, and research shows that young adults are increasingly worried about their future. Many youths feel that there are too many possibilities and too many decisions that should be made, and they feel pressure that too much is required of them.

  • well-being
  • youth
  • resilience
  • nature-based activities
  • nature-based interventions

1. Why Is Young People’s Well-Being Deteriorating?

As we now actually live in a time surrounded by abundance [1], reading reports on the increasing problems with mental illness among children and youth raises many questions. As the well-being of youth is reported to decrease worldwide, according to Marselle et al. [2], who argue that mental illness is now considered to be the most common non-communicable disease in both America and Europe, it appears like there must be at least one global stressor. But is it due to an individualized society and societal factors, or is there a possibility that something called “nature-deficit disorder”, meaning negative effects appear when children do not spend enough time in nature [3], has become real? The “nature-deficit disorder” concept is characterized by both mental health and physical symptoms, including anxiety, depression and ADHD, that are caused or made worse by a lack of time spent outdoors, according to Richard Louv [3]. Louv coined the concept in the early 2000s, at a time when the concept felt somewhat excessive, but as the problems have escalated, it must be considered to contain some possible factors that are causing the negative trend in mental health among youth and children today.
According to several studies, it is especially in high-income countries such as the United Kingdom, the U.S., Finland, Norway and Sweden that adolescent mental well-being has deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the 21st century [4][5]. Interesting research [6] to put in relation to this claims that the IQ gains of the 20th century have faltered, and data from Scandinavia suggest that there has been an IQ decline in some of the advanced nations, which began in about 1995. Research suggests that the factors that caused the earlier gains in IQ in Scandinavia exhausted their potency in the mid-1990s. In these countries, the educational system is characterized as more advanced, and one hypothesis suggests that at a certain point, a country’s education might reach a limit in terms of producing more graduates with mental abilities that give high scores on IQ tests. This means that more-developed welfare states that provide good education for all have reached all the different socioeconomic classes, which makes everyone more equal and lessens class divisions [6].
The Public Health Authority in Sweden has investigated [7] which factors may have influenced the increase in mental illness among children and young people in Sweden based on different areas: factors within a family and the socio-economic conditions of a family, school and learning, and overall societal changes.

1.1. Societal Factors

At the same time, as IQs seem to have decreased in some welfare countries and there is an identified trend of declining psychological well-being, there are also indications of increasing school stress that seem to be particularly evident in high-income countries. According to research, this could be linked to both changes in schools and the surrounding society [5][8][9].
As research indicates that both mental well-being among youth and IQs have deteriorated since the mid-1990s in Scandinavia, it appears interesting to have a look at what happened in society in Scandinavia around the time when traces of the decline emerged. In the beginning of the 1990s, a deep recession hit large parts of the Western world, with the deepest parts in about 1991–1993, causing a significant proportion of bankruptcies, and this led to large amounts of unemployment in many countries [10][11][12].
There are those who argue that the recession traumatized the most vulnerable part of the population and probably caused lifelong damage for a generation [13]. This has not been the focus of any comprehensive study to consolidate in Finland, but Kim and Hagquist [10] published an article with results from repeated cross-sectional data which were collected between 1988 and 2008 in Sweden. Their study examined if economic factors at the societal level (municipality unemployment rate) and at the individual level (worry about family finances) could explain a secular trend in mental health problems. Kim and Hagquists’s study [10] indicated that the “individual-level predictor (worry about family finances) significantly explained the increasing rates of adolescents’ psychosomatic problems” [10] (p. 101). And this was particularly found to be the case during the severe recession in the mid-1990s in Sweden, which was characterized by high unemployment rates.
This indicates that it might be possible that the deep and widespread recession may have caused such stress to some young people in the West that their mental capacity was later insufficient to cope adequately with, for example, IQ tests.
As the recession gradually turned and both Finland and Sweden were just emerging from the deep recession that had hit the country in the early 1990s, the internet became widely available, and a more general use of the internet entered Europe and Scandinavia in the early 1990s. In 1993, the first website was published in Sweden, and in 1996, an internet package became the Christmas present of the year in Sweden [14]. In Finland, internet connections to be used via the wired telephone network began to be sold to homes in 1993 [11][15].
The entire 1990s were characterized by unrest and war in many parts of Europe and the Middle East, and the internet allowed news to spread faster than ever before. The deep recession turned gradually into an enormous economic IT boom, and from 1996 to 2000, the US Nasdaq index rose by over 700%. Large multinational companies accounted for about half of all world trade in the 1990s, leading to a boom at the end of the decade. But this was not to last, and in spring 2000, the IT bubble suddenly burst, leading to a new financial crisis. The situation eventually stabilized, but in the fall of 2008, the internal banking market collapsed, and the financial institution Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. This was the beginning of a new global financial crisis that spread across the world. World history has been marked by recurring economic crises. Almost every decade has alternated between booms and recession [12].
Another characteristic of the 1990s, which may also have had an impact on young people’s well-being, is that it is when the sharp increase in school shootings began [16][17], and in the beginning of the 21st century, the world was stunned by the attacks on the World Trade Center, with subsequent unrest, and after that, news was broadcasted like never before through the internet. Then, 2007 saw the launch of the first smartphone, and a few years later, the market had exploded, and screens were everywhere [18].
The range of choices for young people has never been so wide as today, but this seems to come with a price. Various assessments of well-being reveal that increased choice and increased affluence have been accompanied by a decrease in well-being [19]. A Czech study conducted by psychologists from Masaryk University over a five-year period argues that it is the almost limitless choices youths face today that seem to make them both uncertain and confused. Adolescents today are often unfairly accused of laziness or lacking responsibility when it in fact might be a struggle to choose right [20].
Modern society has given its members a new kind of freedom of choice, as we can now actually choose who to be [21]. Identity is nowadays much less something that people “inherit” than before, even though we are all brought into this world with baggage from our ancestral past. This is due to the fact that most of us have the ability to transcend, for example, inherited social and economic class [21]. This possibility is, in its foundation, something positive: we have the possibility to choose another pathway in our lives. But erasing your cultural heritage might have other costs. In a brief report from the UK National Commission for UNESCO [22], it is highlighted that neither heritage nor culture are recognized to any great extent as important elements for mental health and well-being, but according to the key insights of the report, “Heritage is inextricably linked to mental health and well-being, often generating positive emotions and a sense of connection…” [22] (p. 1). This highlights the importance of knowing your heritage, but it is also important to remember and notice that heritage can also, in some cases, trigger negative memories if we have been exposed to any kind of trauma [22].
“Heritage contributes to individuals’ and communities’ collective memory, sense of belonging, cultural identity, and social cohesion–all elements strongly interconnected with mental health and well-being. These aspects can promote a positive sense of self, social support, solidarity/unity, and resilience, but also adverse feelings and a sense of oppression”.
[22] (p. 1)
The development of society in the 1990s, with the technological revolution as a major driving force, may have had a negative effect on socializing abilities and on the connection or sense of belonging that knowing your cultural heritage gives. But the technological revolution and the rise of the internet might also have affected other factors that determine both our learning and well-being.

1.2. Internet, Social Media, Well-Being and Physical Activity—How Are They Connected?

One interesting question is: why the measures indicate a decline in IQ? The suggestion that education has reached some kind of peak is acceptable reasoning, but this does not explain a decline. And how is the decline in IQ connected to the decrease in well-being among youth? One interpretation is that poorer mental well-being affects a person’s ability to carry out such tests as an IQ test, but we have yet another worrying parameter which, through research, has been shown to affect both our performance and our well-being, namely physical activity [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. There is a constant stream of new worrying reports of a drastic decline in children and young people’s physical activity [30][31][32] and an increase in sedentary behavior among young people, as argued by Louv [3] in the early 2000s. The WHO released the “Global status report on physical activity” [31] in October 2022, revealing that today, more than 80% of adolescents and 27% of adults do not meet the WHO’s recommended levels of physical activity. So the first question emerging from this is, why are we not physically active anymore?
A British study shows that young people aged 13 to 16 years old show poorer well-being as a result of spending a lot of time on social media. And this applies mainly to girls. The reasons include cyberbullying, poorer sleep and reduced physical activity [33].
There are also studies showing a significant positive correlation between depression or anxiety and the use of smartphones or similar technological devices [34][35][36]. Twenge [37] refers to large studies that have found a correlation between lower well-being among adolescents and more frequent use of digital media, but the correlation is not easy to determine in all cases regarding which factor is the cause and which is the effect. Some studies point out that it might be a poorer well-being that leads to more frequent use of digital media, while other studies find that it might be a more frequent use of digital media that leads to a poorer well-being. However, it seems certain that there is a relationship between the two factors. According to Twenge [37] and Twenge et al. [38], there are some experimental and longitudinal studies revealing that at least some of the link between the factors is due to the fact that digital media use causes lower well-being. Some possible effects of more frequent digital media use listed in Twenge’s article [37] include sleep disruption, a possible displacement of social interaction in real life and a reduction in physical activity. Social comparison and cyberbullying are also listed as possible negative effects of the more frequent use of digital media.
In a study that followed thousands of teenagers over a five-year period to investigate the use of screens and their impact on physical and mental health, it was shown that more screen time increased mental health problems and caused a decrease in physical activity. During a follow-up study, the researchers looked at what happened after they asked participants to trade one hour of screen time for one hour of physical activity. Their experiment showed that exchanging one hour of social media use for one hour of exercise was associated with improved mental health, especially among girls [39].
A research review [40] indicates that multi-tasking with mobile phones distracts school students’ learning in different ways, i.e., concentration and working memory are deteriorated from multi-tasking. Ward, Duke, Gneezy and Bos [41] also found, through an experimental study, that the mere presence of an owner’s smartphone can adversely affect his or her cognitive capacity and available working memory capacity. Something that many researchers now seem to agree on is the need to be careful with mobile phone use in classrooms and during lectures, as evidence indicates that a phone’s mere presence affects a students’ cognitive capacity and can make it more difficult to concentrate long enough to create long-term memories that are needed for us to remember and learn things [40][42][43].
In her book iGen, Twenge [44] focuses on the impact of smartphones on the generation she calls iGen, i.e., the first generation that grew up with smartphones naturally present in everyday life. Twenge claims that the iGen generation differs from previous generations on several levels. This generation spends more time on social media than hanging out with friends, which is a change that Twenge [44] says may explain why people in this generation are increasingly feeling depressed and lonely. Doom et al. [45] published a review covering the literature on resilience factors that promote positive mental health in youth published during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors state that psychosocial stress is a primary contributor to mental health problems, and the pandemic introduced several stressors affecting youth in different ways, for example, social distancing. According to Doom et al. [45], research has focused on individual and family-related factors, but they argue that there is too little research on factors promoting resilience, e.g., neighborhood connection and school cohesion, which might also play an important role for youth. Japanese research reveals the effect of screen time on small children [46]. Their research indicated that outdoor play mitigated the association between higher screen time and suboptimal neurodevelopment.
There is a word in the Cambridge dictionary [47], phubbing, meaning “the act of ignoring someone you are with and giving attention to your mobile phone instead”. Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas [48][49] argue that the phenomenon affects individuals negatively, mainly because it is a threat to our four fundamental needs: a sense of belonging, self-esteem, a sense of being important and a sense of control. These needs are not met when a person is subjected to phubbing, and then the person experiences feelings of being excluded, rejected and not being important. And when a person is exposed to phubbing, the person is more likely to start directing attention to their own phone than to direct attention to something else. In the long term, this leads to the phenomenon becoming a normative behavior [48].
There is a growing and convincing evidence base in research on the use of mobile phones, primarily social media, and its connection to lower psychological well-being. Anxiety and depression show a significant connection to high-level use of screen media. High-level screen users also show an inability to finish tasks, show signs of lower curiosity, and have more difficulty with social relations and communication. At the same time, there are indications that the use of mobile phones affects our cognitive functions and might affect learning in a negative way. Less physical activity and more sedentary activity are also linked to the use of technical devices, which in turn has a negative impact on well-being, as there is very strong evidence that physical activity has a reducing effect on depression and anxiety [1][37][38][40][42][43][50][51][52].

2. Growing Resilience through Interaction with Nature?

The question of how nature affects children and youth in terms of their development, well-being and learning has been a topic in which many claims have been made, but the evidence has been weak until recently [53]. In recent decades, the field has evolved, and empirical research is now starting to form a large body of convincing, strong evidence proving the health benefits humans obtain from their connection to nature [2][50][53]. The understanding of the cause-and-effect relationship between nature contact and learning has also deepened. Research reveals the role of nature in facilitating recovery from stress and treating depression [2][53][54][55][56].
According to Marselle, Warber and Irvine [2], this indicates that nature could be an important resource for fostering resilience. Resilience means the process by which people successfully adapt to challenges [45] or have the ability to “bounce back” from adversity [2]. It is claimed that interactions between youth and their families, friends, education providers and other service providers play a crucial role in promoting resilience [57]. Several researchers suggest that to facilitate resilience, it is evident that protective factors are required that buffer the impacts of adversity, making the ability to “bounce back” more likely. Researchers, e.g., [58][59][60], claim that there are three levels at which these protective factors occur: the individual, family, and community levels. This could to some extent be connected to both the theory around which factors can increase the risk of absenteeism [61][62][63][64] and the theory presented by Kim and Hagquist [10] suggesting that economic factors at the societal level (municipality unemployment rate) and at the individual level (worry about family finances) could explain the secular trend in mental health problems.
According to Marselle et al. [2], natural environments are also proving to be potential community-level protective factors that facilitate resilience. There is now empirical evidence, evidence from observational large sample studies, experimental studies among patient populations and diverse community-level interventions that support and substantiate the claim concerning mental health benefits from nature contact [52][53][65][66][67][68]. There is also a wide range of studies that, with strong evidence, suggest that nature experiences promote academic learning, personal development and environmental awareness [53].
There are several reasons why nature promotes learning; for example, there is evidence indicating that nature affects stress levels, attention, self-discipline, physical activity and the enjoyment of learning. Studies reveal that nature-based education outperforms traditional education in academic contexts. A wide range of reports reveal that nature contact affects endurance, resilience, teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. And according to Kuo et al. [53], we need to take the fact that nature is a resource for learning seriously for all, but especially for those who, for some reason, are not effectively reached by traditional education.
A systematic review published in 2022 [69] searched publications between 2000 and 2020 in nine academic databases for evidence of the socio-emotional and academic benefits of nature-specific outdoor learning in school-aged educational settings. The review found evidence that nature-specific outdoor learning has measurable socio-emotional, academic and well-being benefits. The authors claim that this kind of nature-specific outdoor learning needs to be incorporated into all children’s school experiences.
Nature-based interventions can also contribute to students’ health in other ways. For example, there is experimental research [70] revealing that students who were exposed to therapy dogs during a period of final examinations had a better mood than those who were not exposed. Therapy dogs on campus can be an effective way to improve students’ mental health during stressful periods within the university environment [70].
There is also an ongoing research project in Sweden, 2022–2024 [71], where the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, in collaboration with Uppsala University and the Swedish Therapy Dog School, is aiming to investigate whether students with more than 20% absence from school in the last term can regain motivation to go to school with the help of a team consisting of a resource educator or teacher and a trained school dog [72].

3. How Schools Could Help Children Thrive

A wise voice from a 14-year-old student describes how she think schools could help children thrive: “When I think about going to school, I want to feel motivated and think positively about what the day will look like…going to school should not feel heavy or difficult. We students are in school to learn; it is important that we get the education we need. But it is also equally important that you feel welcome among your schoolmates. That you feel safe and, for example, dare to stand out in class. What I mean is that the atmosphere in school is at least as important for us students as the teaching itself. Unfortunately, there are many who do not feel welcome among their schoolmates. There are students who have no one to hang out with and therefore don’t look forward to the school day at all…Everyone has different ways of learning. So maybe teachers could try different learning techniques and not always have students work in the same way. It gets quite boring after a while, and you lose motivation–especially if that technique doesn’t work for you. Also, teachers should definitely treat all students equally, but make sure that those who need more help get the necessary assistance…This would mean that everyone gets the help they need, not that everyone gets exactly the same help…School will never be everyone’s favorite place, but everyone should at least get a chance to enjoy themselves, and of course learn” [73] (p. 7).
Today, academic achievement is a school’s primary goal. This highlights the importance of education and puts children and adolescents under pressure [62][74][75]. Perhaps the decline in well-being among children and adolescents could be linked to this achievement-oriented culture [4]. Passing school and receiving grades may contribute to further studies, better jobs and better living conditions. Not least, self-esteem, trust and mental health are benefited, and there is a reduced risk of crime, violence and ill-health [76][77][78].
Alanko et al. [77] have analyzed time trends in school absenteeism in Finland over two decades and state that during the study period 2000–2015, reported absenteeism changed significantly. In 2020, the Finnish National Agency for Education [79] claimed that in the higher grades of basic education in Finland, there are at least 4000 students (about 2–3 percent of all students in the higher grades) whose absence from school affects schooling so noticeably that the school has had to take special measures. Schools in Finland have called for models for how to intervene in absenteeism, which has recently resulted in more attention being paid to the increasing problematic school absences in Finland. New action plans have been designed for how to deal with school absences. The idea is to start intervening at an early stage, and if it turns out to be worrying absences from school, the underlying reasons for why the student is absent should be found out. However, implementing this in practice is perhaps not so easy [80].
In Swedish municipalities, there are school attendance teams that serve the entire municipality. Their task is to work with students who do not come to school. If a student has been at home for a long time, they go to their home to make a comprehensive survey of the factors that caused their absence from school [81]. The now ongoing research project in Sweden [71], investigating whether students with more than a 20% absence from school can regain motivation to go to school with the help of a team consisting of a resource educator or teacher and a trained school dog, will soon have interesting results to share.
The best thing would, of course, be if we could learn how to prevent as much absence from school as possible. Research regarding school attendance problems identifies several factors which can increase the risk of absenteeism. These factors can be grouped into individual factors, family factors, school factors and community factors [61][62][63][64]. Individual factors encompass mental health problems, which makes it crucial to reverse the trend of a decline in mental health among youth and adolescents to prevent increasing absenteeism. Therefore, a proportionally large part of this article touches on the psychological well-being of young people, what in society seems to affect it negatively and which factors have a positive impact.
As information nowadays can be obtained easily in other ways than during a lesson, Sahlberg [82] hopes that in the future we will move away from the now traditional way of teaching things and instead focus on problem solving and community. Sahlberg [74] argues that we might need to re-think beyond the limiting notion that the primary task of schools is academic achievement. Sahlberg and his colleague [74][75] suggest that a shift in the core purpose of school is necessary to build a healthy foundation for lifelong success. This shift they describe would be a necessary shift from schools’ primary focus on academic intelligence to equally focusing on learning, well-being and health to optimize the development of each child.
Clearly, there further research is needed to clarify the conditions under which specific forms of outdoor learning are most efficacious for various target outcomes. There is also research needed concerning how to prevent school absences and how to develop the school’s atmosphere into an inviting, safe place where everyone wants to be.

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