Mindful Monday- Is it All or Nothing? The Digital Age and Being Outdoors

So I save articles to read and then go back through them when I have time.   This was one that my intern had sent to me to read. 

It was on Huffington Post.  "Getting Our Kids Active in the Backyard Again."  Ahh interesting I thought to myself.  While the author is talking about backyard games, I think the idea is transferable to being out in nature as well.

Having kids, I have a little of both tendencies in my house.  I have both kids who will go outside and stand in the yard, look around, then look pitiful and come back in and tell me they are bored, and I have one that you could give a string to and say go outside, and he would come back in having had some wild adventure with the string.  I will not venture to say either is good or bad, just a different automatic comfort level with the outdoors. 

To be honest, my comfort level varies with both.  I worry about the inside kids and the fact that they don't like to be outside, but at the same time, it can be disconcerting at times to see string boy hanging out of the tops of tall trees perilously.  I have to remind the helicopter in me, that I did the same thing.  (My mom who spent countless hours figuring out how to get pine sap out of long hair will confirm.)

I am wondering though, how do we feel about mixing technology with the outdoors?

As the education director for a conservation trust, this comes up frequently, and people feel very strongly the way they feel.  Some are purists, and they believe that there should be zero technology out in nature, that nature itself should be enough.  Others say they are realists, and that in the day of "Digital Natives"  if you want to get their attention, you have to mix the two...

In the time of "There's an App for that,"  an entire industry has been created around digital nature.  You can find apps on vernal pools, bird calls, tree leaf ID, even frog calls.  There is a way to find out more information about our earth than ever before, right in the little box that is permanently attached to most teenagers hips. 

That said, there is something about exploring and figuring nature out for yourself.  No app can compare to hearing a whippoorwill for the first time at night, or finding fish eggs and having no idea what they are and having to figure it out.

So what's the answer?  I surely don't know.  Do we lure them into the woods with a promise of QR codes and then hope they find inspiration?  or do we let nature speak for itself and hope that kids wander out into it someday?   Or just maybe, there is an in-between... thoughts?