| Studies Show Youth Are Trading Fishing Rods For TV Remotes
Outdoor activities enjoyed by millions of American sportsmen in their youth are being set aside as a new generation opts for the indoors. The continued success of programs such as Trailblazer Adventure and Families Afield are imperative to bringing young people back to outdoor sports.
A recent USA Today article by Dennis Cauchon explains that the nature of American childhood has changed. A generation ago, children were involved in outdoor activities like baseball, bike riding and fishing. Today, ball gloves collect dust in the closet, bikes rust in the garage and fishing tackle stays on the shelf. Children are now content to stare at computer screens and gawk at television sets to pass the time.
Survey Says…
A report by the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) shows declines in young people’s involvement in outdoor activities including biking, swimming and fishing. The number of young people between the ages of 7-17 who biked in 2004 is down nearly 20 percent from 1994.
Children in the same age bracket are not going fishing either. Angling participation rates have fallen 10.4 percent during the 10-year period. The youngest of that group, children between seven and 11 years, has lost more than one out of four of its participants since 1994.
Effects of the Transition
The shift toward sedentary, indoor activities is reflected in young people’s physiology. In the 1960s, four percent of children were overweight. Today, the number has quadrupled to 16 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Studies also indicate that the children who are engrossed before a video screen for hours on end have shorter attention spans than those who spend lots of time outdoors, says Frances Kuo, director of the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
More to Think About
For example, the USA Today article reported that Dakota Howell, a 9-year-old from Ohio, participated in a fishing derby with his family. The boy said that he would rather be playing video games and that his favorite game, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, is more fun than actually skateboarding. As he left the fishing event, he said, “Now, we’re going home to play video games.”
The switch from outdoor fun to indoor recreation is not seen only in pre-teens. Mike Morris, a 20-year-old DePauw University student, was introduced to Nintendo 64 in 1996. Now, he plays the Halo combat game and told USA Today’s Cauchon, “My college memories are more likely to be a great move I put on to kill someone in Halo than a great move in pick-up basketball.”
Why Sportsmen Are Concerned
The effects of this shift concern organizations like the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance (USSA) Foundation.
“This retreat to a primarily indoor lifestyle is contributing to the decline in sportsmen’s numbers,” said USSA Foundation President Bud Pidgeon. “That is why the USSA created the Trailblazer Adventure and Families Afield programs to enable young people to more easily turn to the outdoors and engage in character-building activities.”
The Trailblazer Adventure Program is an outdoor education program developed to introduce families to outdoor sports such as shooting, fishing and trapping. Seasoned sportsmen and wildlife professionals share their knowledge about wildlife and conservation with families that are involved in youth-serving organizations like the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
The USSA has also teamed with the National Wild Turkey Federation and the National Shooting Sports Foundation to establish Families Afield. The partners are urging states to review and eliminate unnecessary age restrictions for hunters. This will make it simpler for hunters to share the outdoor experience with their young children and encourage hunter recruitment at a younger age.
Families Afield was developed after results of a study, the Youth Hunting Report, documented that youngsters are less likely to take up hunting in states that have more restrictive requirements for youth participation. However, states that have removed barriers to youth hunting have a much higher youth recruitment rate.
“These programs are imperative to sustain the sportsmen’s movement,” said Pidgeon. “Studies show that sportsmen’s numbers are on the decline. The sportsmen’s population must rebound if we are to maintain political relevance and continue to have success battling the anti-hunting movement.” | |
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