The average American spends seven hours looking at a screen daily, be it a computer, smartphone, or TV. Regularly stepping outside for a walk, hike, or any other activity isn’t just a break from digital devices. It also has mental, cognitive, and physical health benefits.
Spending time outdoors boosts mental health. It helps decrease anxiety levels, making it easier to manage stress. Green spaces such as forests and parks help lower depression symptoms.
Enclosed and crowded spaces can feel like an entrapment, amplifying feelings of fear, sadness, or worry. Stepping outdoors, on the other hand, helps promote positive emotions. It creates the perception of emotional freedom and cultivates optimism, happiness, and peace.
The human body follows a circadian rhythm, a natural clock that controls the sleep-wake cycle, alertness, metabolism, and other body functions. Staying indoors 24/7 can throw the circadian rhythm out of sync. Exposure to sunlight keeps it synchronized, resulting in a more predictable sleep-wake cycle, leading to better sleep and more energy throughout the day.
Sunlight also triggers the production of Vitamin D, which is important for muscles, bones, blood cells, and the immune system. Insufficient exposure to sunlight results in lower serotonin levels, a mood hormone.
The outdoors boosts the motivation to be active. Getting out into nature can inspire a person to walk, run, hike, or engage in any other physical activities they enjoy. Physical activity keeps the heart and lungs healthy.
Speaking of healthy lungs, air pollution in urban centers can cause respiratory problems. What’s more, concentrations of air pollutants are higher indoors than outdoors. Speeding time in places with fresh air helps lower the risk of respiratory problems.
Over-exposure to digital devices and other modern-day technologies can lead to sensory overload. Spending time outside helps prevent over-stimulation. It helps a person recharge, soothing the senses. It also increases mental clarity, making it easier to focus on one thing at a time.
Spending time outside also boosts creativity. It serves as an escape from the demands of everyday life, which can dampen creativity. It’s harder to solve problems or generate new ideas with a dozen tasks demanding attention. In the outdoors it’s natural to focus on one thing at a time. It also frees up the cognitive faculties to wander and make fresh connections.
The indoors conditions the eyes to see only objects in a room. This can lead to short-sightedness, or myopia. When outdoors the eyes naturally look at images at various distances. Moreover, natural light, unlike artificial light, has a richer collection of wavelengths, which also lowers myopia risk.
The outdoors attracts people with different backgrounds and experiences. As such, stepping away from one’s usual environment and into the outdoors is a chance to interact with people an individual might not otherwise meet. It also helps build communities and avoid isolation.
Green spaces and walkable spaces are shrinking in cities due to urbanization. As such, accessing nature may not be as simple as stepping outside. This, coupled with the nature of work and life in cities, can make spending time outdoors difficult. The trick is to create opportunities to be outside, such as taking calls outside.
People who regularly spend time outside are more likely to be happier and healthier. The more time spent outside the better. A 2021 study suggests that spending 20 to 90 minutes in nature at a time yields the most benefits, while other studies recommend a minimum of two hours per week.
