Many people describe walking in a woodland, tending a garden or gazing at green hills as calming and restorative. That instinctive attraction to life and wildness is called biophilia. The opposite, biophobia, originally described specific fears—of predators, spiders or snakes—but researchers are now noticing a broader phenomenon: a widening distance from the natural world and an increasing discomfort with it.
A review by a team at Lund University, which examined close to 200 studies on human–nature interactions, suggests that our connection to nature is weakening. Johan Kjellberg Jensen, who led the review, ties this trend to urbanization. With most people living in cities, children and future generations are less likely to grow up familiar with natural places and processes, and more likely to develop unease or avoidance.
Psychologist Dirk Stemper points out that signs of this alienation have been recorded since the late 1970s, particularly in industrialized regions. Many youngsters now spend their days inside sealed buildings or in digital environments instead of outdoors. They miss the hands-on, sensory experiences—climbing, getting muddy, watching animals—that build confidence and curiosity about the outdoors.
Familiarity matters. Psychologist Lea Dohm emphasizes that feeling connected to nature makes people more likely to support environmental protection. Negative messages about soil, worms or mud can become family lore: if parents treat nature as dirty or dangerous, children learn to avoid it, and a cycle of detachment begins. Repeated cautions—such as telling children to avoid ticks or not to touch things—teach kids to view nature primarily as a source of risk.
Environmental educator Susanne Sigl, who works at Querwaldein in Cologne, sees this firsthand. She describes children who are reluctant to touch pinecones, twigs or harmless insects, sometimes using handkerchiefs to pick things up or refusing contact altogether. The Lund review also finds that such fear can harden into hostility: biophobia is associated in some cases with support for lethal control of predators like bears, wolves or sharks.
Culture and storytelling shape our feelings about the outdoors. In parts of Central Europe, forests were long depicted as threatening—full of hunger, predators and supernatural dangers—until the Romantic era recast woodlands as places of longing. Today, Stemper argues, a new kind of fear is emerging, driven less by predators than by alienation, media framing and digital distraction. Curated online images, edited Instagram feeds and virtual landscapes in games can create a ‘hyperreality’ that feels more appealing or immediate than actual meadows, woods or animals, which reduces people’s incentive to seek real-world encounters.
This decline in real-life nature contact has health consequences. Time outdoors benefits mental health: exposure to natural settings can lessen ADHD symptoms, improve attention and concentration, reduce sensory difficulties and help with emotional regulation. People who avoid nature because of discomfort miss those potential gains.
How can we rebuild the relationship? Jensen recommends knowledge: learning about plants, animals and ecosystems helps people tell manageable dangers apart from negligible ones and cultivates appreciation. Where fears are grounded—such as protecting livestock from predators—targeted, practical measures can lower conflict and anxiety.
Sigl stresses play and tactile experience, particularly for children. Unstructured, playful activities—running, climbing, falling and getting back up—reduce hesitancy and increase comfort with different textures, smells and creatures. Guided, supervised encounters with soil, insects and plants can turn fear into curiosity. Environmental education programs that combine free play, guided exploration and factual teaching offer a practical way to restore everyday nature contact and the stewardship that often follows.
Reconnecting with nature is not only a matter of nostalgia. It matters for health, for civic support of conservation, and for nurturing the next generation’s capacity to care for the living systems we all depend on. Small steps—more outdoor play, hands-on learning, sensible safety guidance and better public access to green spaces—can help reverse the drift away from the natural world.