Does all screen time pull kids away from nature?

The Kid Should See This  • July 24, 2025

🐮 WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEK:

Planet-friendly foods for gassy cows ➜

🌳 When cattle graze among flowering bushes and shade trees instead of plain grass, the land holds more water, local biodiversity flourishes, and the cows produce less methane (cow burps and farts). One of agriculture’s most significant climate problems turns out to have a low-tech solution: reviving the leafy, plant-rich landscapes that these Colombian ranchers’ ancestors might have considered common sense.

This is the kind of story that can catch kids (and grown-ups) by surprise. Yes, it’s about sustainable farming, explained through cows choosing from a lush salad bar of plants instead of compacting the soil of a barren field. And it’s about cows farting less, which is good for the planet. Even without cows in our backyards, we all understand the need to seek shade on a hot day; nature's solutions often feel obvious once we notice them.

Instead of overshadowing nature, stories like this can help reconnect kids to it. Screens and YouTube don’t have to be nature’s enemy; they can be among its most impactful and farthest-reaching advocates.

We know that children today spend less time outdoors than previous generations. Suburban sprawl, limited access to green spaces, overscheduled lives, and the gravitational pull of devices have reshaped childhood. But in curating TKSST, I’ve built a bridge between the digital world kids inhabit and the natural world they need to grow into confident, curious, connected humans.

Like the educators who use TKSST in their classrooms, I've found that some videos are fantastic for sparking conversations and investigations that continue long after screens are turned off. It’s the same kind of bridge that public television built when it transformed 1970s daytime TV’s “vast wasteland” into a neighborhood with Mister Rogers and Big Bird, using the medium kids already loved to teach them what they needed to know.

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A thoughtfully chosen video can turn any device into a window on the world. When a child watches an octopus unscrew a jar from the inside, they're witnessing problem-solving that reshapes their understanding of animal intelligence. When they see how a kingfisher, an owl, and a penguin all influenced the design of a Japanese bullet train, every bird outside their window becomes a potential engineering consultant. Or take a few minutes to debate: How would a starfish wear trousers?

The research is clear: moments of awe change how children perceive their surroundings and how they see themselves within those surroundings. When a young viewer watches a scientist restore coral reefs, they see how people can make a difference. On a hot day, they might remember how shade trees can drop temperatures by 24 degrees. Maybe they’ll want to measure that difference where they are, or plant trees to create shade in their neighborhood. Perhaps seeing a cow in an open field will remind them of the cow grazing experiment in Colombia.

Each of these stories adds another layer to how kids see the world, making it feel deeper, more detailed, and more extraordinary. We know that time outside supports cognitive and emotional health, and that curiosity and a sense of adventure are what help motivate kids to get out the door. Not every kid needs to become a sustainability or conservation expert, but every kid can grow into a more observant, connected, and scientifically informed citizen.

📔 Like Robert Macfarlane's Lost Words, written to restore vanished nature vocabulary for children, the videos featured on TKSST offer glimpses of hidden wonders through the eyes of those who study them most closely. These videos don't replace outdoor experiences, but hopefully, they can help inspire and inform them.

🙌 With that in mind, I've curated a playlist of DIY Nature-Related Projects, because the best moments can happen when kids take what they’ve watched and then get their hands dirty with a related activity.

🗞️ Reminder! Our newly expanded daily newsletter, TKSST Today, has been running all summer, featuring themed video suggestions from TKSST's archives and timely STEAM-related news links. Once we start adding new videos to the site again, the daily newsletter will also include them. Subscribe here.

Stay safe, have fun, try something new, and don’t hesitate to speak up about something that matters to you where you live. - Rion

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