Memories and Necessity of Technology and Nature: A Cross-Generational Study L. Byrne, E. Roper Faculty Sponsor: L. R. Grinde , Ph.D.

Loras College

PARTICIPANTS
ABSTRACT
Our study examined how adults of different ages view the importance of being comfortable in natural surroundings versus being comfortable with technology and the content of their memories involving those areas. We believe our participants will also differ in how they use technology and nature to alleviate stress. Young adult participants provided lower ratings for the importance of technology and natural knowledge for all three age groups. However, all three age groups rated technological and natural world knowledge similarly in importance. The majority of the sample relieved stress with an indoor activity with exercise, technology, and meditation being the most reported activities. Older adults were less likely to use technology. Participants N=127 Gender: 39 male and 88 female Age Young adults, ages 18-34 N=69 Middle adults, ages 35-59 N=39 Older adults, ages 60+ N=19

RESULTS CONTINUED
H2: Importance of technology Younger adults rated technology significantly less Important for younger (p=.05) and older adults (p<.001) than did middle age or older adults. This same trend was also approaching significance for the importance of technology for middle-age adults (p=.06) Importance of natural world knowledge Younger adults rated knowledge of the natural world less important for all three age groups than did middle-age or older adults (p<.001) Paired-sample t-tests found no significant difference between rating of importance of technology and natural world knowledge for any of the three age groups. H3: Older adults (M=131.16, SD=54.6)had significantly higher scores on the EID than middle (M=91.87, SD=16.77) or young adults (M=95.34, SD=50.39) (F=5.90, p<.01)

PROCEDURE
Online Survey consisted of Four open-ended questions Imagine next week you find yourself in the middle of a very stressful life event. After this event occurs you find that you have a significant amount of time. During this time you could do anything of your choosing to reduce your high stress levels. Please give the specifics of what you would choose to do, where you would choose to do it and who if anyone would be involved? Please describe your favorite recent memory, nature memory and technology memory respectively. Our created 6 item survey How important is it for todays young adults (ages18-34) to be technologically competent? How important is it for todays middle age adults (ages 35-59) to be involved with natural surroundings? Environmental Identity Scale (EID) (Clayton, 2003) I would feel that an important part of my life was missing if I was not able to get out and enjoy nature from time to time. I dont pay much attention to environmental issues.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Giuliani and Scopelliti (2004) examined how adults of different ages chose different restorative environments, specifically nature based environments and found the environment in which we choose to relax in is directly related to the stage of the lifespan of the participant. Lack of knowledge of computers suggests that older people may have negative attitudes towards technology due to their lack of experience with it (Broady, Chan & Caputi, 2010). Young adults use technology to engage with a peer group and those who do not will not be a part of the peer group (Smallwood, 2011). The increased use of technology and the amount of it that is available may have an inverse effect of the amount of time people are spending in nature (Smallwood, 2011).

DISCUSSION
The majority of the sample relieved stress with an indoor activity with exercise, technology, and meditation being the most reported activities. Older adults were less likely to use technology. Interestingly, young adult participants provided lower ratings for the importance of technology and natural knowledge for all three age groups. Would this have been different if our sample contained a higher number of post-college young adults? However, all three age groups rated technological and natural world knowledge similarly in importance. While we didnt find that our small sample of older adults was more likely to spend time outdoors, the older adults did show greater concern for the environment.

RESULTS
H1: Young adults did use technology frequently, but utilized exercise more often to alleviate stress. Middle adults were equally likely to utilize exercise, technology and meditation. Older adults were less likely to use technology and were more likely to engage in exercise and meditation. Also, most people (72.2%) chose an indoor activity to alleviate stress.

HYPOTHESES
H1: Young adults will choose to reduce stress using technological devices especially to interact with peers. Middle adults will be more likely to report family friendly environments as their response for their stress reducing environment. Older adults will be more likely to choose to be in a naturalistic environment for their stress reducing activity. H2: Middle adults and older adults will say that is it more important for young adults to be technologically competent, while young adults will say that it is more important for all three age groups to be technologically competent. middle adults and older adults will say that it is more important for older adults to be involved with natural environments. and depth across the three generations . H3: We expect that older adults will have a higher score on the Environmental Identity Scale. In addition to our hypotheses, we asked three additional open ended questions about participants favorite recent memory, favorite technology memory and favorite nature memory and did a qualitative analysis looking for similarities and differences in focus.

LIMITATIONS
Small participant numbers in both middle and older adult categories More women were surveyed than men

FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research may want to include more middle and older adult participants as well as equal numbers of men and women. We were surprised with how many participants included family in their recent memory. Future research may want to include the role of family in nature vs. technology.

REFERENCES
Broady, T., Chan, A., & Caputi, P. (2012). Comparison of older and younger adults attitudes towards and abilities with computers: Implications for training and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(3), 473-485. Doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2008.00914.x. Clayton, S. (2003). Environmental identity: A conceptual and operational definition. In S. Clayton & Identity and the Natural Environment (pp. 45 65). Cambridge, MA: MIT PRESS Giuliani, M., & Scopelliti, M. (2004). Choosing restorative environments across the lifespan: A experience. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(4), 423-437. Smallwood, A.K. (2011). Review of Wired Youth: The social world of adolescence in the information Communication, 61(3), E1-E3. Doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01557.x. S. Opotow (Eds.), matter of place age. Journal of -

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