It’s hard to overstate how much good nature does for our well-being: Study after study documents the psychological and physical benefits of connecting with nature. People who are more connected with nature are happier, feel more vital, and have more meaning in their lives.
Even in small doses, nature is a potent elixir: When their hospital room had flowers and foliage, post-surgery patients needed less painkillers and reported less fatigue. And merely looking at pictures of nature does speed up mental restoration and improves cognitive functioning.

It is widely accepted that we humans are more and more disconnected with nature if we compare our lives with a hundred years ago. From recent studies we may conclude that this fact is not only having bad influences on our health but also on the environment itself. It seems like nature needs us as much as we need her.

How can we define and measure all the various ways in which people connect with nature? How can we count all the times people stop to watch a sunset or listen to birds chirping, or how long they spend walking tree-lined streets? We could certainly ask these questions to living people, but we couldn’t ask people who lived a hundred years ago.
If we look at popular culture (like visual media, literature and music) and research how much nature related words accure, we see a clear decline in the last 100 years

How can we explain this shrinking of nature in our collective imagination and cultural conversation? A closer look at the data yields an interesting clue: References to nature declined after, but not before, the 1950s.
The trend of urbanization— a spatial organisation which swallows up natural areas and cuts people off from natural surroundings—is typically used to explain the weakening human connection to nature, but our findings are not consistent with that account. Urbanization rates did not change from the first half of the 20th century to the second in the U.S. and U.K.
We think there is a different explanation for our disconnection from nature: technological change, and in particular the burgeoning of indoor and virtual recreation options. The 1950s saw the rapid rise of television as the most popular medium of entertainment. Video games first appeared in the 1970s and have since been a popular pastime, while the Internet has been claiming more and more leisure time since the late 1990s. It stands to reason that these technologies partially substituted for nature as a source of recreation and entertainment.
To the extent that the disappearance of nature vocabulary from the cultural conversation reflects an actual distancing from nature, our findings are cause for concern. Aside from its well-being benefits, a connection to nature strongly predicts pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Such a love for nature is often born from exposure to nature as a child. This is what made author Richard Louv write, “As the care of nature increasingly becomes an intellectual concept severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors, you have to wonder: Where will future environmentalists come from?”
It’s worth remembering that cultural products such as songs and films not only reflect the prevailing culture—they also shape it. Modern artists have the opportunity to send the message that nature is worth paying attention to and to help awaken curiosity, appreciation, and respect for nature, as some did back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Artistic creations that help us connect with nature are crucial at a time like this, when nature seems to need our attention and care more than ever.