We Are Now An Indoor Generation: This Is The Impact It Has On Our Wellbeing

by Guest Tue May 22, 2018 1:22 am

How we closed ourselves off from the great outdoors and why we need to get back out there...

Here’s an irony. This generation is the one most concerned with personal wellbeing than any before, yet our very pursuit to be fitter and more productive may be the cause for declining health.

Consider the things we do in the name of better living. Hitting the gym to get into shape, commuting to the office to succeed, the programmes we watch and games we play on our screens for entertainment, the pubs, clubs and dinner parties that set the scenes for our social life, the sleep at the end of it all. All of these activities are enacted behind closed doors.

If you think that still leaves plenty of outdoor time in our daily lives, you may be surprised. Studies show we think we spend 66% of our time indoors when, according to the World Health Organization, it’s actually around 90%. Now a new YouGov report, made in conjunction with home environment experts VELUX, has assessed the effects of modern indoor living, going as far as suggesting our elaborate mix of commuting, indoor work and indoor activities is not only having a detrimental effect on our health and wellbeing, but could actually be “detaching us from the natural world that has been the driving force behind our evolution as a species”.

Russell Foster, a leading ophthalmologist, points out: “From the year 1800 to 2000, we’ve moved from 90% of people working outside to less than 20%. In a very short space of time, we’ve gone from being an outdoor species to spending most of our time in dim, dark caves.”

Which all begs the question: what’s so bad about being indoors anyway?

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/we-are-now-an-indoor-generation-this-is-the-impact-it-has-on-our-wellbeing_uk_5af548b3e4b00d7e4c1932ee

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