“Being outside and socializing is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here…”
Exactly. This is misleading. Birdwatching does nothing in itself. The socializing and focusing and exercising the brain is what is happening here.
I actually wrote my thesis on a similar topic. It was about introducing user friendly tech into nursing homes to expand the social circle of residents to slow cognitive decline. It was the socializing that showed the greatest results.
This article says the opposite. Birdwatching itself is the trigger (probably compounded by other influences in many of the studies.)
If you have different studies, please share. But this article specifically says birdwatching in many contexts bring improvements. Not just in the outdoors, and not just in social groups.
“Being outside and socializing is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here…”
Exactly. This is misleading. Birdwatching does nothing in itself. The socializing and focusing and exercising the brain is what is happening here.
I actually wrote my thesis on a similar topic. It was about introducing user friendly tech into nursing homes to expand the social circle of residents to slow cognitive decline. It was the socializing that showed the greatest results.
This article says the opposite. Birdwatching itself is the trigger (probably compounded by other influences in many of the studies.)
If you have different studies, please share. But this article specifically says birdwatching in many contexts bring improvements. Not just in the outdoors, and not just in social groups.
You’ve completely missed the point…
It does something, just like ever mentally engaging hobby does