What Happens When You Bring Nature Into Your Kids’ Screen Time (And Your Own Zoom Calls)

So there I was last week, stuck in another endless virtual PTA meeting about school budget cuts, when something caught my attention. One of the other parents had this amazing background – what looked like a living wall of plants cascading behind her kitchen table. Made her cramped corner look like some kind of zen garden sanctuary.

“Love your plant wall!” I typed in the chat, because honestly it was more interesting than listening to arguments about copy paper procurement.

“Oh, that’s just a digital background,” she messaged back. “But I swear it makes these meetings less stressful.”

That got me thinking. Here I am, spending years obsessing over how our physical home environment affects the kids – researching natural light for better sleep, creating that sensory garden in the backyard, fighting with contractors about window placement. But meanwhile, both my kids are spending hours every day staring at screens for school, and I’m logging just as much time on work calls and managing household stuff online.

Why hadn’t I thought about applying any of the biophilic design principles I’m always reading about to our digital spaces?

I mean, think about it – during remote learning, my daughter was basically spending 6+ hours a day looking at sterile classroom interfaces on her laptop. My son does his homework on the family computer, staring at whatever random desktop background happens to be there (usually something the kids changed it to – last week it was a giant pizza slice). And me? I’m taking work calls against whatever zoom background seems “professional” while internally feeling drained by all the screen time.

The irony hit me hard. I’d spent months researching and implementing changes to make our physical spaces more connected to nature because I’d read all this research about how it helps with focus, stress, mood – especially for kids. But our digital environments? Complete afterthought.

So I started digging into this idea of digital biophilic design. Turns out there’s actually research backing up what that parent in the PTA meeting was experiencing. Studies showing that even looking at photos or videos of natural scenes can lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones, help with attention restoration. Our brains respond to visual cues of nature even when we know it’s just pixels on a screen.

There’s this fascinating study I found from 2021 where people who used nature imagery as their computer wallpaper reported significantly lower stress levels after completing difficult tasks compared to those using abstract backgrounds or no wallpaper at all. Another study showed that brief exposure to nature videos between cognitive tasks improved performance on the next task.

As a parent watching my kids navigate increasing amounts of screen time for school, this felt important to explore.

I decided to experiment with our family’s digital setup, starting with my own workspace since I’m usually the guinea pig for these things (my wife jokes that I can’t leave well enough alone, which… fair point).

First change: replaced all our generic desktop wallpapers with carefully chosen nature photos. Not just any pretty landscapes though – I went down a rabbit hole learning about fractals, which are those self-repeating patterns you see in nature like fern leaves, tree branches, coastlines. Apparently viewing fractal patterns can reduce stress by up to 60% according to research from the University of Oregon. So I found wallpapers with strong fractal elements.

Next, I adjusted the color temperature on our computers to shift throughout the day – cooler blue light in the morning (mimicking natural sunlight), gradually warming to softer amber tones in the evening. This isn’t just easier on the eyes; it helps maintain healthy sleep cycles that regular screens mess with. Super important for kids whose bedtime routines are already challenging enough.

For video calls, I created custom backgrounds using photos I’d taken in meaningful natural places – the community garden where we volunteer, the nature preserve where we hike on weekends, even our own backyard after we’d transformed it. Way more personal than generic stock images of tropical beaches we’ve never seen.

The kids were initially skeptical (“Dad’s doing another weird experiment”) but got into it when I let them choose their own nature backgrounds for school video calls. My daughter picked photos from our camping trip last summer. My son chose images of the creek behind his grandparents’ house.

I even changed our notification sounds to gentle nature sounds – water droplets for email, distant bird calls for calendar reminders. No more jarring pings and dings that make everyone tense up.

The results? Honestly surprised me. Within about a week, I noticed less eye strain during long work sessions. The kids seemed less resistant to homework time on the computer. My daughter specifically commented that her virtual classes felt “less weird” with a calming background instead of her messy bedroom wall.

Most interesting was my son, who has ADHD. His occupational therapist had mentioned environmental modifications as part of his treatment plan – reducing visual clutter, incorporating natural elements. I’d focused on his physical spaces but hadn’t considered his digital environment. The nature imagery and softer color temperature seemed to help him stay focused during online activities.

When I shared what we were trying in my usual parent Facebook groups, other families started experimenting too. A mom in my daughter’s class created a “digital nature corner” routine where her kids take short breaks to watch nature videos between homework subjects. A teacher friend started using subtle nature backgrounds in her virtual classroom and noticed improved student attention.

I’ve been reading about how this might have bigger applications too. Some hospitals are experimenting with nature-based digital environments for patients during long treatments. Schools are looking at incorporating biophilic elements into their learning management systems. The idea is that if we’re going to be spending so much time in digital environments, maybe we can design them to support our wellbeing instead of depleting it.

Of course, not everything I tried worked. I found this browser extension that was supposed to represent open websites as different trees in a digital forest. Sounded cool in theory but was completely impractical – I kept losing track of important tabs in the “woodland.” Some concepts are better left as concepts.

The key seems to be choosing elements that have personal meaning rather than just slapping random nature images onto everything. Generic stock photos of mountains you’ve never seen probably won’t have the same impact as using images from places you actually have positive memories of.

I’m particularly interested in the educational applications. My son’s school is still using this incredibly sterile online learning platform – white backgrounds, harsh fonts, zero consideration for how the visual environment affects learning. I’ve been advocating through the PTA for schools to consider these design principles, especially given how much screen-based learning is now part of regular education.

What’s fascinating to me is thinking about this as another way to maintain kids’ connection to nature in an increasingly digital world. It’s not a replacement for actual outdoor time – nothing beats real dirt under fingernails and actual fresh air. But when they have to spend hours on screens anyway, why not make those digital environments support their wellbeing instead of working against it?

I’m still learning and experimenting. Currently trying to figure out better nature-inspired organizational systems for the kids’ digital homework folders. My daughter’s file organization is chaos, and I’m wondering if there’s a more intuitive way to structure it that mimics natural patterns instead of rigid hierarchies.

Also planning to suggest some of these ideas to the teachers at my kids’ school. If they’re going to be using screens for educational content anyway, seems like incorporating biophilic design principles could be a simple way to support student focus and reduce digital fatigue.

The bottom line is we’re all spending way more time in digital environments than humans evolved to handle. But maybe we can design those spaces to be a little more supportive of the natural beings we still are, even when we’re staring at pixels all day.

Now I need to go check on my actual garden – for all my digital nature enthusiasm, I somehow managed to kill the basil plants again. Some things definitely can’t be replaced by screen time, no matter how well-designed.