A new study concluded that outdoor activities are being replaced by the virtual reality. According to the findings of the study conducted by Oliver Pergams, visiting research assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, people prefer to spend more time online or watching their favorite shows in the tube.

"There's a real and fundamental shift away from nature - certainly here [in the United States] and possibly in other countries," said Oliver Pergams

This is not the first time when Pergams has investigated the decline of the outdoor activities in people’s preferences.

Pergams and Patricia Zaradic, a fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program, Delaware Valley in Bryn Mawr, Pa., had previously reported a steady decline in per capita visits to U.S. national parks since the late 1980s. They found that during the decade from 1981 to 1991, per-capita nature recreation declined at rates from 1 percent to 1.3 percent per year, depending on the activity studied. The typical drop in nature use since then has been 18-25 percent.

The decline is correlated with the increase of the time spend to watch movies or playing game, in a shift defined by the researchers as "videophilia"

As you can imagine, “videophilia” has some bad consequences for physical and mental health. "Videophilia has been shown to be a cause of obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders and poor academic performance," Pergams explained.

Especially the children are the one most affected by this shift to indoor activities.

As biologists, the researchers are also concerned about the ecological implications.

"We don't see how this can be good for conservation," Pergams said. "We don't see how future generations, with less exploration of nature, will be as interested in conservation as past generations."