Research Simulation: Technological Play Versus Nature Play

I am quite single minded in my passion for re-inserting nature into children's lives.  Technology has improved the human condition in many ways, but it has, at the same time, pulled us away from our foundation.  Humans are an integral part of the natural world, we are connected to all living things on earth and to the earth itself - but we have come to a place of feeling disconnected.  We no longer understand where we fit into the natural balance.  This puts the human race as well as all life on Earth at risk.

I am greatly concerned about how the influence of technology is affecting current generation of children's sense of self.  I have observed that children are negatively affected on an emotional level when using computers and video games.  They become easily frustrated, have less desire to cooperate with others, become manipulative, dishonest, aggressive and generally difficult.  When outside playing, I rarely see these traits in the same groups of children.  I therefore, would like to look at the social and emotional effects technology has on children compared to the social and emotional effects of exposure to nature.

How to do this in a quantitative way, however, poses some difficulty.  I considered a few different approaches to this project, however, given the limited resources at my disposal, I decided that I would use a tallying approach.  I will simply observe the same group of children for equal amounts of time playing video games and playing outside.  During these observations I will count the number of negative social and emotional occurances (ex. - lying, arguing, belittling) during each experience.  I will repeat my observations over time, and will then compare my results.  In this way, I will have data regarding the effects of technology and the effects of nature on children's social and emotional health.