nature-deficit disorder
n. A yearning for nature, or an ignorance of the natural world, caused by a lack of time spent outdoors, particularly in rural settings.
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2010
Now a nonprofit educational enterprise, the manor is among the New York-area farms attracting locavores, green-minded students and urbanites suffering from nature-deficit disorder who yearn to raise produce and livestock for a day, a week or longer.
—Kathryn Shattuck, “City Slickers Take to the Crops, With Song,” The New York Times, May 28, 2010
2010
Revealing the inspiration behind his latest epic, Avatar, legendary filmmaker James Cameron recently described himself as a "nature geek", and said modern humans were suffering a degree of "nature deficit disorder". It may not be a medically recognised condition, but "nature deficit disorder" is a concept gaining traction with childhood and behavioural experts around the world.
—Peter Ker, “More fertile imagination,” The Age, March 20, 2010
2005 (earliest)
Many members of my generation grew into adulthood taking nature’s gifts for granted; we assumed (when we thought of it at all) that generations to come would receive these gifts. But something has changed. Now we see the emergence of what I have come to call nature-deficit disorder. This term is by no means a medical diagnosis, but it does offer a way to think about the problem and the possibilities — for children, and for the rest of us as well.
—Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods, Algonquin Books, January 01, 2005