Exploring the Paradox of Using Digital Technologies in Nature

People often spend time in nature to escape an over-technologised life, yet they increasingly rely on technology to do so. Understanding how technology use shapes nature experiences is crucial, given their implications for wellbeing and environmental concern. Through in-depth interviews with 30 people, we examine this technology–nature paradox, focusing on commonplace digital tools used around visits to nature. Our findings chart how people assemble and manage a carefully chosen array of tools for each outing. We show how these technology choices depend on people’s adopted mode(s) of nature engagement, identifying six modes and their associated technologies: adventure, aesthetic, ambient, enquiry, escape, and novelty. We further demonstrate how these modes shape the temporal deployment of tools across phases of a visit: before, during, and after. We offer an interpretation of how people seek to manage the technology–nature paradox and consider broader implications for designing technologies for beneficial nature experiences.