Plugged Into Nature: How Jenny Gottstein Is Reimagining the Outdoors for the Digital Generation
June marks Great Outdoors Month, a national celebration of our parks, trails, and green spaces—and a timely opportunity to explore how today’s youth are reconnecting with nature in a digital age. We are proud to feature Jenny Gottstein, whose innovative work bridges technology and outdoor engagement to inspire the next generation. Jenny is an award-winning experience designer who has spent over a decade crafting immersive games that blend technology, education, and outdoor exploration.
As youth screen time continues to rise, with teenagers averaging more than eight hours a day on digital devices, a growing concern has emerged: are we losing the next generation to the indoors? Jenny Gottstein doesn’t think so. In fact, she believes that technology—when used intentionally—can actually bring young people back outside.
Rather than competing with technology, Jenny’s work embraces it. She designs outdoor challenges that use augmented reality, geolocation, and mobile storytelling to transform parks, schoolyards, and city streets into dynamic playgrounds of learning. Whether it’s a climate-themed game show or a community-based scavenger hunt, her projects invite young people to move, connect, and engage deeply with the world around them.
Her approach reflects a growing movement that reimagines outdoor education through a digital lens. One example is Agents of Discovery, a mobile gaming platform that helps children explore nature through interactive missions. In cities like Tacoma and across Pierce County, Washington, the program has been implemented in multiple parks,
offering multilingual access and digital badges to encourage ongoing engagement.
Educators have noted a shift in how students relate to the outdoors when these tools are integrated. A teacher from Green Schools National Network reflected, “The kids like to learn through games… be competitive, be outside, and be connected… it kind of enwraps their interest in the learning.” What Jenny and programs like Agents of Discovery show us is that the divide between digital life and the natural world doesn’t have to be so wide.
In a time when many worry that young people are becoming detached from nature, innovators like Jenny Gottstein offer a hopeful path forward. By harnessing the tools of this generation—games, mobile apps, and digital storytelling—she’s helping redefine what it means to be outdoorsy in the 21st century.
At GlobalMindED, we celebrate innovators like Jenny Gottstein whose work—fusing technology, creativity, and outdoor learning—aligns perfectly with our mission to build real-world pathways for the next generation to explore, grow, and succeed.
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