Young Explorers in Virtual Ecosystems: Environmental Empathy in Animated and Digital Worlds

Abstract

Thus far, the book has argued that children’s media can contribute to the building of environmental literacy, particularly by strengthening young viewers’ knowledge and sense of efficacy in the face of environmental problems. My concern in this chapter is with another aspect of environmental literacy: the qualities or mindsets that allow humans to feel empathy with the non-human world. Here, I take up the question of whether mediated experiences with nature can contribute to the development of environmental sensitivity and nature-connectedness. I bring this conundrum into my discussion of animated and digital representations of nature across children’s screen media. Through my analysis of the films Wolfwalkers and How to Train Your Dragon, along with the popular videogame Minecraft, I propose that the animated, digital, and virtual experiences that constitute so much of children’s screen time today open a space for radical reconfigurations of the human/nature relationship. My concern here is particularly with the capacity for screen texts to encourage environmental empathy through representations of nature and/or the relationship between human and non-human worlds, bodies, and ways of being.