Seven minutes. That’s how long the average American child spends in unstructured outdoor play each day. Yet that same kid will spend more than seven hours a day staring at screens. By the age of 8, they will have spent an entire year of 24-hour days on screens. It wasn’t too long ago that when parents needed a quiet house, they’d just tell the kids to “go outside” - but these days the go-to solution has been to tell kids to “go online.”

New research is revealing the impact screen time can have on developing brains, and it’s significant. The encouraging part? Nature can help offset its effects. Time spent outdoors is linked to positive changes in children’s brain structure and development. Great Outdoors Colorado’s (GOCO) Generation Wild wanted their campaign to shift parents' perspective of nature as not only beneficial, but essential to supporting the development of your child’s brain.
- It gives the prefrontal cortex a break
- It protects developing eyes
- It helps gain focus
- It strengthens memory
- It resets the sleep cycle
- It supports communication, cooperation and peer bonding
- It lowers stress hormones
- And it provides long-term developmental benefits

You could say that spending time outside resets little brains. That insight drove our new “Take Your Brain Out” campaign for Generation Wild. In the hero spot, we bring viewers into a magical world showing different kids engaged in outdoor adventures with friends - friends who just happen to be anthropomorphized brains. Together they ride bikes, swing on a tree swing, roll down a grassy hill, and stare up at the clouds.

Campaign elements include CTV/OLV/linear video, in-theater placements, billboards, streaming audio (podcasts/music), and social media. Paid media placements drive to the Generation Wild website to help parents learn more about the healing properties of time in nature.