Florence Williams This Is Your Brain On Nature Summary

In response to the increasing number of Americans avoiding to go outside, Florence Williams’ article “This is Your Brain on Nature” endeavors to persuade her audience that spending time in nature is beneficial to one’s overall health. Williams constructs her argument by implementing reliable sources, appropriate data, and by appealing to the audience’s pathos. Throughout the entire article Florence Williams utilizes reliable sources to convince readers that the facts that she states come from trustworthy places and that many notable organizations are noticing that Americans are not near nature enough. In order to inform readers that Americans do not spend time outside: Williams states, “According to research by the Harvard School of Public Health, American adults spend less time outside than they do inside vehicles…” As her audience reads this fact, it shocks them because that circumstance is insane to think about. The fact that people spend more time traveling in a vehicle makes the readers want to change their lifestyle. The reason that this quote was incorporated into this article was to inform

While discussing, She states, “One recent Nature Conservancy poll found that only about 10 percent of American teens spend time outside every day.” This convinces readers that American teens do not care enough to go outside and there is possibly another reason that they are not going outside. The reason the author chose to apply this statistic was to get the attention to teens and parents that teens are getting potentially lazier and that it could get worse as the years go on. The addition of the statistic to the article seizes that audience’s attention and helps them to believe that teens need to be near nature more often. With the application of this statistic, it aids Williams’ argument because she is able to show actual evidence that connects back to her