‘A break from scrolling’: how Gen Z fell in love with birding – podcast

# ‘A break from scrolling’: how Gen Z fell in love with birding – podcast

**In the last 50 years, Britain has lost an estimated 73 million wild birds from its landscape, according to data from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Yet paradoxically, a generation that has grown up amid this staggering decline is leading a renaissance in birdwatching. Gen Z, often stereotyped as glued to screens, is increasingly turning to binoculars and field guides, driven by social media platforms and the Merlin Bird ID app. This trend, documented in a new podcast from *The Guardian*, reveals how young people are reconnecting with nature despite a phenomenon known as ‘shifting baseline syndrome’—where each generation inherits a degraded environment and fails to notice the cumulative loss.**

The podcast, hosted by Madeleine Finlay, features writer Robert Macfarlane and Jess Painter, a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) youth council. They explore why birding has become “cool” among under-30s, even as the UK’s bird population has plummeted due to habitat loss, pesticides, disease, domestic cats, and the climate crisis. For young people, the appeal is partly about digital detox. “It’s a break from scrolling,” Painter says in the episode. “When you’re out with your phone trying to identify a chiffchaff, you’re not thinking about notifications.”

The scale of loss and shifting baselines

The BTO’s data paints a stark picture: since 1970, Britain’s wild bird population has declined by roughly 73 million individuals, with farmland and woodland species hit hardest. The skylark, once a ubiquitous sound of summer, has declined by 60% since 1970. The turtle dove has seen a 98% drop. Yet many young birders, born after 2000, have no memory of these losses. This is the core of shifting baseline syndrome, a concept first identified by fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly. It describes how each generation accepts the state of the environment they inherit as normal, masking long-term degradation.

“Shifting baseline syndrome means we don’t notice what we’ve lost,” Macfarlane tells the podcast. “For a 20-year-old birder today, a dawn chorus with 10 species might seem rich—but 50 years ago, that same wood might have held 30 species. The silence is relative.”

How Gen Z is bucking the trend

Despite this, the RSPB reports a surge in youth membership, with 18- to 24-year-olds now the fastest-growing demographic. The Technology behind this shift is notable: the Merlin Bird ID app, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, uses sound recognition to identify birdsong in real time. Downloads in the UK have risen 45% year-on-year among users aged 16–25. Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram have also democratized birding, with hashtags like #BirdTok and #BirdingGenZ generating millions of views.

“We’re seeing a generation that uses technology to access nature, not escape it,” says Painter. “Merlin turns a walk in the park into a game. You’re collecting sightings, you’re learning species. It’s addictive in a good way.”

What we’re missing from the dawn chorus

The podcast also highlights a sonic loss. A companion piece by *The Guardian* compares audio recordings of Britain’s dawn chorus from 1976 to 2026. The difference is dramatic: where once there was a layered orchestra of song thrushes, blackcaps, and nightingales, now there are gaps—silences where birds once sang. The decline is not just numerical but acoustic, affecting human wellbeing. Studies cited by the BTO link exposure to birdsong with reduced stress and improved cognitive performance.

Forward-looking analysis

The Gen Z birding boom offers a glimmer of hope, but conservationists warn it must translate into political action. The UK government’s Environmental Improvement Plan targets reversing species decline by 2030, but current trajectories suggest that goal is unlikely without stronger protections for habitats and pesticide regulation. The RSPB’s youth council is lobbying for a “Right to Nature” bill, and Painter notes that young birders are increasingly involved in citizen science projects, from garden bird counts to nest box monitoring. “We’re not just watching birds,” she says. “We’re counting them, sharing data, and demanding better.”

For now, the trend suggests that a generation raised on digital tools may yet become the stewards of the natural world. As Macfarlane puts it in the podcast: “The birds are telling us something. The question is whether we’re listening.”

*For more on this story, listen to the full episode at The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast.*