The target article offers a timely and integrative framework for understanding how individuals perceive and respond to ecological affordances based on shifting goal priorities across key life stages – childhood, mating, and parenting. Drawing from life history theory and affordance management perspectives, Ko and Neuberg argue convincingly that individuals flexibly recalibrate their cognition, affect, and behavior to meet stage-specific adaptive challenges. They illustrate this model through three environmental dimensions – genetic relatedness, physical violence, and sex-age ratio – rooted in recurring pressures across human evolutionary history.

This theoretical contribution is both generative and novel; however, its scope is limited by the selection of only historically recurrent ecological dimensions. In modern human ecologies, other salient environments have emerged that carry significant implications for developmental adaptation. This commentary aims to expand the proposed framework by incorporating two underexplored but developmentally critical ecological conditions: digital social environments and outdoor natural environments. Adopting the structure of the target article, this commentary applies the original model to these two overlooked ecological dimensions across the childhood, mating, and parenting stages.

Digital social environments, including social media, messaging platforms, online gaming, and AI tools (such as ChatGPT and Deepseek), provide novel affordances (e.g., strategic self-expression, mediated visibility, and personalized learning) that interact with goal-directed behavior (Orben & Blakemore, Reference Orben and Blakemore2023; Piazza & Bering, Reference Piazza and Bering2009). Relative to the long span of human evolutionary history, digital social settings are a remarkably recent environmental condition, emerging only within the past few decades yet rapidly reshaping how individuals pursue core life-history goals. In childhood, life-history theory posits a focus on somatic growth and learning. Digital platforms can afford rich learning opportunities (e.g., interactive educational apps, games, and videos) that promote cognitive and emotional competence (e.g., literacy; Niklas et al., Reference Niklas, Birtwistle, Mues and Wirth2025). The social affordances of online games can also help children practice communication and play roles, contributing to the development of their emerging social identity (Fu et al., Reference Fu, Schwamm, Baughan, Powell, Kronberg, Owens, Izenman, Alsabeh, Hunt, Rich, Bickham, Radesky and Hiniker2025). However, children’s engagement in digital environments may also encounter novel threats because these settings differ sharply from the ancestral contexts. Evolution prepared children to adapt to the environments through face-to-face interactions and physical exploration, yet digital media often substitutes these experiences with virtual interactions (Lim & Tan, Reference Lim and Tan2024). Such mismatches can impair the calibration of attentional systems and expose children to more developmentally inappropriate content (Uhls, Ellison, & Subrahmanyam, Reference Uhls, Ellison and Subrahmanyam2017; Zivan et al., Reference Zivan, Bar, Jing, Hutton, Farah and Horowitz-Kraus2019) and deceptive and misleading information (Hancock, Reference Hancock, McKenna, Postmes, Reips and Joinson2007). Moreover, children encounter evolutionarily novel threats (e.g., elimination of geographic constraints, visual anonymity, and privacy breaches) that were absent in ancestral environments and for which humans may lack specialized defense mechanisms (Shariff Green, & Jettinghoff Reference Shariff, Green and Jettinghoff2021; Silva et al. Reference Silva, Barbosa, Silva, Silva, Mourão and Coutinho2017). Thus, the digital environment may pose both opportunities and threats at the childhood stage. In addition, in the mating stage, digital mating affordances align with reproductive goals by enhancing signaling (e.g., attractive profiles and photos to signal fitness or status) and search opportunities (e.g., broad access to potential partners), but they amplify mating competition and even sexual deception (Piazza & Bering, Reference Piazza and Bering2009), hence evolutionarily requiring individuals to adjust cognitive biases to identify those threats. Last, in the parenting stage, life history priorities shift to parental investment and resource provisioning. Digital environments (e.g., online forums, apps, and AI chatbots) afford parents quick access to caregiving advice and community support (Niklas et al., Reference Niklas, Birtwistle, Mues and Wirth2025; Mertens et al., Reference Mertens, Ye, Beuckels and Hudders2024). And even digital tools now address challenges like children’s safety through digital monitoring gadgets and work-family balance through remote work technologies for parents (Ball & Keegan, Reference Ball and Keegan2022).

Outdoor play/natural environments include green spaces, playgrounds, neighborhood recreational areas, and nature experiences. Historically, outdoor play and engagement with natural environments have been ubiquitous aspects of human life, supporting learning and well-being from an evolutionary perspective (Wilson, Reference Wilson1986). To navigate the challenges and opportunities of natural settings, humans have evolved perceptual and behavioral systems designed to detect environmental cues related to safety, resources, and potential hazards, triggering adaptive responses that promote exploration while avoiding danger (Kaplan & Kaplan, Reference Kaplan and Kaplan1989). In the childhood stage, from an evolutionary-developmental lens, outdoor play/natural environments are primarily seen as opportunity-rich environments that foster adaptive skills and well-being, with threats being part of the learning process (Bogin, Reference Bogin1997). For example, a review showed that access to green spaces promotes the mental well-being (e.g., attention restoration, memory, and self-discipline) of children (McCormick, Reference McCormick2017). After puberty, young males became more passionate about nature adventures. Human males often treat outdoor play and nature adventures as mating arenas where they can display fitness to both rivals and potential mates. Evolutionary theory interprets males’ attraction to wilderness challenges as “costly signals” of genetic quality (Bishop et al., Reference Bishop, McGrosky, Trumble, Gurven and Hill2023). By climbing, hunting, or competing in natural environments, young men demonstrate strength, endurance, and bravery, which are considered attractive traits and often associated with good genes by women (Baláš et al., Reference Baláš, Pecha, Martin and Cochrane2011; Sell Lukazsweski, & Townsley Reference Sell, Lukazsweski and Townsley2017). In addition, long-term mating strategies emphasize provisioning and responsibility. Skills to promote survival or hunting in challenging natural contexts signal men’s competence and social status, which are indicative of resources and protection to a family (Gurven & von Rueden, Reference Gurven and von Rueden2006; Marlowe, Reference Marlowe2003). In sum, for men, these risk-laden natural environments can afford an opportunity to gain access to potential short-term or long-term mates. Last, outdoor play/natural environment is likely perceived as affording threats to parents by directly threatening the safety and survival of their offspring, further compromising parental fitness. In particular, from a modern parental safety perspective, risky play in natural outdoor environments (e.g., climbing trees, playing near fire or water, or exploring areas where children might get lost) is typically regarded as requiring supervision and risk management (Brussoni et al., Reference Brussoni, Ishikawa, Brunelle and Herrington2017). For example, a large-scale survey of 13,169 children aged 7 years in the UK showed that parents tend to be conservative about letting their children play outdoors alone, with fewer than 30% doing so (Aggio et al., Reference Aggio, Gardner, Roberts, Johnstone, Stubbs, Williams and Smith2017).

In sum, this commentary argues that incorporating digital social and outdoor natural environments into the ecological affordance framework not only reflects contemporary developmental realities but also enhances the theoretical scope and cross-contextual applicability of the model.