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- Social media helped cause a big increase in wild food foraging after the pandemic, especially on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
- Using the internet for foraging helps new people learn fast but often means they miss out on safety lessons and understanding the natural setting.
- Getting mushrooms wrong based on what you see online can be very dangerous, mainly when you use group chats or apps.
- People worry more about taking ideas from other cultures and not saying where they got information in online foraging content.
- Experts say we need to find a way to use what we learn online along with real, hands-on learning about nature so we can keep things going for a long time.
The Rise of Cyberforaging
Foraging and social media have changed together into a strong cultural pair. Over the last ten years, online places have changed from just for scrolling into unexpected classrooms for wild food foraging. People were isolated during the pandemic and looked for outdoor activities that felt meaningful. This helped foraging grow a lot online. The Foragers Association says that membership in online foraging groups grew very quickly during COVID-19 lockdowns. Some Facebook groups got three times bigger between 2020 and 2021 [Foragers Association, 2021].
The word “cyberforaging” first came from the tech world. It meant computers getting things from the environment. But here, it now means sharing foraging experiences online using phones, social apps, and group message boards. In short, today’s kind of cyberforaging puts old knowledge together with quick sharing of information.
But this is a tricky thing: what helps people learn can also make wrong information and harm to local nature areas spread faster.
Why Foraging and Social Media Work So Well Together
Look at it simply, wild food foraging is very good for social media. It has great-looking pictures, special knowledge, fits the seasons, and feels connected to nature. A lion's mane mushroom cooked up gold-brown in a pan, or violets with sugar on homemade cookies—these are the things that get clicks, saves, and followers.
The visual appeal of wild plants and fungi fits well with how apps like Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok show posts. On TikTok, videos with #foraging have been seen hundreds of millions of times. And topics like #mushroomidentification bring together posts users have made. Some are helpful for learning, others are not so sure.
Being able to talk back and forth helps this more. Facebook groups help with identifying things right away, getting advice, and building connection between people. Pinterest is a place to keep recipes forever. YouTube lets you learn a lot about things like soil or ways to harvest without harming nature.
Foraging used to be learned by working with someone older. Now, it's like everyone online is helping teach. Today, a beginner can go online and learn how to identify miner’s lettuce, see worms in mushrooms up close, and watch how to pickle things—all in 15 minutes. This is a big change because it makes things so easy to get to.
The Upsides: Help and Connection
Cyberforaging has made the field open to groups who didn’t have easy access to land, teachers, or knowledge passed down from older family members. Foraging and social media are where digital information can help people in cities, people with disabilities, and beginners who are learning by themselves.
People who forage online can
- Learn about what’s ready to find based on what others post live.
- Watch how-to videos on mushroom spore printing, using a field knife, and drying food.
- Join group challenges and share what they are finding to learn from each other.
People who make videos on YouTube, like Alexis Nikole Nelson (@blackforager), show a fun, fact-based way to forage in cities. This has helped bring more kinds of people into a space that used to be mostly white, from country areas, or men. Their online places are changing learning into fun without losing important details.
Teachers who are also business owners have also built businesses because of cyberforaging. Some offer classes that mix walking outside with booklets you can download. Others run businesses about mushrooms, making fermented foods, or creating natural remedies. These creators use their online places not just to teach but to encourage taking care of nature and making a living from it.
Cyberforaging, when done the right way, helps spread out who has knowledge. It gives everyone a chance to learn about mushrooms and plants.
The Downsides: Not Learning Enough and Too Much Screen Time
But, as often happens with things online, having a lot can mean the quality isn't very high. Cyberforaging puts foraging information into quick bits you can watch fast. But it also lets people share wrong information easily.
The way foraging beginners used to learn was slow and took time. Now, it's becoming quick viral videos. Someone might scroll past many plant IDs but not remember their names, how they grow, or what toxic plants look like that are similar. When this happens, TikTok becomes less a tool for learning and more something that just looks real but isn't. You can watch hundreds of nice-looking videos without ever walking into a real forest.
This way of just watching things without doing cuts down on the careful looking needed for safe, ethical foraging. For example
- How mushrooms grow changes a lot depending on the small weather conditions and soil.
- Telling wild carrots (Daucus carota) from poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) needs you to look closely using many senses—not just seeing a picture.
Technology can help, but it cannot take the place of learning by doing things outside. If you don't get your hands dirty, what you learn stays just an idea—and can be unsafe.
And then there's screen time that's hard to stop. It can make us feel disconnected from the nature we want to be part of. Studies show that spending time online means less time outside, which means people understand less about nature—especially kids and teenagers [Greater Good Science Center, 2018]. What's strange about cyberforaging is that the very way it works might harm its own message.
Mushroom Identification Risks Amplified Online
When it comes to finding wild food, identifying mushrooms is perhaps the most dangerous thing you can do. Getting plants wrong might make you taste something bitter or get a stomach ache. Getting fungi wrong can kill you.
Online message boards where amateurs ask for help identifying things are very risky
- People might post bad photos that don't show all the parts you need to see.
- Answers often come from strangers whose knowledge you don't know.
- People writing back might focus on being fast and sounding sure instead of being careful and checking fully.
Even popular ID apps that use AI or photos people send in have limits. They might not be right for your area or could get a species wrong with deadly results. Fungi are known for changing a lot. Even experts argue about complicated types like Cortinarius or Russula.
New people should be careful about anything online that doesn't clearly talk about the dangers. Good ways to stay safe are
- Checking three times using trusted field guides.
- Using spore prints and looking at where you found the mushroom.
- Asking local mushroom groups or teachers who know what they are doing.
- If you are not sure—do not eat any wild mushroom, no matter how many people liked the photo of you finding it.
Kits to grow mushrooms at home offer a safer way to get hands-on practice before going into areas that could be dangerous.
Ta-da Culture vs. Realism: Showing Off vs. Reality: Fake Success and Taking Too Much
“Instagram foraging” often shows only the best parts—the basket full of finds, not the hours of looking, the bad weather, the bug bites, or the times you found nothing. This way of showing things leaves out the real picture and makes success look much bigger than it is. This gives beginners unfair ideas about what to expect.
Worse, online posts showing huge amounts of food picked without talking about the effects on nature can teach people the wrong things. Wild ramps, fiddleheads, and garlic mustard are plants often taken too much of by online stars. If people don't understand good ways to harvest, like
- Cutting the plant, not pulling up the roots.
- Taking only a small part of a patch.
- Knowing if a plant is protected where they are.
—users might hurt the places where these plants grow without knowing it.
Wild food foraging does well only when keeping things going for the future is part of how it's done. The social media way rewards finding the biggest things. Foraging wisdom reminds us that sometimes the smartest thing to do is leave something there.
Foraging as an Embodied Practice, Not a Hashtag
Information online cannot take the place of knowing something in your body. Smelling a mushroom deep down, seeing how light changes on leaves, or feeling the wet air in the woods—these things are part of how you learn foraging over time.
Foraging is not just about touch; it also feels emotional and connects to people who came before us. Many foragers say they get a sense of being in tune—with the weather, the time of year, how plants grow—that gets stronger the more they do it. This kind of knowing doesn't happen on a screen.
While cyberforaging can open the door, you have to go through it with your senses wide open and your screen off.
Taking Ideas, Not Giving Credit, and Forgetting Where Knowledge Comes Comes From
When people rush to make videos that go viral, many foragers forget who taught them—or who helped keep the information alive.
Taking other people's work is very common online. Recipes like Fergus Drennan’s jelly ear mushroom candy are often shared with no mention of where they came from. This is worse when people online share knowledge about plants without saying thanks to Indigenous, Black, or groups who have not had power. These groups kept traditions about edible plants alive through hard times, colonization, and being left out by the system.
To do cyberforaging respectfully, you should
- Say where you got your information: books, teachers, and different cultures.
- Say when a recipe or ID tip isn’t yours.
- Avoid trendy words that make things sound strange or take away the real meaning, like calling burdock “healing root powder.”
Give credit, keep the real meaning, and help others. Cyberforaging should never mean losing the knowledge of certain groups of people.
Cyberforaging Etiquette: Online Behavior: Being Nice, Not Nasty
When you are seen by many people online, you get judged. But online foraging groups have a lot of bad behavior, from people correcting others when they didn't ask to just being mean.
“Pickshaming” means criticizing people for what they harvested without knowing the real story. Talking about keeping things going for the future is very important, but how you say it matters. An angry comment about “ruining nature” rarely helps anyone learn.
Being respectful when foraging online means
- Asking questions to understand better.
- Suggesting ways to harvest without harming nature and sharing links or pictures.
- Understanding that different areas have different plants before you criticize.
Sometimes, the people who are loudest in a comment section know the least. Don’t act like you are the only one who knows. Foraging should stay a practice where people feel welcome and where nature can grow back—not a club for only a few people.
The Role of Mushroom Brands & Educators
Brands that work with mushrooms and teaching about foraging have a lot of power. They can reach many people and help change how things are done.
Good mushroom educators
- Make learning plans with different parts (videos + articles + classes).
- Always put safety warnings on every post about identifying things.
- Answer questions from beginners with kindness and patience.
- Say that doing things the right way is more important than how good it looks.
For example, Zombie Mushrooms mixes jokes and safety. They pair fun videos with useful safety sheets you can download and kits to start growing mushrooms. They use clicks to help people learn and grow groups of people who enjoy the hobby and know what they are doing.
Recalibrating Our Influence: What Can We Do?
No matter if you scroll online daily or pick plants often, what you do online changes what cyberforaging becomes.
Tips for being a better digital foraging citizen
- Post the full story: the times you didn't find anything, the mistakes, the things you learned.
- Include where you found it and what time of year it was.
- Say who taught you, who your teachers were, and where you got information.
- Link to books about plants and mushrooms for your area.
- Make it normal for beginners to make mistakes—and to learn from each other.
Make it cool to be interested and want to learn, not just to be right.
Healthy Digital-Foraging Balance: Lessons for Beginners
If you are just starting out foraging
- Don’t trust only one place for information—check with books, libraries, and real teachers.
- Pick people online who show they are humble, say where they got their info, and are open to talking.
- Practice "slow foraging": Spend time in the same place over many weeks. See how the plants grow during the year.
- Start near your home. Dandelions, chickweed, and dock all grow well nearby.
- Use cyberforaging to start learning—don's make it the only way you learn.
In the end, the forest doesn’t care how many followers you have. Learn about it slowly, and love it deeply.
Check out our beginner mushroom [identification safety guide], look at our [seasonal wild mushroom tutorial], or join a [local foraging event] to stay connected to the real world with your foraging.
References
- Foragers Association. (2021). Pandemic-driven growth in online foraging communities. Retrieved from https://foragers-association.org/News/9867952
- Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley. (2018). How Modern Life Became Disconnected From Nature. Retrieved from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_modern_life_became_disconnected_from_nature
