National Park Ranger: Young people are missing out on important

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Veritas Prep Official Explanation

Like many Strengthen, Weaken, or Assumption questions, this problem heavily rewards those who notice the major gap between the wording in the conclusion (which is about appreciating nature) and the wording in the premise(s) (which here is all about time spent in the park). Does time spent = appreciation? That is the wording gap in play here: if time spent is not a valid measure of appreciation, then the argument is totally disconnected. If it is a good measure of appreciation, then the argument much more logically flows.

For that reason, choice E is correct. If you hold it up to the Assumption Negation Technique, you'll see that the negated version is "time spent is NOT a reliable measure of appreciation" which then means that the only premise (younger people don't spend much time at the park) no longer supports the conclusion.

Among the other answer choices:

Choice A may very well seem relevant ("but what if they look at the pictures later?") but requires an additional assumption, that "looking at pictures" = appreciation.

Choice B may also look tempting, but if you hold it up to the Assumption Negation Technique, note that even if "people who spend multiple days at the park spend less than half their time appreciating nature" they can still spend a lot more time than "just long enough to take a picture" appreciating nature, so you can see that the negated assumption does not cripple the argument.

Choice C misses the scope of the conclusion, which is only about young people currently missing out on opportunities to appreciate nature. C would be helpful if the conclusion was more about a comparison between generations, but the conclusion as written is specific to current young people so this comparative answer choice isn't relevant.

And choice D is also incorrect, as you can see from holding it up to the Assumption Negation Technique: even if young people are NOT the only people whose visits are so brief, their visits ARE still brief so you haven't changed the nature of the argument by negating the assumption Therefore, the assumption is not required: whether it's true or the opposite is true has no bearing on the argument.­