Live data from Hacker News

Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

studyfinds.org

71–80 of 304 posts

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#71

Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?

Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?

Screens haven't damaged your eyes for a long time. That was only true on the old CRT displays, which literally shot high frequency EM at your eyes.

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#72
post #9

Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.

Hardly. Scratch most topics past the surface level and if you're lucky the Web can find you the book you need. Usually though you'll need to find the best book the Web can find you, then use that book and/or correspondence with experts to find the ones you actually need. The problem seems to be a mix of tons of stuff just not being on the Web yet, even decades in (some of it's in ebooks, though, yes, but a whole lot…

Google, for all its current problems, _has_ made organization of the worlds knowledge vastly better than it was before they showed up.

I could be wrong but just surrounding the field of software development, there's probably already more relevant information on the internet than I could possibly consume in my life.

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#73
post #9

Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.

Hardly. Scratch most topics past the surface level and if you're lucky the Web can find you the book you need. Usually though you'll need to find the best book the Web can find you, then use that book and/or correspondence with experts to find the ones you actually need. The problem seems to be a mix of tons of stuff just not being on the Web yet, even decades in (some of it's in ebooks, though, yes, but a whole lot…

Approximately once per week I observe a comment on HN saying approximately "search doesn't work anymore." Why is this? Why do I only observe such complaints here?

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#74
post #38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really supported by empirical trials? A short search online seems to point to that being somewhat disputed. I'm all for contradictory evidence though if you have some I missed. Yeah sure a screen is emitting light which maybe makes it worse for the eyes to look at in some ways and situations than a paper page, but "looking at light" is almost an oxymoron - isn't that what eyes do?

Eyes usually look at diffusely reflected light, which has a different impact than direct light. A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 (I'm not sure how much bearing this actually has on eye health, this is just to illustrate how looking at a monitor and at a piece of paper is significantly different)

cd/m^2, not cd/cm^2

I don't understand. Monitors are intended to be set to the same brightness as the ambient environment. 300cd/cm^2 is max, not average.

Of course shining a monitor in your face at maximum brightness is bad, just like staring at a light bulb all day is bad.

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#75

So a few minutes ago I wrote code for a company, producing economic value. Last night I kept up with family, maintaining healthy personal relationships. Right now I'm engaging in intellectual discussion of major issues with other people. And last night I watched an episode of Mr. Robot, engaging my brain with a stimulating story. And yes, sometimes I just look at animal gifs on imgur. I see no problem continuing any…

How much of that time was caring for your eye health so you don't go blind early?

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#76

13 hours a day on average? That seems quite high to me. Assuming you sleep 8 hours, that only leaves 16 other hours for potential screen time of which 13 we are apparently looking at a screen. Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left. So of all of our waking hours, we spend…

I bet I'm around 12-13 hours more days than not. Maybe higher. And my phone addiction/dependence is moderate compared to some so it probably comes in a distant 3rd after laptop (easily #1) and TV (all movies, shows, and video games combined)

> Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left.

Laptop on the dresser/counter playing Youtube. Phones are waterproof—read news or catch up on morning messages in the shower. Laptops that aren't giant bricks and have battery life good enough that you aren't constantly hunting for an outlet and towing your power supply around, plus (even more so) smartphones, have changed everything.

Also depends on how they're counting screen time. Kinda like TV-watching stats. My parents leave their living room TV on probably 15+ hours a day. Does that mean they're "watching TV" if they're making lunch (good view of the TV from the kitchen) but half paying attention to the TV? Or I've come over and we're talking but the TV's on and you (or at least I) can't entirely ignore it?

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#78
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.

Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.

And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#79
post #9

Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.

Hardly. Scratch most topics past the surface level and if you're lucky the Web can find you the book you need. Usually though you'll need to find the best book the Web can find you, then use that book and/or correspondence with experts to find the ones you actually need. The problem seems to be a mix of tons of stuff just not being on the Web yet, even decades in (some of it's in ebooks, though, yes, but a whole lot…

That's an awfully pessimistic view of things. I've studied some fairly obscure corners of computer science and the Internet has allowed me to get instant access to mountains of scientific papers, a huge variety of books (many of which are out of circulation), incredibly high-quality courses on maths, DSP, algorithms and the like.

Previously I would have had no way of accessing any of that information unless I happened to be at the right university with the right department, or in some high-level research institute.

Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens

#80
Protip for everyone, since I've done a lot of research on this:

If at all possible, cut the blue from your screen at all times.

I use flu.x [0] and even during the day I set my color temp to 5800K instead of the standard 6500K. You won't notice the change much, but it will make a huge difference on how tired your eyes get.

I also go down to 1850K at night (candlelight basically) to both ease strain on my eyes and not mess up my sleep. It makes a noticeable difference.

[0] https://justgetflux.com

Post reply on HN