Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by throwaway8941 » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #42

volune wrote: post #11

The medieval peasant spent how much time staring at dirt?

Few of them stared at brightly glowing dirt, though. And few of them continually stared at dirt a foot or two in front of their faces. There's debate how much damage that difference causes, but pretending there's no difference is an unhelpful approach.

Tone down your brightness then? I use heavily customized dark themes absolutely everywhere, and my screen is hardly brighter than dirt. I have no problem looking at it for 30+ hours straight (though I don't do this anymore for other reasons.)

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

#92

Post by jedberg » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

literalanyone wrote: post #87

martindbp wrote: post #2

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?

I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?

Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time.

Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value.

Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories.

So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids.

The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).

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

#93

Post by nixpulvis » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

martindbp wrote: post #2

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?

You can make it out to be whatever you want. But there is a physical difference between a screen's light emissions and the light perceived from paper. I've always been curious exactly how much different, but anyone claiming otherwise is suspect in my eyes.

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

#94

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #36

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 agree. I track my screen time on my computer and mobile phone. I feel like I have too much screen time, but there's no way I could consistently hit 13 hours of screen time per day, unless maybe I put TVs around my house to use as background viewing while I do other work.

Even if I spend 10 hours at the office, it's a challenge to get over 7 hours of screen time logged unless I actively avoid all discussions, meetings, and eat lunch at my desk.

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

#95

Post by malwrar » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

acituan wrote: post #63

econcon wrote: post #19

Important thing is, people don't just stare at screen. Many of them achieve smth else too. For example, last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen. Helping them turn waste plastic into 3D printing filament: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

> last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen You've spent time with a simulation of those people, their voices lossily compressed with a biased frequency response, their images projected through a non-eye lens on a 2D surface, their heads bigger and closer than you would have in real life, while rest of their bodies hidden, with hundreds of milliseconds delay betwee…

Speaking personally, most of my good friendships growing up (and even now) were with people online and they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me. I've been really surprised to hear people (who seem to have been forced into interacting with folks online because of covid) start popping up claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow invalid or inferior, as your post seems to imply. I would have thought the presumably largely computer geek HN crowd would be full of folks with similar experience.

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

#96

Post by goostavos » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

literalanyone wrote: post #87

martindbp wrote: post #2

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?

I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?

Eh, I'm in camp "limit their screen time" if the screen time is all junk food. I also don't have kids, so what do I actually know? :) The only context for this opinion knowledge of the army of adults whose job it is to "maximize engagement" and give little dopamine hits.

Some apps just seem predatory.

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

#97

Post by nsilvestri » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #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…

I've had sunset-synchronized f.lux/redshift for 7 or 8 years now. Turning on redshift during work revealed I had pavlovian conditioned myself into getting sleepy when the blue light goes away.

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

#98

Post by dannyw » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

ipnon wrote: post #39

"If children get outside enough, it doesn't matter how much they study they do. They don't become myopic," said Ian Morgan, researcher at Australian National University.[0] "Researchers say kids and teens need to get sunlight during the critical years of their development while their eyeballs are still growing. "The mechanics of how sunlight protects their eyes are not clearly understood. One theory suggests that sun…

Does anyone know if this also applies for people in their early 20s? Of course more sunlight and exercise never hurts, but I’d be more compelled if there’s scientific evidence that it stops myopia progression.

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

#99

Post by jedberg » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

nsilvestri wrote: post #97

jedberg wrote: post #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…

I've had sunset-synchronized f.lux/redshift for 7 or 8 years now. Turning on redshift during work revealed I had pavlovian conditioned myself into getting sleepy when the blue light goes away.

Hah! Never thought about that side effect. I did both at the same time so never experienced that.

Good to know.

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

#100

Post by sigfubar » Wed, May 20, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

goostavos wrote: post #96

literalanyone wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?

Eh, I'm in camp "limit their screen time" if the screen time is all junk food. I also don't have kids, so what do I actually know? :) The only context for this opinion knowledge of the army of adults whose job it is to "maximize engagement" and give little dopamine hits. Some apps just seem predatory.

It's the parents' job to teach kids how to tell junk food from healthy food; predatory apps from apps which add value; "you're the product" from "you're consuming the product". I do this with my kid, and technology is a boon for her. However, most adults aren't qualified to make the distinction between good and evil, so their kids suffer too.