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

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

#121

Post by jedberg »

falcor84 wrote: post #110
jedberg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some apps just seem predatory. Oh boy are they ever. We spend a lot of time curating the kids' screen time. We try every app first. Youtube Kids is banned. Youtube's AI sucks at vetting content and they refuse to put humans on the job. The apps from PBS are all gold. Disney+ has so for proven to be good at making sure all the content is kid appropriate.

YouTube Kids also lacks an option to disable Autoplay, which makes it pure evil in my eyes.

Amusingly PBS kids is the only streaming app I've seen that doesn't ask "are you still there". We've left that one running overnight by accident and it just keeps going and going.

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

#122

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

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?

Well, I agree that the issue needs careful examination. Not all screen time is created equal. That said, to an average person, screen time does not really equal educational applications, writing code or even reading. Instead, to most, it tends to mean Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, and increasingly creepier games designed to suck you in and bleed you( or your parents ) dry.

I am saying this as an expecting parent. My parents were raised without TV and there is a clear difference on how they processed the information presented to them. Heavens know I do not process it the same way what with being basically raised on internet and tv.

In short, I do not think we should move on. I think it is worthwhile to ask more nuanced questions than 'is screen time bad-discuss'.

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

#123

Post by ironmagma »

fsociety wrote: post #114
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?

Such a good point. I had a small existential crisis watching programmers on YouTube/Twitch because I was focusing on the sounds of the keyboard typing and realizing that they are sitting in front of a screen typing for hours on end and how pointless it was. The second part of my crisis was that I was no different. After a few months of dealing with this I remembered that actually they are engaging with an entire worl…

Never heard it put so plainly, that’s awesome.

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

#124

Post by carierx1 »

osrec wrote: post #106
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?

Funnily enough, I remember talking to a historian who said centuries ago, reading a book was considered "mindless entertainment", much as we think about our smartphones now. Eventually, reading evolved into being considered something generally "smart" people did.

I'd love to read up more on that! Any links to literature on the topic?

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

#125

Post by karatestomp »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #82
karatestomp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure about that. The topics I want to dig into I usually find it's harder to get the level of depth I want on a topic in book form than I do than to find videos on YouTube. Some random examples: - I'm interested in turbine engines, AgentJayZ has a while host of videos taking real turbine engines apart, talking about obscure features like compressor variable valve vanes etc. - Plumbing, almost everything I've…

Oh yeah, for the subset of content that is "watch an expert do a thing" the Web has become extremely good. Nothing before touches it. In part I think it's remained so because almost all the content is on one site—there's no web search involved in finding it at all, you just search Youtube (which is owned by the main company that might help you find videos on other sites). If Google'd found a way to reward putting academic & deep cultural-knowledge material on a platform they owned such that they had a near-monopoly, perhaps that site would be good. The web at-large might remain basically useless for it (or, probably, even worse, as everyone went to that single platform) such that it depends on one's perspective whether it's the Web delivering value or just Google's platform that could be served just about any damn way at this point (if they decided to transition over to a new non-Web protocol just for Youtube and put it in Chrome they might well succeed in forcing everyone else to adopt it)

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

#126

Post by rorykoehler »

jedberg wrote: post #101
goostavos wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Some apps just seem predatory. Oh boy are they ever. We spend a lot of time curating the kids' screen time. We try every app first. Youtube Kids is banned. Youtube's AI sucks at vetting content and they refuse to put humans on the job. The apps from PBS are all gold. Disney+ has so for proven to be good at making sure all the content is kid appropriate.

I dunno why we can't just hand select any video from youtube for youtube kids? I don't need youtube algos to recommend bullshit to my kids and I don't need youtube to control what i show to my kids.

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

#127

Post by sinity »

gowld wrote: post #75
scottLobster wrote: post #6

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?

You don't go blind from staring at a screen. Claims otherwise are the same as 5G conspiracy theories. Photons are photons.

You might get issues from focusing at the same distance all the time. Or that theory about dopamine may be true - but if anything, screens are an improvement over things like paper books. And it applies to adolescence anyway.

And nearsightedness is not anywhere near going blind.

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

#128

Post by eanzenberg »

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?

>> Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?

Is it, though? Spending lots of time in front of a TV is still considered harmful as it was half a century ago.

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

#129

Post by akiselev »

karatestomp wrote: post #46
mchusma wrote: 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…

Thirty years ago you couldn't scratch past the surface of more than a few dozen topics based on your local library's availability, if you were lucky to have a decent one to begin with.

Between libgen, scihub, Google Books, Project Gutenberg, torrent sites, and the rest of the internet we've got access to almost all of the world's knowledge for free with plenty of avenues to interact with experts using a variety of different channels for knowledge that hasn't been put to paper yet.

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