"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.
Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
131–140 of 304 posts
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#132Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.
And will use that infinite potential to binge watch Friends for the 11th time.
I have a large collection of movies and ripped them all to Kodi. I was going though marking a bunch as watched and I started to get slightly upset at myself as I marked each one and thought "watched that one 8-10 times, watched that one 5-6 times, watched that one 3-4 times, watched that one 5-6 times, etc etc. for many many movies. And there are TV series I've watch multiple times as well. So much time. Sure I enjoyed it but counting it all up is still shocking what else that time might have been used for.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#133Earlier 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?
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 bett…
I think it's irrational. "Screen time" is today's Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal. People are doing things differently today than I did at that age, therefore it's bad and needs to be limited.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#134Earlier 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.
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.
You can create a playlist if you want to hand curate a list. But the whole reason I use streaming services is so I can pay someone else to curate the content for me.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#135Well, 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 wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?
Well, ultimately, it is...
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#136These stats always freak me out when you extrapolate it over the long term. The average adult will also spend 2 years commuting or an entire year of their life sitting on the toilet. Lot's of wasted time here people. I think this also shows the power of what we can accomplish by spending 10 minutes a day doing something.
It can be quite difficult to convert random time savings into valuable time.
1) Is marginal free time actually converted to value (eg, Quality study time vs TikTok infinite scrolling)
2) Can Marginal free time be chained into valuable blocks (saving 1 minute commuting such that you're 2 more minute earl y for 30 appointments, you cannot chain that into a 1 hour study block.
Edit: I will say Ankidroid has helped me get some value out of random deadspace though.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#137Well, 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?
It's much harder to articulate "limit skinner box time" or "limit time spent using services that play on gambling impulses and give instant gratification like endless youtube playlists and mobile games."
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#138Average 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…
I've definitely felt and experienced the situation you're describing, but I think you might be painting with too broad a brush.
Sources like ArXiv, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar have made it really easy for me to access tons of deep, academic/professional level knowledge in my field instantaneously and for free. I know that Physics, Math, and Computer Science are relatively uniquely privileged when it comes to ArXiv, but even paywalled journals are more accessible in the internet age than they were before. I'm even able to find public-released technical info from the DoD through DTIC that I don't think I would ever know what to request without having it come up through search engines.
Likewise, tons of undergrad classes through MIT and the Ivies are available for free on Youtube; more still are available with exercises and some form of certification through services like Coursera, EdX, and Udacity. Some graduate and professional-level courses are starting to come online through these institutions as well; the Institute for Advanced Study has started releasing its lectures on Youtube over the past few years.
I can find manuals for my car, my appliances, and all my electronics online. I have access to all sorts of do-it-yourself how-tos on Youtube when I want to do work around the house. I have StackOverflow for when I have challenges with programming languages and tools that aren't clear from the docs, and the rest of the StackOverflow network when I have questions that are more specific to my problem domain.
There's more throughout all sorts of fields: instant translations with Google translate and langauges lessons through DuoLingo, Rosetta Stone, et al; music lessons on Youtube, etc.
Again, I've been through the experience where some older materials just aren't as available as I'd like, and where the normal search tools only bring you part of the way. But I think you're taking a lot for granted here.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#139Earlier 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…
This might be field dependent. All my research is based on scientific journal articles and reviews, which are electronically available, and books are more vanity affairs
Surely you started with textbooks.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#140Well, 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 wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Well, ultimately, it is...
Of course, but nobody ever says this. Except when reading was a new thing.