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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

#191

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

manmal wrote: post #145
derekp7 wrote: post #18

This article is about the effects of eye strain, not the overall mental health of looking at content on a screen. With that in mind, what is it about a screen (emitted light) that is worse than outdoors reflect light? One item I can think of, is that looking at something with reflected natural light, the iris contracts based on the total amount of light hitting it. Whereas a screen may be brighter than the ambient li…

Screens are optimized for energy efficiency, so their emissions are restricted to a narrow range of visible frequencies. They don’t even really cover the whole range of colors, but mix them by combining RGB, which isn’t the real thing. Eg you can make something looking like violet light by mixing blue and red, but it’s not the same thing as the „real“ violet. Sunlight, however, is a wild mix of broadband EM emissions…

would it help to set your screens to a grayscale setting?

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

#192

Post by filoleg »

saalweachter wrote: post #180
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…

I'm sure there is a correlation, maybe even a strong one, but I have quite a bit of anecdata to suggest it is not true in all cases. (I grew up on a farm, and spent a helluva lot of time outside, and needed glasses long before my family had a computer; my father would have spent even more time outside than I did, and likewise is pretty nearsighted.)

Had the inverse situation observed too. One of my friends has been writing code intensely since at least the age of 11, still spending tons of time in front of the screen. Never needed glasses in his entire life. And then there is me, who had very limited access to screen time as a kid, and I still ended up needing glasses around the age of 15 (despite none of my parents needing glasses, which goes to show that "genetic" doesn't necessarily mean something as simple as "your parents are this way, so you are bound to be the same way").

I am not a doctor, but imo it is similar to a lot of other health concerns. Predominantly genetic, but you can still affect the outcome in slight ways and improve your chances a bit.

Personal example: my grandfather who has been smoking at least a pack a day since the age of 9, and he is still doing way better in his 80s than majority of people his age. Working in the garden (even physically demanding stuff, like preparing the soil for potatoes every summer), fully mentally sound, etc. On another hand, you have plenty of young people who do everything right (no smoking, healthy diet, regular proper exercise, etc.) falling due to random health ailments. Which goes to show that while taking care of yourself is important and beneficial, the luck of hand you got can override it all in either direction at any moment.

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

#194

Post by rietta »

saiya-jin wrote: post #172
rietta wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I SURE am glad my parents didn't limit my screen time as a kid. I taught myself how to program from age 14 spending countless, countless late night hours staring at the DOS computer screen programming whatever caught my fancy. My career would look so much worse if my parents had forbade me from using the computer.

careers to many of us are far from being the most important things in our abysmally short lives

I find my work to be enjoyable and am glad it supports my family and my team members who work for us. It started out as literally me working crazy sleepless hours coding freelance using the self taught skills.

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

#195

Post by karatestomp »

bityard wrote: post #186
karatestomp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people here who were and remember being "good at search" and able to make exactly the thing they're looking for shoot to the top 3 spots on the results screen and being able to craft a series of searches such that, if they all failed, one could be pretty damn sure the information wasn't online or at least was hidden from the Google bot, neither of which are really possible anymore. The 100th time one attempts…

I definitely remember a time when Google was much, much better at returning relevant results for technical content. My feeling is that there are (at least) two factors at play: 1) Google and other search engines revised their algorithms more than a decade ago. Instead of showing you results for what you searched for, they now show you what they _think you meant_ based on your search history and the search histories o…

> This is not technically Google's fault but there is a lot they could do to curb this, but all that ad revenue on those sites is how they earn that sweet sweet lucre.

That had been going on for years, but there'd be clear times when Google got ahead of it and results would get much better for a while, and because search was so much more precise it was possible to work around the spam. That those good times stopped happening and results are now a consistent and fairly high level of "spam-filled" by content that's seemed pretty much the same sort of crap for years, leads me to conclude they stopped trying. IIRC right around then they stopped the "no no, our ads our different and good, they're just text and always formatted the same way so it's easy to tell what they are" and became just another banner ad slinger.

[EDIT] just mined Slashdot for that last bit, looks like that happened around the last half of '07, which roughly checks out with my recollection of Google search abruptly getting much worse around '08-'09 then never getting better again.

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

#196

Post by jabroni_salad »

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 set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day. Even during the day under florescent lights and an open window, if I have to toggle it off for any reason it feels like my eyes are being stabbed with tiny knives.

I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?) but I personally definitely staved off eye strain and dry eye issues with f.lux and no other changes.

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

#197

Post by acituan »

sigfubar wrote: post #100
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.

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.

> It's the parents' job to teach kids how to tell junk food from healthy food

I agree with the sentiment, but an important point is not the forget that behind the curtains there is an army of product managers, AI PhDs and tons of data running a version of Truman Show on each one of us. Usually "you're the product" is blended with "you're consuming the product that adds value". For example, you can search and land to a video to watch something educational, but opaque recommendation algorithms, un-turn-offable autoplays, nagging notifications and whatnot will try to convince you like an optimally-annoying salesman to stay just a little more and pay them in attention and ad revenue, or get you those dopamine hits so that you will want to come back to "just check" the app in a pavlovian fashion.

Whenever you or your kid interact with a screen, you are potentially interacting not only with a machinery with inherent information asymmetry but also one that we train every day exactly how much abuse we are willing to take. For further reading see Tristan Harris and the design ethics questions he brings into light.

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

#198

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

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…

any thoughts on blue light glasses? or setting your screens to grayscale?

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

#199

Post by bityard »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #175
matwood wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going through TNG right now, and the stories still hold up very well. There are a lot more useful lessons in them than I remember when watching as a kid. I really do like the humankind aspirational nature of the show also.

I went through TNG again a while ago and I was struck by how much I'd forgotten, and how I'd kind of lost my way in terms of my beliefs. I grew up wanting to be like Picard, and watching them again reminded me of that.

I grew up on TNG and I'm now re-watching it all with my daughter. The first season is just as rough as I remember it, but I love how much of the core themes and character of TNG they got absolutely right from the very first episode.

One thing about the show that struck me is that I'm amazed at how inter-personal communication has changed over the decades. I thought I remembered everyone being a lot more easy-going when I was a kid and then decided that I must have imagined it. But no, sure enough, right there on Star Trek you see the characters poking light fun at each other not long after they first met, even in a military setting.

Today people seem to take themselves much more seriously. You have to be a lot more guarded and diplomatic, sometimes even with people you know very well, otherwise you risk alienation or embarrassment. I know TV is not reality, yadda yadda, but there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere.

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