Pfft. Amateurs.
Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
211–220 of 304 posts
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#212Ugh, I did not need to see this today :(
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of “teaching” is literally excluding from consumption for young kids. Parents know better than their kids, why entrust that kind of advanced decision making within them?
>Lots of “teaching” is literally excluding from consumption for young kids Sure, I agree with you. Limit what they have access to while using the screen, but not the actual screen time. Somewhat analogous to the difference between limiting junk food from kids' diets vs. making them go full vegan and doing intermittent fasting.
Like most things moderation is key.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#214"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…
Meanwhile we put 5-6 year olds in kindergarten classrooms with UV-blocking windows all day, for about 9 months during the part of the year with the least sunlight available, and we've cut recess time down to almost nothing, and schools increasingly don't send kids outside if the weather's anything other than perfect. At my kids' school they don't even have indoor recess if they keep them in! They just watch a damn mo…
I think it's all a side effect of the treadmill that society is putting everyone on. Between globalization and automation there are fewer good jobs that more people are competing for. Either you end up with what used to be a lot of money or way too little. Till you "made it" you are constantly at risk at slipping off the treadmill and into the "way too little" group. Especially in the US.
May this be reality or not, it's the experienced reality for many. We feel so much pressure to give our kids a head start which results in this rat race starting earlier and harder. I think this is just collateral damage from that shit going wrong. I'm so glad I was a kid in the 80s when playing outside was still normal.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#215Good thing I started out super far-sighted. If anything, my vision has improved with time focusing on close screens. :P
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#216"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.)
I agree. This is the first time I’ve heard of it. Literally everyone in my family wears glasses, including my deceased grandfather who lived into his 90s. He grew up in rural Mexico without electricity so it absolutely couldn’t have been caused by TV or Computers
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile we put 5-6 year olds in kindergarten classrooms with UV-blocking windows all day, for about 9 months during the part of the year with the least sunlight available, and we've cut recess time down to almost nothing, and schools increasingly don't send kids outside if the weather's anything other than perfect. At my kids' school they don't even have indoor recess if they keep them in! They just watch a damn mo…
I think it's all a side effect of the treadmill that society is putting everyone on. Between globalization and automation there are fewer good jobs that more people are competing for. Either you end up with what used to be a lot of money or way too little. Till you "made it" you are constantly at risk at slipping off the treadmill and into the "way too little" group. Especially in the US. May this be reality or not,…
We let ours play outside plenty, and there are quite a few other kids out. Does seem to be neighborhood-dependent, though, all kinda have their own culture. Our current one's less free-range than the last, which had big ol' gangs of kids with large age-ranges roaming around, and was great.
We are fairly worried about 1) eventually having some kind of encounter with child protective services—which will likely end up fine, if it happens, but will also probably be really inconvenient and stressful—and 2) injuries that end up giving us yet another opportunity to play everyone's favorite game, Medical Billing Roulette, especially now that they're riding bikes. Multiple kids, just a matter of time until one of them get a hospital trip out of a bad fall. Odds very low they'll all make it to 18 without at least one broken bone.
God damn do I wish we'd fix healthcare in the US. It's crazy how much background stress & anxiety that causes across just about all activities and choices. And that's with insurance.
[EDIT] although I'm pretty sure the "playing outside" thing tapers off around tween/teen ages in a way it didn't for us, when they all start living on social media. :-/
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#218Ugh, I did not need to see this today :(
Ironic
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 tho…
> they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me That is the whole point of a simulation. Hyper-palatable food, cocaine, porn etc. they also feel good and even hyper-real in our nervous systems in the short term, but that’s not a good way to judge if they pose long term complications. Though, I’m not saying video chat is necessarily a hyperstimulus, we don’t know yet. > claiming that online interactions aren't real an…
If you've been reading Baudrillard, you might like the blog The Last Psychiatrist, which is a less-rigorous, more ironic take on a lot of similar ideas about hyperreality.
Re: Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens
#220"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.)
What did you spend your time doing though? Did you read a lot? Did you draw? Did you spend a lot of time working on things within arms reach? Or did you spend your time staring off into the far yonder? Isn't there a case to be made that sunlight is more of a signal used to help the eyes learn to focus and that by staring at something a foot away with low signal strength the eyes never got the feedback necessary to shape itself to the environment that it needs to work in?