
Teens are spending nearly half their waking hours on screens - ga-vu
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-scary-lasting-effects-of-too-much-screen-time-on-children-2019-04-10
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JDiculous
As an adult I must spend at least 80+% of my time staring at a screen, but I'm
guessing that will never be diagnosed as a problem and get its own article
because nobody cares when it comes to adults?

~~~
Mirioron
What I find really interesting is that if this problem is so common, then
won't the kids who _don 't_ spend so much time behind a screen be the odd ones
out? I wonder what impact that is going to have on their life. Perhaps teens
that spend all that time looking at screens will be better at looking at
screens once they become adults?

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neap24
It’s possible that they are the odd ones out without “screen skills”. I’m
actually betting that kids who spend most of their time away from screens will
have some weird, competitive advantage in a future economy.

~~~
Mirioron
I would think that it's the opposite. I think the kids with significantly less
screen time to no screen time will be like the people who never learned to
drive. Doing many things is more difficult for them unless they're rich.

~~~
Faark
I don't think having a deeply engrained reflex to open youtube or tiktok or
whatever the nanosecond you're start loosing attention on whatever you are
currently doing will enrich peoples lives. Sure, some will use the tools
productively. But most will fall victim to the most effective pleasure
industry mankind has come up with so far.

~~~
joshuahughes
This totally nails it. My wife and I very carefully control our kids' (13 and
14) screen hours to make sure they're engaging with real people in the real
world and not thoughtlessly pulling out a phone every two minutes. But even
with restrictions, they manage about an hour of screen time a day, and they're
still superbly capable at handling whatever device they happen to be using.
They're in no way disadvantaged from a 'computer skills' POV.

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MrGilbert
Teens are hunting for likes and streaks (Snapchat, I hear you) - sharing
photos of themself with a ton of filter applied. And at the end, they are
unable to look at themself in the mirror, because they feel ugly, and reality
doesn't fit to the reality on their screens.

This is a first-hand experience I have with my 17 year old foster child. I
don't know how she grew up, but I see the results social media is doing to her
self-esteem. My gf and I, both in our mid-30s, know how this works and are
able to work against it as best as we can. But other parents, which are 10, 15
years older - I can understand that it's difficult for them to grasp the
consequences, as they are also caught in the social media loop.

~~~
cageface
I’ve seen the same thing in people this age. It’s really tragic how social
media is shredding the self esteem of kids of this generation, especially
girls.

I’m really glad I grew up before this happened.

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stevewodil
I would think that this number would actually be higher than 'nearly' half.
They are at school all day with laptops, and then I would imagine they go home
and do homework, watch videos, and communicate with friends all using a
screen. The only time away from screens is showering or playing a sport.

For me, I would guess that I spend 13 hours a day looking at a screen. I think
that's just modern life for a lot of people, especially those who work in
tech.

~~~
skizm
I don't know any high schools that allow laptops in normal classes. This is in
the tri-state area at least (NJ/NY/PA) where I know a bunch of people who are
teachers. Maybe the rest of the country it's common for high school students
to be allowed laptops in class?

~~~
ct0
Some districts in NJ have a 1 to 1 policy where students are all given a
chromebooks at the start of the year. Teachers who can utilize this policy and
google classroom love it because it off-loads the grading to a program and not
a piece of paper.

~~~
mc42
In the same area, both my hometown and the district I attended had 1:1
Chromebook policies. They also had Orwelian programs to allow teachers to see
what was on student's screens (!) and later a list of recently closed tabs
(!!).

~~~
nullandvoid
I think as a child your mind is pretty easily distracted ( looking at you IT
classes of my time where 90% + of the class would be sneaking on miniclip
every time a teachers back was turned )

It's pretty essential if we're going to have those connected devices in the
classroom there is a way to control it.

I would prefer rigorous blocking over teacher control - but reasonably I think
it's kind of necessity in a classroom setting.

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gnode
> Those children were more likely to become depressed by age 12 or 13, to be
> the victims of bullying, to be aggressive, to have lower interpersonal
> skills, to have unhealthy diets, and to be overweight, the researchers found
> in the April study.

> The findings suggest that very young children are missing out on key aspects
> of their brain development when they spend so much time staring at a screen
> instead of interacting with the outside world.

Or alternatively, they suggest that victims of bullying, less socially
successful, and less physically fit children are more inclined to spend time
using a screen.

So often studies like this find a correlation, then jump to the causation they
had set out to find, ignoring all other plausible relationships suggested by
the data.

~~~
McWobbleston
Right, all of the factors they mentioned seem like the kinds of things that
would make screen time more fulfilling or engaging compared to time with
others or something else.

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maliker
Just wait until they start working. Screentime on macOS is showing me I'm
looking at screens over 80% of my waking hours.

~~~
bobloblaw45
It's like those dystopian heavy metal graphics of a feeble human with a screen
strapped to their face. Back in the 80s and 90s they were thinking about
televisions. People wasting their lives away being pacified by tv media while
some faceless companies and government controlled the world. If they saw the
world today it would probably blow their minds.

~~~
maliker
I want my MTV! Turn it on leave it on!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGZSWdh17l0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGZSWdh17l0)

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tiborsaas
Teens are spending nearly half their waking hours on reading, communicating,
creating content and embracing the digital world around them

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zipwitch
Here's a 2018 article specifically on tv-watching time over years:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-
did-tv-watching-peak/561464/)

For comparison, here's a 2004 paper on how teens spent their time from
1981-2003:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-w47wgdhso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-w47wgdhso)

(Short version: about 5 hours a day on tv, games, and computers.)

And, let us not forget when, in 1959, Scientific American denounced the vile
scourge of _chess_ : "A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has
spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have
been formed in cities and villages...chess is a mere amusement of a very
inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted
to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body."

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-
conce...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-concern-
trollingchess-mere-amusement-very-inferior-character-180953281/)

Speaking for myself, I'm not thrilled at the amount of screen time I and
others spend... but the same has been said of various forms of print media and
other things over the years;
[http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-
complaint...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-
about-young-people-ruining-everything)

I doubt medieval crafters were thrilled about spending 10-14 hours a day in
their workshops either. Ultimately, I think self-awareness is more important
than anything, including _how_ information-selecting creations like Youtube or
Facebook are affecting our minds and our ideas, rather than focusing so much
on time.

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odiroot
I'm over thirty and I probably spend 12+h on screens every day. That's par for
the course when you work "with computers". The rest is Kindle and my
smartphone.

I can imagine, people who are heavily invested into social networks probably
take it up to even 15h.

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SolaceQuantum
I don't know what the difference is between this and the back-in-the-day
children reading too much in fantasy novels and comic books...

~~~
sh-run
I'm 28 and spent a lot of my childhood playing video games (N64, GameCube and
later Xbox 360) and reading. I still play video games and read as an adult
(although much less often due to work and personal obligations). I have also
gone through periods where I waste tons of time on social media.

Social Media is mostly mindless, it makes me think negative thoughts about my
neighbors and friends, it makes me want to go out and spend money on things I
don't need and I get caught in this cycle where I feel like I constantly need
to check it. Fortunately, I recognize this and its not a problem any more but
its a very easy trap to fall into.

Books and video games have never made me feel this way.

~~~
Nasrudith
I hate to say it but social media's issues sound like related to other people
and sick social dynamics which all too often establish themselves.

Keeping up with the Joneses and veblen goods are things which cause people to
spend money on things they don't need and lead to negative thoughts about
neighbors and friends over them being "too good" and provoking envy oe "not
good enough" and provoking scorn.

~~~
sh-run
I agree. It's just compounded by social media. It could be that I'm affected
by this more than other people, but I've spoke with friends and family with
similar experiences. Luckily I'm mature enough now to recognize this.

I also want to be clear that most of the negative thoughts I have aren't due
to people being "too good" or "not good enough". It's due to the things people
share. I see lots of anger in my facebook feed, usually related to politics,
but not always. It's just a very dramatic place.

I don't want to think of what my early teenage years would've been like had
social media been more accessible. Don't get me wrong, I would've loved to
have access to MySpace from anywhere, but I don't think it would've been
healthy and I certainly wasn't mature enough for it.

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rlv-dan
Screen time really needs to be sorted into meaningful, productive usage, and
recreation and procrastination.

~~~
mikestew
Or allow me to make my own categories based on apps. Here's an extreme
example: meditation timer. All I need you to do is ring a bell after 30
minutes, otherwise I'm meditating and obviously not looking at anything but
the wall. So I'd like $TIMER_APP to not count toward screen time. Instead, it
racks up 30 minutes every day toward that number. Does the yoga app that I
throw to the Apple TV count? I guess it does. _Should_ it count? Depends on
what I'm trying to measure. If Screen Time is a measure of "sitting on my ass
swiping at a piece of glass", then no, yoga time is not Screen Time. But it's
early days, perhaps they'll refine it into a more useful feature.

Now, Screen Time _does_ do what you're asking. Screen Time/See All
Activity/Show Categories. It's not perfect. Messages shows up as "social
networking". Okay, if that's what you want to call "telling my wife I'm not
dead in a ditch" and "hey, neighbor kid, wanna walk dogs with me?" But's it
what we've got, and it's better than what we had.

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tasuki
Good for them - that's much less than I do!

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munmaek
I spend the vast majority of my day staring at my phone or my monitor. I work
in tech. I don't use social media besides ~1-2m on instagram every other day.
I consume media/news through the financial times, reddit, HN, and youtube. I
also play chess via apps daily, and other games from time to time. The rest of
the time I'm either doing something physical like cooking/cleaning/walking, or
reading a book (not on my kindle).

For teens, half is pretty good. For younger kids though I can see it as a
problem.

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brianwawok
It's real bad. Delay getting kids a phone as long as possible.

~~~
ceejayoz
Meh. We just limit mindless apps.

Seeing eight kids organize a playdate via text message and then do some
collaborative building with redstone circuitry in Minecraft is pretty
impressive to watch, and makes me strongly feel there's more to the debate
than just "screens vs. non-screens".

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rb808
So less than adults then?

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ineedasername
The article touches on the _type_ of screen time when it says the time cited
is in addition to that for school, but the non-school screen time is not
broken down into other buckets. I would expect a significant difference
between kids whose primary screen time was videogames vs. videos vs. social
media.

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snaky
And Google AR glasses still failed.

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hsnewman
The title is misleading. It's not all teens, it's some teens.

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andreshb
I wish that was the case for me

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hntddt1
Is that a bad thing?

~~~
hombre_fatal
TFA goes into more detail than the title.

