
Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens - praveenscience
https://www.studyfinds.org/digital-overload-average-adult-will-spend-34-years-of-their-life-staring-at-screens/
======
ipnon
"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 sunlight triggers the release of dopamine in the
retina; another speculates that blue light from the sun protects from the
condition.

"The solution is simple. Have kids "spend more time outside, have less demands
(from) the schools and relax a bit," said Seang Mei Saw, professor of
epidemiology at the National University of Singapore."

[0] [https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east-
asia/index.h...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east-
asia/index.html)

edit: quotation marks

~~~
saalweachter
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.)

~~~
ipnon
The link references the rate of myopia in South Korea increasing from 18% in
1955 to 96% in 2011. This suggests 2 things:

1\. Myopia is not entirely genetic, because genes for myopia could not have
spread to almost all Koreans from almost no Koreans in the span of 56 years.

2\. Myopia is somewhat genetic, because myopia existed in a significant
proportion of the pre-industrial population.

~~~
saalweachter
Prefixing this with an acknowledgement that I totally believe there was a
change in the prevalence of myopia due to changes in environmental conditions
(amount of sunlight, artificial lighting, etc etc)...

I _am_ curious whether 18% was the _diagnosed_ rate of myopia in South Korea
in 1955 or the _actual_ rate of myopia in 1955.

In 1955 South Korea was a poor country; now it is one of the wealthier
countries (per capita) in the world. On the one hand, it is entirely
believable to me that access to eye correction is radically greater than ~70
years ago, and there was a lot of undiagnosed vision problems in 1955. On the
other hand, it's also entirely believable to me that literally every 20 year
old (male) was given a vision test in 1955 in South Korea, because of the War.
On the third hand, it's _also_ entirely believable to me that the vision test
given was fairly easy to "pass", and that a many of the people who passed it
would have a level of myopia that we would now prescribe glasses for, because
hey, better vision is better.

------
scottLobster
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 of this for 34 collective years.

~~~
gowld
How much of that time was caring for your eye health so you don't go blind
early?

~~~
ImprobableTruth
Is there anything to indicate that excessive screen usage can cause blindness?
Especially since LCD aren't that bad concerning eye strain.

~~~
kart23
I get pretty nasty headaches and my eyes start hurting after looking at
monitors with PWM backlights. Some of my screens are fine, some begin to hurt
my eyes after an hour or so.

------
derekp7
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
light in the room, causing more of a point source of light to hit the retinas
that would normally happen (which is why I've always found it more comfortable
to watch TV with some other light on in the room vs. the room in total
darkness).

~~~
manmal
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 across basically
the whole spectrum, as you‘d expect from a glowing ball of plasma (halogen
bulbs are actually similar in that regard, they need and do have a UV filter).
About a third of the sun’s emitted energy hits the earth’s surface as near
infrared light, and then there is UV etc.

Near infrared light is very beneficial, the mitochondria in our cells can
increase their energy output as a direct consequence of receiving photons in
that frequency range. There are lots of studies that showed improvement of
many health conditions following near infrared or red light therapy. I
wouldn’t be surprised if NIR light helped prevent myopia too.

~~~
mattkrause
As far as your visual system is concerned, "real" violet (e.g., from a tunable
laser) and the "fake" RGB violet are pretty much the same--it's coded as the
relative amounts of red/green or blue/yellow almost immediately after the
cones.

~~~
bdamm
Not necessarily. There is a lot of analog in the eyes beyond the nerves, and
we don't know all the effects of ambient light on the entire eye structure.
Even if the neural impulses end up being similar (and I doubt that) the eye as
a whole organ may not respond the same way. Maybe that heat energy triggers
something in the cornea? We don't know.

~~~
mattkrause
I don't disagree that UV and IR exposure may be important. Variations in UV
exposure are thought to account for changing rates of myopia, for example.
There may be non-image-forming receptors with different spectral sensitivities
for circadian rhythms.

However, the structure and function of circuits involved in color
representations has been studied to death, and it overwhelmingly points to a
tristimulus model where the activation of the S/M/L cones matters, rather than
the complete power spectrum of the illuminant. The sensitivity of rods and
cones has measured measured with exquisite sensitivity, both behaviorally and
by directly recording their electrical activity. Many downstream neurons in
visual cortex get their input from individual L/M cones (parvocellular
pathway). The others (magno, konio) have a fairly simple mix of inputs from a
simple, spatially organized combination of the cones. In some cases
(especially within the retina), the individual fibers have been traced and
mapped.

There is a hell of a lot we don't know about the brain, but the very early
representation of color isn't one of them. If you've got sources saying
otherwise, I'd love to see them.

~~~
mattkrause
(This may come off a bit harsher than I meant. It's just that I'm surprised to
hear someone doubt what I thought was a well-established principle with lots
of data behind it. If you do have anything suggesting otherwise, I'd
legitimately love to read it.

If not, WebVision is an excellent resource with a long chapter about color.
[https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-
vision/co...](https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/color-
vision/)

The Visual Neurosciences is a behemoth too, if you can find a copy; I don't
think it's online.

------
qubex
_The Onion_ was way ahead (as usual): [https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-
waking-hours-spent-sta...](https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-
spent-staring-at-glowing-re-1819570829)

------
stevebmark
Part of how myopia works: When your peripheral vision is in focus too much,
because something is close to your face like a screen, your eye (which grows
on its own, without brain involvement), is told to grow longer to to help
reduce the over sharpening of the world it thinks it has.

This happens in developing humans, at some point in adulthood it's suspected
this stops (although some people see worsening myopia past the typical age
range where it stops).

~~~
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
would it help to keep your phone or monitor further away?

~~~
stevebmark
Having less focus in your peripheral vision might help slow myopia
progression, so possibly. However wearing glasses and contacts automatically
add more focus to peripheral vision, signaling the eye to grow. So moving
something further away from your face while wearing glasses or contacts may
have less of an effect. Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at
something far away for some time without glasses or contacts, may be
beneficial in that it may signal the eye to become less football shaped to
help correct for the blurriness it now is experiencing. However I haven't seen
any evidence this can reverse or improve myopia, rather this just seems to
slow its progression.

~~~
veddox
> Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some
> time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal
> the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it
> now is experiencing.

I literally just had that yesterday, and was wondering what it was. My eyes
have always been very good, but I have been a bit worried of late after a few
such blurry episodes...

~~~
stevebmark
no, I mean intentionally unfocusing your eyes by looking at something far away
without wearing correction. Involuntary blurriness or double vision is
unrelated.

------
ryeguy_24
Haven't we also gained 34 years in longevity in the last 100 years? So, net
net we are good? :)

More seriously, what types of activities did screens replace? Was it talking
to other people? Physical activities/labor? Reading? Nothing?

~~~
srl
I know your first comment is mainly in jest, but...
[https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-
life-...](https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-
expectancy-united-states/)

For white folk in the US, even the life expectancy at birth (arguably an
inflated metric) hasn't increased by 34 years since 1900. For all people in
the US (basically everywhere else, too, I think), that ~30-40 years is
dominated by infant/youth mortality getting driven hard towards 0.

------
mattlondon
13 hours a day on average?

That seems quite high to me.

Assuming you sleep 8 hours, that only leaves 16 other hours for potential
screen time of which 13 we are apparently looking at a screen. Lets assume
another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing
teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous),
so 15.5 hours left.

So of all of our waking hours, we spend 13/15.5 = 84% of every minute we are
awake looking at a screen? 50 seconds of every 60 seconds staring at a screen?

Seems high to me.

~~~
karatestomp
I bet I'm around 12-13 hours more days than not. Maybe higher. And my phone
addiction/dependence is moderate compared to some so it probably comes in a
distant 3rd after laptop (easily #1) and TV (all movies, shows, and video
games combined)

> Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-
> breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but
> I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left.

Laptop on the dresser/counter playing Youtube. Phones are waterproof—read news
or catch up on morning messages in the shower. Laptops that aren't giant
bricks and have battery life good enough that you aren't constantly hunting
for an outlet and towing your power supply around, plus (even more so)
smartphones, have changed everything.

Also depends on how they're counting screen time. Kinda like TV-watching
stats. My parents leave their living room TV on probably 15+ hours a day. Does
that mean they're "watching TV" if they're making lunch (good view of the TV
from the kitchen) but half paying attention to the TV? Or I've come over and
we're talking but the TV's on and you (or at least I) can't _entirely_ ignore
it?

------
JSavageOne
Eye strain is a serious problem and actually becoming a bottleneck for my
productivity. Flux and dark-mode everything are mandatory, and I recently
bought blue-light filter glasses and can't stare at a computer screen without
them anymore. I had been reading ebooks on my phone out of convenience, but I
stopped due to the eye strain and will revert back to using the Kindle.

If you spend the majority of your life staring at a screen, don't take your
eyesight for granted. As you age, it will deteriorate, and it's really not
fun, especially when your career/livelihood depends on you being in front of a
screen.

~~~
hrktb
I think we are all in the same boat. For me switching from reading to hearing
wherever the option makes sense helped a lot.

Basic news coverage is fine in podcast form, audiobooks work fine for non
fiction (going at 2x or 3x speed doesn’t kill the atmosphere) and it makes a
good excuse to exercise while listening.

------
volune
The medieval peasant spent how much time staring at dirt?

~~~
groby_b
Few of them stared at brightly glowing dirt, though. And few of them
continually stared at dirt a foot or two in front of their faces.

There's debate how much damage that difference causes, but pretending there's
no difference is an unhelpful approach.

~~~
throwaway8941
Tone down your brightness then? I use heavily customized dark themes
absolutely everywhere, and my screen is hardly brighter than dirt. I have no
problem looking at it for 30+ hours straight (though I don't do this anymore
for other reasons.)

------
KerryJones
While this article touches on eyesight, it seems like it's quite a myopic view
of the issue (see what I did there? ;)

But seriously, we spend over half of our "healthy years" staring at a screen?
This should be begging deep philosophical questions

\- How do you want to spend your life?

\- When you look back at your life, how do you want to have used your time?

\- What is important to you?

Some questions I struggled with when I went on a sabbatical was "what makes me
feel alive, really alive?"

Ironically, my answer for many months was, "I don't know, but it's not staring
at a screen."

Many other people's answered things like "rock climbing", "sky diving", "going
dancing", and I think those are pretty decent answers, but mine settled on
"anything that makes me grow".

I also thoroughly spending time with other people in real human-to-human
interaction. This feels like a huge slap-in-the-face wakeup call.

~~~
Arbalest
A big component is surely from work. In which case, how does the philosophy
extend to take into account the fact that people are in offices working?

~~~
KerryJones
Yeah, I think this is an important question. I think some of it will be
inevitable, but I don't think we focus much on "decreasing screen time"...
when so many companies (facebook, google, et al) get money from people
spending more time on screens (advertising). There's no incentive for
corporations to spend less time looking at screens.

The few companies that do promote that -- such as REI... are outdoor
companies. Which could lead you to a really pessimistic thought that even the
co-op companies are really just profit motivated (I don't believe this, but
there is the correlation)

------
aupchurch
These 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.

~~~
kazen44
why would spending time on the toilet be wasted time?

actually, sometimes, doing practically nothing is very valuable for one's
state of mind.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I’d avoid the toilet simply due to avoid increasing risk of hemorrhoids.

------
econcon
Important thing is, people don't just stare at screen. Many of them achieve
smth else too.

For example, last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front
different parts of the word on screen.

Helping them turn waste plastic into 3D printing filament:

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-
ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-
cheap-6c908bb09922)

~~~
acituan
> last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of
> the word on screen

You've spent time with a _simulation_ of those people, their voices lossily
compressed with a biased frequency response, their images projected through a
non-eye lens on a 2D surface, their heads bigger and closer than you would
have in real life, while rest of their bodies hidden, with hundreds of
milliseconds delay between interactions. Don't get me wrong, it is a very
convincing and useful simulation for many purposes, but it is a simulation
nonetheless.

We might have overlooked this previously, but we will slowly be gaining an
understanding of the effects of sole social interaction coming through
videochat. I know for some, no matter how many zoom calls they do a day, it
doesn't come close to creating the same relational satiety.

~~~
malwrar
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 thought the presumably largely computer geek
HN crowd would be full of folks with similar experience.

~~~
acituan
> 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 and are somehow wrong

I’m not saying it is wrong, and in the absence of real thing it is the
rational thing to do. But thinking that it is the real thing is kidding
ourselves and to the extent it replaces real life interactions, it could have
long term harm. I know this is not an exact comparison, but we have already
seen this with uni-directional audio-visual entertainment replacing real
relationship time. We feel like our favorite youtubers, podcasters, netflix
protagonists etc are our friends, or at least relationally worth investing
time in (otherwise we wouldn’t consume them). Same might go with the 50 people
around the world we videochat.

~~~
standardUser
I've been dating someone online for the last two months and I agree there is
something missing, perhaps something chemical, that can't be transmitted over
a screen and a speaker. But your viewpoint seems a bit too myopic. Humans are
exceptional at adapting, and our brains are brilliant at filling in the
blanks. I have no doubt that people can have deep and meaningful interpersonal
communication without being face to face. I know I have many times, and I have
certainly experienced intense emotion with people remotely, and built trust,
and felt my social needs sated (if not my physical needs, specifically sex).

Maybe reconsider the idea that it is a problematic simulation, because it's
really no more a simulation that how our brains translate vibrations and light
waves into sounds and pictures in the first place. If video chat is an
illusion, then so is face to face communication, as neither one is an
unfiltered experience. The filter of standing two feet from someone is only
marginally different than the filter of a video chat. The real filter, the one
doing the heavy lifting in both cases, is our brains translating the raw data
of the physical world into our lived experience.

~~~
acituan
> Humans are exceptional at adapting, and our brains are brilliant at filling
> in the blanks

This is exactly the problem. Our adaptive machinery can adapt to the wrong
stimulus and get stuck in that. This is called "reciprocal narrowing" and is
the mechanism that sustains addiction. I'm not saying videochat is necessarily
the wrong stimulus or has an addictive potential, but being able to adapt
doesn't mean it is the right thing for us in the long term.

> felt my social needs sated (if not my physical needs, specifically sex). ...
> because it's really no more a simulation that how our brains translate
> vibrations and light waves into sounds and pictures in the first place

This sounds like a reductionistic, cartesian model of what is going on. It
assumes something like "Stimulus gets in through my senses, interpreted
through my consciousness in my mind and I get what I need" or "my relational
needs and my physical needs are mutually separable". Cognitive science
experiments show us existence of phenomena like "blindsight", in which there
is stimulus processing without possibility of conscious awareness; "implicit
learning", in which there is learning without conscious awareness. In other
words, our conscious awareness of what is going in is not necessarily a good
indicator of what is actually going on, nor if our long term needs being
actually met. We don't know if we can delineate relational and physical needs
(here by physical I mean physical presence, not necessarily tactile stimulus)
or to what extent we can reduce relationality to vibrations and light waves
going through our auditory and visual systems.

I want to make it clear, I am not saying videochat is bad, I've spent my whole
week videochatting and feel like I've met certain relational needs. But it is
nonetheless a simulation, and I actually can feel tired and lonely even after
a day full of videochat. I don't intend to equate both, and I want to be
careful not to displace the real thing with its simulation when the
opportunity arises to be present in person. Just like I need to be careful
about diet coke and hyperpalatable fast food not confusing the hell out of me
to the point of replacing real, long-term sustainable nutrition.

------
mr_berna
Does staring at two screens at the same time count double? At work as an iOS
developer I look at two computer monitors, an iPad screen and a phone screen.
When I watch TV at night I'll look at the TV and my phone. I'm sure I can get
my count really high.

~~~
XCSme
It might actually be better, as you keep changing focus.

------
Ididntdothis
Just my personal experience: i definitely notice my eyesight getting worse and
my eyes getting tired when I look at screens for a while. Worst are phones ,
then iPad , then laptop. TV causes me the least strain. I think it may have to
do with the viewing distance or the background light.

When I don’t look at a screen for a few days while on vacation my eyesight
gets much better.

------
matthewfelgate
We spend 34 years of our lives staring at computer screens.

The rest of the time is just wasted.

~~~
standardUser
Those sound like the first lines of a movie I would watch.

------
nsxwolf
Drooling too? Or just staring? How about "looking at", "watching", "reading",
or just "using"?

------
nemo
I used to spend a lot of time in book/magazine/paper reading. Now I read off
screens mostly. 34 years of my life spent reading would be time well spent
regardless of the medium.

------
GaryNumanVevo
Some good tips to prevent myopia:

\- 30/30/30 rule: Every 30 minutes look at something 30 feet away for 30
seconds

\- Take regular walks outside: it will lower your blood pressure, and expose
your eyes to violet light

\- ensure brightness of environment closely matches brightness of screen to
prevent eye strain

------
patrickcteng
So, as a child my mom always insisted on me reading with lots of lights turned
on. She claimed that reading the dark causes short sightedness and etc.

Now, as an adult, I find that I have my screen's brightness turned up way more
than my peers. For example, although it's currently very sunny right now in
LA, I have my brightness turned up 100% on my 16" MBP. Though, in the
evenings, it's more comfortable at 3 or 4 steps down from 100%.

I can't help but to wonder -- did she condition my eye to be less sensitive to
light and have thus slightly ruined my low-light vision?

~~~
kingbirdy
Why wouldn't you have your brightness at 100% if it was sunny? You need the
backlight to be bright to avoid it being washed out by sunlight. It would be
weird if you said you used 100% brightness in the dark, but that's perfectly
reasonable when it's sunny.

------
jedberg
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 mess up my sleep. It makes a noticeable difference.

[0] [https://justgetflux.com](https://justgetflux.com)

~~~
jabroni_salad
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.

~~~
jedberg
> I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day.

Sometimes when I travel to the other side of the planet but don't update my
laptop clock, it goes into "night mode" midday. I can use it but I find it
jarring with the natural light.

> I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?)

They have links to studies on the flux page [0] although I'm not sure how much
of that is peer reviewed or if the sample sizes are big enough.

I know that it makes a difference for me. My sleep quality went way up when I
started using flux, and it goes down when I look at screens without it too
late at night (like my not-so-smart-TV).

[0]
[https://justgetflux.com/research.html](https://justgetflux.com/research.html)

------
jliptzin
This was already true for people I know who were watching TV all day since the
70s

------
mchusma
Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite
knowledge and possibility.

~~~
karatestomp
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 isn't)
and Google having given up on "organizing the world's knowledge" or whatever
their supposed mission was (now it's plainly "organize the world's advertising
dollars into our bank account") so it may be there but good luck finding it.

~~~
VBprogrammer
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 ever needed to know about plumbing has
been available from PlumberParts / dereton33.

\- Woodworking, I basically learned everything I know from watching people
like Matthias Wandel.

\- Recently I've been digging to electronics, I have an excellent book
"Practical Electronics for Inventors" but every now and again I need to hear a
different take on the same things and invariably there is a good video or
article which clears it up for me.

What's more, to get the level of detail these guys show for free in book form
would mean investing in some seriously expensive books, most of which hide the
interesting parts under a lot of uninteresting maths.

~~~
karatestomp
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)

------
avgDev
Average Adult Will Spend 60% of Their Existence With Their Eyes Open.

------
deg4uss3r
If this was "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at books"
would that also be a bad thing? To me and my work/reaserch/fun it's the
same...

------
throwawaysea
Can we quantify the "net screen time" once we subtract away from activities
that took up time but have since been replaced/optimized by automation?

But leaving that aside, the 34 years figure is understating the true time
spent. That figure is referring to 34 years of 24-hour days. If we subtract 8
hours a day for sleep, it is actually 52 years of our waking hours.

------
varshithr
If you are in IT, or any knowledge worker for that matter, do we even have a
choice?

~~~
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
e-ink monitors?

------
sunstone
Formerly the average adult spent 34 years staring at text on the printed page.

------
mvkel
100 years ago the average adult (who dealt with information as we do today)
probably spent 25 years of their life staring at paper.

It’s the content, not the medium, that matters.

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ashleshbiradar
"screen time" is too broad a term and is too often described as something bad.
But we need to understand screens are more like papers, and what we consume
off the paper is what matters.

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peter_d_sherman
OP: "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens"

Comment: "And for 33.9 of those years, it will be at things that are _not work
related_..."

~~~
ycombinete
I'm not sure about you, but 6-8 of those 13 hours of my day are spent working.

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onion2k
I'm happy to be above average at something at last.

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redsymbol
Aaaand now I feel the sudden urge to get away from this screen and go walk
through some trees. I'll see ya all later.

~~~
2OEH8eoCRo0
I'm an ape man i'm an ape ape man no i'm an ape man

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo)

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abstractbarista
Good thing I started out super far-sighted. If anything, my vision has
improved with time focusing on close screens. :P

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rurban
Better than staring in books as before. Imagine the bok giving feedback to you
or allowing communication.

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austinshea
Staring is an embarrassing word for this person to have imposed upon the
actual study.

Science journalism is a real problem.

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sizzle
If the average adult spend 34 years staring at screens, what would us tech
workers average?!

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rafaele
I wonder if they count staring at "n" screens for 1 hour as "n" hours.

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M5x7wI3CmbEem10
has anyone seen endmyopia.org? a friend of mine suggested it because he said
he was able to perform “eye exercises” to improve his eyesight. He said it
wasn’t perfect, but he no longer needs glasses.

~~~
Azametzin
I just created an account just to answer you. Yes, endmyopia.org is great. The
same way we develop myopia, we can revert it naturally in 99% of the cases. I
was really skeptic at the beginning, but if you participare in the forum, read
a lot and follow thousands of people taking part of the process, you will
belive it for sure.

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golemotron
I don't think that's true. Eventually, we'll have implants.

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yosito
I've spent 34 years staring at screens since February.

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jrochkind1
Oh, I can totally beat that and do way more than 34 years.

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martindbp
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?

~~~
Andhurati
Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Probably? It's not like screens shoot death rays. It seems very likely that
looking closely at patterns within a rectangle has the same effects whether
it's made of paper or electronics.

~~~
ping_pong
CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.

~~~
jayd16
Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.

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jayroh
Ugh, I did not need to see this today :(

~~~
scollet
Ironic

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ngcc_hk
Collecting info, react to info, organise info, communicate info etc.

Otherwise might as well say we look for our life. It is not staring at. It is
something else.

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chadlavi
speak for yourself, some of us are definitely above average

>_>

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ttizya20
phd's will spend 5 years starring at paper

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pknerd
And programmers?

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OMGCable
I read this, and wanted to put my phone down. I failed.

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TheRealDunkirk
Pfft. Amateurs.

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napster4lyfe
time well spent, imo

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etxm
That fucking sucks.

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nbj914
seems low

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throwaway9482
Average adult will spend 31 years of their life lying on the bed

If we want to be pessimistic and reductionist there’s many other ways to do
this too

