I watched a Japanese doc about this phenomena a couple years ago. Japan's genetics haven't changed in recent decades but now basically everyone leaving highschool needs glasses. So they strapped lasers to kids to measure the distance in front of their face, to track their focus distance throughout the day. The results and outcome were telling, suggesting a conflict of cultural standards regarding eyesight.
The worst, closest, time was while at school. The kids were learning writing, Japanese characters. They were sitting at desks, their heads looking straight down onto paper as they learned to create tiny perfect characters. But at the doctor, the kids were given eyeglasses to correct their vision to the 20/20 western standard which itself is largely based on operating vehicles or seeing blackboards in giant lecture halls. So kids with glasses optimized for distance were forcing their eyeballs out of shape to focus on schoolwork literally inches from their face. The finding was that perhaps Japanese eye doctors should prescribe glasses based on what kids actually need (close focus) rather than pretending they all are going to be driving cars and flying planes.
This interestingly opens up another example for exploration of nature vs nurture.
I always thought my good eyesight was from genetics from my father's side--but maybe it was the relatively free-range upbringing that he both experienced--and also paid forward to me--that might have been the deciding factor.
I’d still venture to guess it was genetics, I played outside all the time, granted I used the computer a lot growing up too and I still needed glasses around 13 - 14 years of age.
I'm truly scared of the future we're building, most kids I meet already have permanently damaged spine from looking at their phones/tablet 24/7 (quasimodo style). Their attention span if absolutely fucked, a lot (most) of them are already fat, now apparently they're losing eye sight. And on top of that they apparently suck at computers.
The scale and pace of the transformation is insane
My generation's grade schools: 20 min playground time after morning bus drop off, 30 min after eating, a 15 min recess and PE time. In the evening, we had 30 min of homework total.
My kids grade schools: 15 min playground time after eating. The 5-6 classes gave 30-60min of homework, each. So it was home, eat, homework, cubscouts/etc, eat, homework, bathe, bed.
It was almost just as well. There was ~nowhere for them to go past the yard (and 92°/90% humidity+heavy gnats).
Does this take into account the time kids would get normally?
Like school recess and Walking to and from School would get kid me to around an hour and a half of outside time, but I feel like something like that wouldn't ve counted
Seems like you are describing suburbs, but they suck at almost everything. Maybe we should actually think about living in denser but smaller cities, which can provide all necessities, including nature, in walking or cycling distance. This is most likely the key to allow for healthy lifestyles.
I agree it would be an improvement for people
but a somewhat utopian one.
But how do you figure we will do it?
Are your factoring in a drastic population decrease?
If you flatten out all tall buildings that house XX or XXX apartments
you will a lot more space for the city.
Which means the cost of rail, trains and a lot of service will increase.
It may be a lot like the suburbs, but with the houses closer and
shared green space?
Is the garden meant to provide food for the people living there?
If so who is doing the farming?
A return to an agrarian society?
I would love to end factory farming, but is not a feasible option
to feed as many people as we do today.
Which again would be solved be a massiv reduction in the population.
So if you gave each family of four a 50x100 foot plot of land (i.e., 5,000 square feet of space), then you could fit eight such plots per acre (with 3,500 square feet to spare for communal space) -- because an acre has 43,560 square feet.
So you would be able to fit 32 people per acre, and since Texas has 171 million acres, you would be able to fit 5.4 billion people in Texas. Since the world has more than 5.4 billion people, we will have to conquer Mexico or Oklahoma.
Long story short, there will be plenty of space left over in Asia.
Outdoor time is good for eyesight... But is bad for sunburn. Bad for learning math. Bad for getting wet in the rain and cold in the snow. Bad for breathing in polluted city air.
There doesn't seem to be enough data to truly say what the ideal amount of time outdoors is.
That means UV exposure outdoors is worse now than it used to be.
Unfortunately, it seems nobody measured UV at ground level before we started destroying the ozone layer, but there are barely any historical accounts of serious sunburn before ~1930. Everyone just talks of heat stroke and dehydration rather than actual burning/peeling of the skin.
>> This sunburn scare needs to go away already. Kids aren't getting skin cancer
It isn't about cancer. It is about modern standards of beauty. Sun ages skin. People learned to avoid the sun because of cancer, but they hide in the shade today to keep their skin looking youthful.
Life is bad for a whole lot of things but without the bads you can't enjoy the goods. If getting wet and cold is bad wait until your partner dies in a car crash or when your kids die of cancer. People would willingly be uploaded to the matrix and living comfortably in a pod apparently...
We're raising generations of people who aren't even developing basic human abilities like having more than 5 second of attention span, being physically fit or being able to see apparently, the drawbacks are starting to weight a lot imho
I heard my whole life how my generation was going to be useless too. Ruined by arcades and violent tv shows. I am not saying there aren’t going to be drawbacks but “5 second attention span” sounds like the same ole same ole to me.
The pace and scale is completely different though, it's accelerating and all encompassing
Before it was "rock n roll is bad" for a full generation, now in a single generation you have multiple paradigm shifts, we don't even start to understand the impact of tech X that we're already deploying Y and Z
I am a white guy who was outside for 4-5 hours per day for my entire childhood in India, and I think I only got a sunburn once when I fell asleep on the beach in Goa without my shirt on when I was about 8.
The worst, closest, time was while at school. The kids were learning writing, Japanese characters. They were sitting at desks, their heads looking straight down onto paper as they learned to create tiny perfect characters. But at the doctor, the kids were given eyeglasses to correct their vision to the 20/20 western standard which itself is largely based on operating vehicles or seeing blackboards in giant lecture halls. So kids with glasses optimized for distance were forcing their eyeballs out of shape to focus on schoolwork literally inches from their face. The finding was that perhaps Japanese eye doctors should prescribe glasses based on what kids actually need (close focus) rather than pretending they all are going to be driving cars and flying planes.