Teens are spending nearly half their waking hours on screens
marketwatch.com
marketwatch.com
The teens by virtue of their age probably aren’t working, so I don’t that screen tune can be attributed to work requirements.
Like Slack and Jira?
My total screen time is higher than that, but that's largely my fault (although I do work 50+ hours a few weeks out of the year). If you work in tech your going to spend a lot of time in front of screens, likewise fishing guides spend a lot of time staring at water.
That's certainly possible. I'm sure most people here were the odd balls growing up, doing the opposite of what other kids were doing.
First, my time on a screen is far more productive (the time mentioned in the headline excludes any school work). It's not occupied by social media or games, it's occupied by more meaningful communication with people, critical thinking, etc. It's also the most efficient way for me personally to make a living and provide the needs of life for multiple other people. I'd like to think I've chosen a job where I'm contributing meaningfully to the world and not just affecting the bottom line of my employer or my own checking account.
When I'm not working, I do make it a point to not have my face in a screen. I spend time in stimulating and wholesome recreational activities with my kids, I get outside, I exercise. If you do have your face in a screen the whole time, I have bad news for you: you're probably missing out on some cool real life stuff, your wellness may be suffering, and there are articles about you using a screen too much [1]. People do care when it comes to adults, especially adults who need to be taking care of their kids more than being on their phone or paying attention to the road.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=adults+time+on+their+phones&ia=web. There are even articles about how this is actually a disproportionate problem with adults.
Building relationships and learning social skills is very important for teens. An increasing number of jobs and products will be in entertainment where attention is the currency. There are some very educational and meaningful youtube channels for example.
Teens are spending half their hours in front of a screen so it sounds like there is a balance.
First, a quick Google tells me there are plenty of articles written about too much screen time, generally. Second, teenagers are at a very vulnerable, formative time of their lives when this excessive screen time is occurring, with as yet unknown consequences.
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.
I’m really glad I grew up before this happened.
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.
What school has their students be on laptops all day?!
As you get older most exams are done on Linux distro called DigabiOS (https://github.com/digabi/digabi-os) the same distro is also used for the matriculation exams. You boot this off of a USB drive and hope it works well with your own machine.
So I can absolutely see people spending most of their school day on a computer staring at a screen.
I recently rewatched Neon Genesis Evangelion and noticed that in many of the classroom scenes all of the kids had laptops. The anime aired in 1995/1996, but was set in 2015.
So, you're absolutely correct that the figure is much higher, and the rest of the article shares potential health and social risks that children (instead of adults) have when they are so plugged in, "modern life" aside. I believe, however, that children are more vulnerable to these risks than us who work in tech all day.
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.
As a tech worker I use screens more than them, but I am at least paid OK for destroying my body and can evaluate the trade-offs and adjust my life if needed.
> 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.
For comparison, here's a 2004 paper on how teens spent their time from 1981-2003: 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...
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...
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.
I can imagine, people who are heavily invested into social networks probably take it up to even 15h.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For teens, half is pretty good. For younger kids though I can see it as a problem.
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".