About three-in-ten U.S. adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online (2021)
pewresearch.org
pewresearch.org
Can we stop screentime shaming people?
We have had an ongoing moral panic about screentime for about a decade. Screentime is so broad and vast it now covers anything from chatting with your grandma to get her spaghetti recipe to playing WoW nonstop in your underwear to learning how to code on Youtube to make yourself better and more productive to using a Peloton bike to workout.
The youngest generation has it the worst with helicopter parents sitting over their kids shoulders, filling their lives with activities to "keep them off screens". Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time. We fail to prepare for independence as actual adults, and just create a lot of anxiety and shame around screens themselves.
To some extent this is not how parenting works. This is like giving heroin to an addict and letting them learn to set their own limits unattended.
In practice, supervising addiction helps control it. Kids need some kind of supervision. It's much harder to get a kid to reduce screentime if they're used to unlimited screentime.
I turned out fine. It’s hard to see the moderates in any given situation, almost by definition. That includes moderate outcomes.
Comparing the internet to heroin isn’t a moderate take. Having freedom when I was a kid directly prepared me for the rest of my life.
That’s the point; unless you’re saying that everyone with high karma is mentally unsound (which may or may not be a fair argument), being constantly online doesn’t seem to have much negative impact on most people.
But even for people like me I wouldn't say being online causes those problems, more likely some third factor makes them be super online and also shows up as other issues, though it may be a feedback loop (removing the option of being constantly online could do good for me)
Ironically, what helped me was to focus on Twitter. Specifically producing quality tweets. I was able to build an audience at my own pace, and it led to quite a lot of opportunities.
So in the same way one particular place isn’t always good to be, one solution is to spend time in a variety of spaces. I like irc/twitter/HN/tiktok, though I still lurk Reddit occasionally.
I haven't got WhatsApp, and the thought of it brings me out in hives. Would be difficult to step back from the web. SMS once had a huge draw, and that was an incredible time sink with less immediacy.
I don't know what that amount is.
What I can say is that each time I have successfully restricted my access to these places, it was followed by period of intense withdrawal, and after that was over, a notable amount of extra energy to do other things, to my very obvious benefit.
I'm skeptical that anyone has a non-addictive relationship with these places, and i was speculating that you are not an obvious non-example, despite your claims at having turned out fine.
I don't, for the record, think that the solution is as simple as denying your children access to social media while you still have control over them, but it also isn't obvious that letting them engage with it freely counts as a good form of innoculation.
I think some people have a better ability to self regulate than others, and you are likely one of those people. Additionally, your online experience didn’t have “the algorithm”. There really does seem to be something addicting about modern short form content and it seems quite different from the content found on the early Web.
You have to use a lot of screentime for an effect to be shown. And the studies are always showing correlations, not causations.
As an example, if you're a poorer family, with no time to spend 1-1 with your kids because you work 3 jobs. Are screens the root cause? Or is poverty the root cause?
Stare at the TV all evening like my parents do? Read a book? I already do that on the train, and it's also staring at something while sitting down. Cooking/exercise/chores? I already do that, and still have hours of time left over. Stare at the wall maybe?
If there's one thing I hate, is other people preaching to you about how you should spend your time.
Why? I'm already "producing" a big part of my day. This "always be producing" mentality is more harmful than making time to relax, enjoy yourself in non-productive ways.
I don't know what the ratio is between active and passive leisure. Nor do I know for sure that people generally have more leisure time now than ever before, but I do suspect that is the case.
But I do know that there are many companies that one might consider to be in the "active leisure industry" and that are profitable.
For most of human history we were hunter gatherers. We know from the field of anthropology that people in hunter gatherer tribes "work" about 30 hours a week - but their work consists of things we consider leisure like hunting, fishing, hiking, and building things with friends (ever spend a weekend helping a buddy build a deck?).
Hell, even medieval surfs had more free time than us. Planting and harvesting seasons certainly had some full workdays but other than that... lots of time off. You know all those feasts in the Catholic church? Yeah, they got all those off. Kind of like how government workers get all the extra holidays off like MLK and Columbus day. A medieval surf's PTO puts an average American's PTO (0 days by law!) to shame.
If you compare our current amount of free time to the free time of a Dickensian orphan working in a factory at the turn of the 20th century then yes, it seems like we have it pretty good. But compared to 95% percent of human history, we work way more time at our stupid jobs than any other humans in history.
This chart and supporting material argue that over the last 150 years annual working hours per worker drastically declining. That lets me believe that leisure time is increasing. https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever
Where do you think they're wrong?
Also there's the other factor where we have this insane obsession with producing at all times. Producing for work. Producing for multiple side hustles. Producing with our hobbies. It's as if they're trying to speedrun a complete burnout, not just with work but with relationships and life itself. Some people really do need a reminder that it's ok to relax, to consume, to observe, to waste time with people you love.
Basically what I'm saying is more people should find the balance that works for them and question whether their current general routine makes them happy. I reckon for a lot of people, the difference doesn't really come down to screen time or production vs consumption, but an active choice to be doing whatever it is they are planning to do.
That’s a question you have to answer for yourself, but on its face it sounds like a good one to ask.
No one I know shows up to a friends house on a whim or unannounced. It’s all planned activities and the art of conversation has died in the U.S. We are social creatures and the solitary nature of being online has an unhealthy, anti-social side effect.
plus dangerous behaviours like drinking, smoking, fighting with other kids, setting trash on fire, destroying property, stealing, an generally being a menace to society.
i think playing a bit of vidya is a god alternative outlet, and it can be just as social.
but i always admired the culture in the us where random ppl would strike up a conversation with you. if someone did that over here i would expect to get scammed, robbed or both.
I would argue it cannot be as social, even if you're talking to people. You won't ever get half the social cues that come from actual social interaction, nor the firing of mirror neurons that comes when people talk face-to-face, etc.
In fact, Turkle makes a good argument that online communication is destroying empathy among a whole generation of kids, and they don't even know how to really communicate in person with another human being anymore, nor any idea of social manners, etc. Having taught secondary school for five years, I can't agree more with her conclusions.
I didn’t have a cell phone until 2015. One time while teaching class at a community college my students found out that I didn’t have a cell phone. They asked me what I would do if my car broke down since I couldn’t call anyone. I told them I would walk to the nearest house and ask to use their phone. One student said, “I never would have thought of that.”. Another asked if I would be afraid of getting shot. American society has become anti-social and its very unhealthy that this is so.
It's just better. 1980s mode (having a couple of good friends I spend a lot of time in person with) is better than 2020s mode (having hundreds or thousands of online "friends" who I'm not really that close to). I just find it more fulfilling to interact with people in meatspace.
100% agreed. I think it's actually the true underlying cause of the political fracturing we've seen in America (and are starting to see elsewhere as it filters out).
It's also the biggest difference I've noticed since moving to Ireland. People still sometimes show up unannounced, just to see if you're home and want to chat, especially in more rural areas; plus, you have the pub culture where people go and just have a drink and a chat. It's not great, because drinking is expected (though thankfully alcohol free options have come a long way) but it's much better than what exists in America.
I actually worry messenger apps like Discord make this worse, because you can just get a facsimile of human interaction online, and it's nowhere near the real thing; in fact, it can't be, because it won't trigger our brain the same way as seeing facial expressions, etc., does. Even more, I worry that as chatbots get better, we're going to see this trend get even worse as people turn to chatbots (and/or companies start shoving them in front of us). I can't see things getting better with the current state of the internet.
We can bemoan these facts but I don't think it's accurate to blame screens or the internet. If anything the internet has made it easier to stay in touch despite the aforementioned life changes.
I was from the rural edges of a metro area in the 90s. My main interests at 6 years old were programming, astronomy (particularly star classification systems), video games, and child development. There were no people like me around; the internet made me more social (and more socially adept) than I otherwise would have been. My parents are socially stunted because they spent 40+ years of their lives being unable to be themselves with anyone other than their spouse, siblings, my dad's parents and their children because they were routinely mocked.
We need to be careful not to be blinded by nostalgia glasses. There were some benefits to the old way of doing things, but there were substantial drawbacks as well, particularly for those who were out of step with their local community.
Oh, how I wish this were true, lol.
I am always out of time by the end of the day.
Personally I don't think online time is something that needs to be limited but social media and news consumption, absolutely.
I also think socializing online is a poor substitute for doing it face-to-face.
Some do, some don't. My 2nd grader is happy to self regulate. My 4th grader will however spend 12-14 hours/day online and as the screentime accrues, become more likely to annoy, torment, and eventually act violently in response to perceived transgressions.
We're otherwise a no tv, no videogame console, no tablets house. Not because we've decided not to have these things, but because a half-a-day binge has resulted in a kiddo rage-destroying the device at some point and not having the broken device any longer is a natural consequence to that behaviour.
So no, I dont think all kiddos can typically learn to self regulate. The existence of some kiddos self regulating is not evidence that all of them can or that even the ones who can't are somehow "broken." Screens are a new tech and we're still learning the cultural-social technologies to interact with them healthily.
FWIW, I do think there is something damaging about screen time especially if it is just passive consumption ( brain is a muscle; if it unused, it will grow weak ) so I am personally trying to limit it. I already spend so much time with it at work ( and until recently, at school ). I do allow myself some guilty pleasures, but I treat those similarly to the way I treat ice cream or sake. It is something of holiday from reason.
edit: HN is probably a giant exception to that. It seems I spend a lot of time here. Maybe I can rationalize it as 'HN is not guilty pleasure? I get to argue with people over stuff I normally would not?'
I guess my main point is that the main responsibility lies with the parents and it kinda sucks, because at least 'in my days' my parents didn't have giant corporations working on keeping my kids glued to their device. All I had to deal with is arcade addiction.. and that.. my parents solved ( with me crying all the way ).
The article presents factual findings and does not get anywhere near passing judgment. That’s for the comments section.
How exactly is a kid raised from birth with screens in front of them supposed to learn or even recognize this?
>> Can we stop screentime shaming people?
You are welcome to do so, but I'm free to shame and view negatively all sorts of behaviours. I don't need to accept this any more than you need to accept something you view as a bad habit or worse.
If it turns out that you just spend 80% of your free time online, you've lost. Your life is not better, it is in fact worse.
Involved parents are not just helicopter parents. An involved parent might have gone through a similar generational experience where they were ignored by their parents and put in front of the radio, television, computer, etc and want to break the generational cycle with their kids. Because substituting healthy activities for screentime is a good way to model independent behavior and bring balance to your life. It doesn't mean you cannot use screens, but rather that you use them in moderation.
The difference of opinion changes when you become a parent too. You start to reflect on your childhood and things you wish were different while trying your best to bring more real experiences to your kids instead of them trying to explore the world virtually.
I think this number will continue to rise in the future. Probably 40% by 2035.
this is a minimal connection made as part of a virtual outing. (hello.)
many widely-held constructs are getting redefined. like what it means to be “social” or “connected.”
zuck wasn’t wrong, but metaverse is already here. it’s just the internet, and we are slowly integrating it more fully into ourselves.
I'm not sure internet use alone is concerning. It was a problem when I was a kid because it isolated me, but it's also hard to tell how the causality worked there because I was a weird-ass little kid.
I'd love to look at/might try to find later what the average amount of time a person spent writing letters or on the phone was - or TV or radio listening. From what I've seen, most people use the Internet like we used to use telephones (lots of young people whose primary contact with their friends is online and I can't see much of a difference between hanging out in Discord for hours and talking on the phone with your bff for hours) or television/radio (I remember all the back and forth about the boob tube and honestly the passive consumption is pretty similar).
It'll also be interesting to see if anybody starts to disengage. The Internet relies on constant novelty to keep people engaged since the body naturally starts regulating to things and once you've seen enough it stops hitting the way it used to.
Same with being a weird kid. Being weird led to not having many friends led to relying on internet socialization more and more.
>It'll also be interesting to see if anybody starts to disengage. The Internet relies on constant novelty to keep people engaged since the body naturally starts regulating to things and once you've seen enough it stops hitting the way it used to.
I’m hopeful but cautious. The internet is novelty manifest. There are single sites alone that can keep someone occupied for days. Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down. It’ll take willpower for sure for some people to get out of the rut that they’re in right now, and especially for future generations, if entertainment continues to advance.
Like over a thousand TV channels? And yet for some reason we were all pretty ready to ditch cable and pursue other entertainment options. Easy isn't enough. (I'm amused by how long this has been going on; Victorians had a similar panic about novels. Though given how I was glued to a book when I was forced away from the digital world, they may not be wrong there either.)
> The internet is novelty manifest. There are single sites alone that can keep someone occupied for days. Content aggregation in the form of applications like Tik Tok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and even HN have the ability of providing hours of content and then some by just refreshing the page or scrolling down.
Is it, though? It's novelty manifest compared to the pre-Web (and pre social media) days. But that was 30 years ago, and the Internet sure looks a lot less novel when you compare it to the Internet in 2010. You think the iPad babies are going to find anything novel in TikTok? Of course not.
Novelty requires constant change, or else it stops being novel. Not just in the content, but also in the delivery mechanism. Being raised on digital content consumption, I use TikTok but after being glued to it for 3-4 months, I picked out enough of the similarities in content that it started being boring. Another weakness of the current social media landscape that shows up the longer the audience has engaged is recycled content. For example, TT has figured out that I like history content. It has not figured out that I've been looking for stupid fun history tidbits for decades and I already know what it's showing me. "Did you know...?" YES. YES, I DID. It's informational blue balls. I spend too much time on TikTok, but I also spent too much time on LiveJournal, IRC, Usenet, Tumblr, and Reddit. Showing me something new is way harder than a random 13 year old.
Another example is the phenomenon of how people who are porn addicts usually end up seeking out new and novel stimuli because eventually the same old gets boring. That still applies to TikTok: The people who want thirst traps will eventually stop being tickled by the 50th one because it's too similar and their dopamine receptors demand an upping of the ante.
I basically have hope because the human organism requires change. And because human adolescents really like doing the opposite of what the last generation did. We're due for another Great Awakening and shit is going to get weird. If Millennials and Gen Z are obsessed with content consumption, our grandkids are going to rebel pretty hard. I expect some very strong social/cultural taboos around entertainment and content use will show up in a few decades.
Social media account users are ‘always online’ in the sense that someone can always find them and interact with them… regardless of whether they’re using a device or even awake.
Most information workers - even ones who still work in an office - ‘come online’ when they get to their desk and often remain ‘online’ for out-of-hours contact.
So… what different people mean when they say they are ‘online constantly’ feels like it probably renders any conclusions you can draw from this kind of survey pretty thin.
Constantly means something. It doesn't mean too much, or a lot, or an unhealthy amount -- it means almost the entirety of your time.
> About how often do you use the internet?
That's the definition.
I've been putting a considerable amount of my time into helping people for past 20 years, that doesn't mean people like to spend time with me outside work and studies.
I didn't do, and didn't learn how to do actives growing up, it's just awkward to others and I when I try. I even cook 5 course meals and workout at home.
Of course I'm going to be constantly online, games and forums are were I'm loved.
Technically my computer is, but I might not be doing anything actively online. I might be coding something (which requires looking things up online, but only sometimes), or working on the graphic design in Illustrator for one of my board game designs, or composing music, or playing old tv shows I have copies of on my computer in the background while I do other things, etc.
It still feels like I'm online a lot though, and a lot less productive in my personal projects than I could be. I keep trying to reduce it, but any effort I've made in the past doesn't seem to last very long.
In other words self-reporting as “being online constantly” (whatever that means… TikTok or day trading?) correlates with more education, income, and ability to pay a higher rent.
Depending on what people consider “going online,” this isn’t necessarily a problem.
Being glued to an endless feed of clickbait and advertisements is probably unhealthy.
Having a desktop running SETI in the background for the entire day probably isn’t.
I wonder what people mean when they say “going online.”
I once had a conversation with a fighter pilot about what a good pilot candidate looks like. He said it would be someone who could drift a car around a corner while having conversation about a legal problem, while adjusting the radio, and not missing a beat as he pauses that conversation to answer a cellphone, all the while keeping an eye out for cops. Such people will not be the type to sit quietly in history class, but they might be those people who sit at a screen all day bouncing between a dozen different tasks.
The _guilt_ I would feel looking at my phone as a parent is objectively unproductive when I look objectively at how much 1-1 time I have sunk into my kid. People need breaks, and if not the phone, it would be something else...
I'm not saying you're wrong. I suspect that you're right, in fact. But what's happening at the park might not be the best indicator.
I feel sorry for people who don't get to experience 8am in an open field with the sun shining. Little rabbits bouncing around. The sweet smell of the grass. The earth between your toes.
Dew-kissed field wakes,
Morning sun, golden embrace,
Birds trill, wind whispers,
Nature's symphony begins,
Soft grass, a canvas of peace.
And then eventually the sun gets too bright for my computer screens and I have to go back inside to continue working.
But good on you for taking an honest stab at full-time farm work. From what I hear it's gotten pretty difficult to make a living off of it, unless you have a huge farm and put millions of dollars into farm equipment (or you're otherwise retired and don't need much extra money). Hopefully it's the latter in your case :).
I have other sources of income. I code in the winter months.
Seeing different amounts of introversion from live streamers helped me understand this divide. For some people, the idea of staying in your room all day and playing video games sounds like one of the most isolating things you can do. The amount of other people you are playing with online doesn't make a difference. But from the other side, there's streamers that get consistently 1000+ concurrent viewers to every stream and they make an effort to interact with individuals over time. Not everyone is chatting, but even if 1% are, thats a group of 10 people constantly chatting. Should the steamer be considered introverted or extroverted.
I think the difference between people who see screen time as good vs bad relates to whether they consider online interactions as social vs not. There is a large population of people that see any screen use as the same, but that comes from a place of not understanding the different uses of technology. The divide falls on generational lines because younger generations grew up using the internet and don't remember a "before". Those that didn't, and failed to adapt to social interactions moving online, feel nostalgic and see screen use as a "problem". I think younger generations also aren't valuing extraversion the same way older ones did because there is a better understanding of things like social anxiety and neurodevelopmental disorders.
I used to be bothered a lot and got defensive when people tried to screen shame me, but I don't care anymore. I recognized it's just part of the cycle of new technology making people feel uncomfortable when they can't or choose not to adapt. The same divide happens over and over at different scales. Ebooks are a great example, paper vs computer, paper vs eink, eink vs computer, book vs movie vs audiobook. I just finished working my way through an excellent Youtube analysis series of Dune, there hours of a book club discussion with a content creator. As a deeply introverted person, even online discussions can feel exhausting. People that try to screen shame me demonstrate they have zero nuanced understanding of that.