How the Internet hurts your sleep schedule, productivity and personal life
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Of course a newer, more utilized tool eats into your other activities that don't revolve around that tool.
Less time spent driving to the store, walking around the store, and purchasing the items, and driving back home? More time spent on Amazon.com?!?!
What about less time spent socializing offline, but more time spent playing MMOS?
IMO this is all about one major sociological/technological device eating into our other habits. Depending on the person, it could eat into bad habits, or good ones.
They mentioned 2.7 minutes less working, but what about the productivity gains from the internet?
Every schoolchild in America is told experiments begin with hypotheses.
Granted that isn't how things work in the real world, but it isn't categorically untrue either.
The thing is though, some of these are ridiculous. 9.6 fewer seconds at parties? 6 fewer seconds at cultural events/institutions? Well, I don't party for one (it's a waste of time, and I'm an introvert), and what is a "cultural event/institution?" There's few museums near here, the university theater has few interesting plays, and I likely wouldn't go to them anyway. Maybe I'm lacking an adequate amount of culture, but the only museums that really tickle me in my happy spot are air and space museums (with a few notable others touching on such subjects as archaeology or anthropology)...
As tokenizer pointed out at the top of this thread, less time shopping doesn't imply people aren't shopping. It could imply they're supplanting their shopping with online shopping, which is often more convenient. Depending on where you live, online stores might even have a better selection!
I can think of a few falsifications, borrowing from yourself, tokenizer, and several others. 1) Instead of partying or socializing, some people are more apt to replace that with playing games with friends online and using VoIP clients (TeamSpeak, Skype, etc). 2) Instead of spending "other" leisure time watching telelvision or the like, it's supplanted by browsing or gaming. 3) Can you even prove that spending Internet-related time isn't someone's idea of relaxing? Moreover, how do you quantify "relaxing?" Does the notion of what constitutes relaxation change from person to person?
Personally, I'd personally rather if someone were to waste an evening reading Wikipedia than watch television, so I'm not sure how one could quantify "36 fewer seconds on educational activities." This is doubly true for those who use the Internet as a means to further their own interests (the article almost implies they're mutually exclusive).
The other question is thus: Does it matter?
> The other question is thus: Does it matter?
Absolutely not. Any, and I repeat, any of the problems encountered with a computer or the internet, can easily be more attributable to the human condition, and the way our civilization and organizations work. It's the exact same argument as guns don't kill people.
Lets take the title as an assertion, and see if holds any ground when asked as a question. So the assertions are: "The internet hurts your sleep schedule, productivity and personal life"
The internet hurts your sleep schedule?
First of all, what's the internet? Is it a physical object? No it is not. Does it force me to interact with it? No. People or myself may force me to use it however. When I look into the science, it tells me that what really affects your sleep, is bright lights close to your face. This actually seems like more of a problem with display screens and is more of a criticism of our modern, electrical society, which is fine. This doesn't mean that it's the Internet's fault though.
The internet hurts your productivity?
Hah. So where are we getting our data from? From before the internet was invented? Yes? Well No. Actually the data is more about what a time sink on average, certain services are on the internet. Again, what's the internet?? Unfortunately people use whatever definition suits them. Again, all I'll say is the problems are most likely born from personal or social pressures or vices or defects, and while I may agree to more accurate phrase (Facebook hurts your productivity), the internet is where I and many others make their living everyday. To generalize it as unproductive is just incorrect.
The internet hurts your personal life?
If you let it hurt your personal life, or you let someone use the internet, and that person hurts your personal life, then I guess you could argue a more exacting phrase (My naked photos being on the internet hurts my personal life). But then again, with such a general definition of internet, then a fair retort is the evidence we have of people's personal lives being improved everyday because of the internet. Girl dying of cancer? Reddit donates to her in a caring creative way. Veteran needs some love on their B-day? /b/ from 4chan has over 10 people attend and give the man company. The internet is keeping you single because of anime and porn? The internet got this guy a girl friend and a job in Cologne.
It's like your said earlier: Does it matter? No. Because people are different, technology is agnostic to our anthropomorphism, and all of our problems stem from humans, human groups, or human civilization.
For instance, they're basically saying more leisure time spent on the internet, means less time for everything else. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see how that sentence is just too simple. Of course it's correct. Any more specific however and it's wrong. A great example is the three assertions in the articles headline.
The catch? The computer is just a tool. Some people use it 24/7, only consume sedentary media, and can skew these results. While some other folks utilize the device to save time on their shopping, social communication, taxes, personal growth, hobby development, and professional networking device.
A computer is a tool. If studies show that more people choose to use it in a reckless and hedonistic manner, then that's more telling of us humans than the effects of the internet. If those same people can't ruin their lives on computers, they'd do so at a bar, or at a casino, or in front of their TV all day.
I see this playing out two ways:
1. The "productivity" apps will continue to grow as more people become less productive. (the tools aren't lacking, but their attention spans are) We'll continue to see to-do list apps, CRM apps, and project management tools rolled out week after week.
2. Internet based companies (everything from publishers to web apps) will have to increasingly find more ways to ensure user engagement. This means more email notifications, more smartphone notifications, more SMS's, and more ways of people trying to annoy you.
We'll see how long it lasts before I feel the need to switch them all back on, but so far I haven't been missing them one bit! I might just give them up for good because I really do feel great not having to check up on my Twitter/Fb/etc. I'm no longer being pummeled with a sea of content that I then inadvertently consume. I spend more time looking around my environment in my moments of free time (like when standing in line) instead of automatically opening up Fb or Twitter like a cruel nervous twitch.
The only social network app that I kept is Instagram because I like taking pictures a lot and Instagram is just fun for that purpose :) Plus it doesn't notify me too much or require too much of my attention even when it does.
The problem comes when they are doing something they don't want to be doing - they might check them while watching a nourishing NPR documentary, or that 1980s zombie movie He insists is amazing.
So why are I commenting on HN while I am supposed to be working? I think it's because there isn't a strong enough negative consequence. Most people can perform +-20% at anything in their lives, and not see much effect either way. So if they don't like doing an activity, why not give it -20% effort?
In the 70s it would be a cigarette break, now it's reddit. People don't change much.
For example, I've built a little time tracker tool that asks you to rate your focus after a work session. That way you KNOW how much time you've spent actually focused, vs. puttering around on the internet.
My current hobby project is a gamification of journaling. The basic idea is to get people addicted writing. My current issue with this app is with testing it. I find myself focusing on playing the game instead of actually coding. Oops.
A notable fact about this book is that 20% of the entire volume are references to various scientific studies used throughout the text to substantiate the author's position. It's not a fluff piece.
Wake up in the morning. You have about an hour to prepare and get to work. While you're eating breakfast, you read Hacker News. Multi-tasking. Now you have finished eating breakfast. Yet you're still reading Hacker News. You just gotta finish those last few links. And maybe check up on your email. Then you realize you've wasted minutes of an already tight schedule and you really got to rush it to make it to work on time. You arrive maybe 5-15 minutes late and a little flustered because you were racing.
Then you realize you could have just left the house quickly and read Hacker News at work, on the clock. Yet you'll make the same mistake tomorrow.
I read Hacker News afterwards, though...
Headline says one thing; final paragraph says another: "Bottom line? The Internet is quickly changing the way we allocate our time, but there’s no call to panic yet. You might want to stop reading this thing on the Internet and get back to work, though."
In any case, I don't really like the idea that those people would been useless anyway as if it were in their nature to be unmotivated. Maybe I'm a bit naive but I believe good nurture can offset much of the problems of nature.
I personally believe it is a parent's responsibility to monitor their children and ensure that they have the best chance they can get at adequate cognitive development, even if that means monitoring their use of "screen time."
When I was young (and no doubt many of you), it was cartoons. Now it's Internet or game-related stuff.
> In any case, I don't really like the idea that those people would been useless anyway as if it were in their nature to be unmotivated.
I didn't suggest they're useless. I stated they were unmotivated and that such lack of motivation is unlikely to change no matter what the distraction. 20 years ago, it might have been soap operas. Today it's the Internet. Removing any distraction in particular for someone with a great deal if idle time who is unlikely to be motivated to "learn" something isn't going to change their motivation. That was essentially the crux of my point.
> I think the fact that people have literally died from screen overuse lends credence to the idea that there is some danger to integrating computers...
And what about those of us who use them daily with (seemingly) no ill effects, because it's what we do for a living and for much of our hobbyist use? Of the circumstances I'm aware of where people have died from sitting in front of a computer too long, it's been due in part to video game abuse. Playing StarCraft for 48+ hours in a single stretch without eating or drinking is the sign of an addiction, not necessarily the fault of StarCraft itself.
I think this effectively boils down to the fact that the problem is not with technology. The problem is with people.