It’s easy to go overboard with screens, but there are many good things about them. There are valid concerns about how our screens affect us, but the sky isn’t going to come down. As long as we use our screen time carefully and strategically, we can get more of the benefits and cut down on some of the negatives that come with them, too.
How long do we spend on screens?
Nielsen says that adults spend more than 11 hours engaging with media, which is a lot. This is an increase from 9 hours and 32 minutes just four years ago. when it was the same. More than 4 hours have been allocated to watching TV out of the 11 hours people spend watching. Nine hours a day is the average amount of time that teenagers spend with media, and that doesn’t include school or homework time. The same Common-Sense Media poll discovered that children aged 8 to 12 spend an average of six hours per day in front of a monitor. They spend approximately 32 hours per week before a screen (e.g, videos, watching TV gaming).
Researchers can’t do everything
While it is obvious that a significant amount of time is spent in front of screens, there are difficulties in gathering this data. Most researchers use self-made reports, which are known to be unreliable. People have a problem remembering what they ate for lunch yesterday and how much. It’s hard to figure out how much media people watch or listen to across It’s hard to figure out how much media people watch or listen to across different mediums and devices
Most research is based on how long people say they spend on their phones and tablets. If you report how much screen time you spend, that doesn’t always match how much screen time is digitally logged. There is no way to know for sure what these research findings are.
In some studies, the amount of time being spent on media is doubled or even tripled, as stated in the Common Sense Media study, which shows how much time kids spend on media. If the TV is on simultaneously as the phone, screen time is double-counted. Teens who watch a movie for two hours on the clock are only credited for four hours of media usage because they were engaging with a mobile device while the movie was going on. This can make it look like you spend a lot of time with media each day.
How do you measure?
Another big problem with the research is that it doesn’t know if people are happy or sad. How could we really know if we’re spending too much time in front of a screen? I don’t know. Some way or another, there has to be a bad side effect to what you did. However, we would need to agree on a well-being metric. Are we looking at, anxiety, depression, stress, sleep quality/quantity happiness, grades, or how satisfied we are with our friends when we measure them? Different people would say different things about how much screen time is too much based on measuring positive or negative results.
In what way does the amount of time spent in front of a screen step over the line?
More often than not, screen use is of benefit or very least innocuous. As with nutritious food, we will be able to use screen time so much that the negatives outweigh the positives, just like eating too much good food. Even so, there isn’t a golden line that is crossed, and the person falls off a cliff. On some well-being metrics, the negatives may outweigh the positives in a way that makes them seem worse than they are.
Many people (maybe most?) use screens every day, losing some of their health and well-being. When we use our screens, we face a hard time setting boundaries because they are very much fascinating.
Persuasive design is used to entice and maintain the viewer’s attention on the screen. In the same way that food firms attempt to get us to buy their unhealthy products, tech companies will attempt to capture our attention. That’s the way their business model works. As a result, we spend a little too much time on our screens. This is detrimental to our general health. The majority aren’t sure what to think about all of this, as well as the effects of typical overuse might be small and hard to notice.
From time to time, screen use can negatively affect your body
As long as we don’t use screens too much, the adverse effects will outweigh the positive ones when they get in the way of the things we need most. This means that, Even if an adolescent is learning to program, if she is only receiving four hours of sleep per night as a result, she will be unable to perform at her best. Chronic sleep deprivation can have a detrimental effect on your physical and mental health.
