How much time do you spend on screens?

A long time ago, I was quite used to being limited on how long I can use those digital screens - no matter they’re smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, laptops, etc, with the only exception being televisions but I rarely watch the TV anyways. My mum did that for the sake of the health of our vision (I started wearing glasses since a pretty young age because I was used to read comic books while lying down, but that’s another story), but as time passed we got less strict on the limitation, partly due to how much phones can do compared to the past and it’s getting harder and harder to live with the limitation. Now, the rule doesn’t exist anymore in my house, but I don’t think that’s a valid reason to use the screen all day every day. I mean, overusing them can still cause harm after all.

In school, I use my laptop a lot - in class, after class, in the dorm, sometimes even before class if I have nothing else to do. I can’t really count the amount of hours I spend on it per day, but I expect it to sit around 6 hours or more since I really use it for almost everything, from note-taking to coding to chatting and gaming. Probably I even hit 12 hours or more during assignment deadlines, unhealthy enough. That does not include the time I spend on my phone yet, so...imagine yourself, maybe?

Since I’m now on a semester break, I am naturally interested in how much time I spend on the screens I have per day. Did it became more or less?

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Source

To be honest, I’m not using my laptop a lot these days, even with the fact that I have quite a number of games installed on it to be cleared in this holiday (another fact: I haven’t played even one of them, money well spent during last Steam sales). Probably it’s because I have access to the iPad at home so I turned my attention to it instead, using it for Discord and games. That’s partly the reason why I have those circle-tapping gaming videos in my Steemit blog, I did spent quite an amount of time on it. Let’s see how much time I have spent on the device today.

(Sorry for a screenshot full of Chinese, it’s the language on the device and I’m not the only user of it so changing it is not so nice.)

2 hours with only 1 hour and 1 minute on Cytus? That’s surprisingly low. Although it’s probably because I’m quite busy today so I’m not playing the game a lot. And as you can see, I spent a majority of the remaining time on Discord. With this, I guess I have the credibility to actually complain that Discord’s emoji autocompletion and emoji picker is really slow and sluggish on an old device like this iPad Air, I would rather use it on an old Android device instead of this.

Well that’s kinda out of topic, so let’s go back to it by looking at the overall time spent on it for past 7 days.

So on average, I spend 2 and a half hours a day, with the game Cytus taking 6 hours over the week and Discord following close behind with almost 5 hours. There’s a huge spike of time spent on Friday...I guess it’s caused by my brother playing with the BandLab app on that day together with me writing posts in the Photos app (it uploads to YouTube while Share2Steem does the reposting) as well as the Google Docs app. Almost no record for Sunday, because the entire family spent the entire day outdoors. Good for the eyes!

In fact, the screenshot above is taken before I finish writing this post, so the total time isn’t that accurate. Probably add another hour for today because that’s approximately the amount of time I spend typing in the Google Docs app today. We can also continue counting the time I spent in the Safari app uploading the images to my Vornix site, but I think it’s neglectable?

We’ll take a look at the record on my phone then. Android doesn’t seem to have a screen usage monitor built-in, and the closest one I found is in the battery section of the settings app.

4 hours and a little more...wew, that’s more than what I expected.

Since Android doesn’t record the amount of time spent per app for me, so I should do the counting myself then. I am taking care of a few mobile games on this phone, so I do some “daily tasks” for them every day. I took like 20 minutes in Vainglory today for the first win of the day, 30 minutes in Tower of Saviors to clear events, and another 15 minutes in Sdorica to do their daily quests. I guess I spent around 30 to 40 minutes in the Patriko app doing my daily supports for #powerhousecreatives and reading a few other posts, another 20 to 30 minutes in the Spotify app, and dumped the rest in the Discord app. That kinda translates to around 2 hours more of Discord...not sure that's insane or impressive, wew.

Some simple addition will easily show that I am looking at screens for about 6 to 7 hours a day with the stats above, and that's just an approximated value, it might be more! Frankly speaking, I'm a little shocked to know that I'm staring at these rectangle-shaped light-emitting stuff for so many hours a day. I'm even trying to not look at the screen when typing now, lol.

Although no research really showed that modern screens can cause significant damage to humans over prolonged usage, but it's still a fact that they emit radiation and cause eye sore if not other problems with incorrect usage. I might really have to stop being a total Discord addict, or at least pick up the habit of leaving the screen every half an hour for the eyes to get some rest. I believe this habit is actually crucial to vision health in the long term as screens will be more and more common around us and we will have to use them more and more. Technology is growing and I can't stop that, but I can probably stop them from creating more problems for me. Most of the times it's not the technology's fault, but the user's :)

If your work or daily life doesn't really rely on the use of screens, probably research a little on how much time you spend on those devices per day and you might be surprised. If you have to use screens a lot like I do, try picking up habits that are beneficial to your eyesight, or get other protective mechanisms like a good blue light filter on your glasses, if you have one.

Now it's time for me to give my eyes a good rest, see you next time!

—Lilacse

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress.