Is this really that weird, considering labor now involves mostly looking at a screen? In other words, is the total amount of time we see family really going down vs say the 1800s, when people used to work many more hours.
The ability for a computer to keep your attention for very long periods of time is an order of magnitude greater than the time you would purposely spend on TV or Newspapers. I can usually stomach 2 to 3 hours tops on TV even with Netflix, Prime and loads of Freeview channels. On the other hand, if I had the time, I could easily spend 12+ hours playing a computer game.
As for Newspapers, how long would you really spend reading them on any given day?
“The computer” is a multipurpose tool that sweeps in multiple activities.
The newspaper? On the computer now. TV? On the computer. (YouTube feels much more like old TV than streaming services, to me.) Games? Computer. Work? Computer. Shopping? Computer. Keeping up with distant family and friends? Computer. Banking and bills? Computer. Investing? Believe it or not, computer.
This has its downsides—it can be harder to consciously allocate time—but it also allows you to be more flexible with the ever-decreasing square footage per person allotted in the modern world.
Usage should really be broken down by activity, not lumped under “computer time”.
I think a better way to ask this question is if I was entertained by a computer more than by the company of friends/family.
Of course I spend more time looking at a screen - it's my job description. It's never been different in the past. But outside of work, that's a different story.
This reminds me of Tim Urban's excellent post The Tail End[1] he wrote a few years ago.
He calculates that when a person reaches age 18, they have spent more than 90% of their in-person parent time. As a parent and a son, that hits pretty hard.
If you think of your screen is a big glowy box of noise that fails to contribute to a good, meaningful life, that's a problem! Put better things on your screen.
Valid point. Using a screen for your daily work is one side. Another is sitting with family members together who are staring on a screen like zombies. I guess it’s the latter part that the author claims to be different than 10 years ago. I feel it.
Some parents seem to believe that quality family time would spontaneously happen, if not for all those darn screens taking away all our attention and free time.
There's a tiny bit of truth in that, but sometimes parents need to actually do parenting and force their family to put down the phone or stop watching the tv and do things together.
Tiny bit of truth? I think for many it would happen almost instantaneously, genuinely where else would people put those 3+ hours now spent on the computer/phone/tv.
It would also make it easier as more family oriented businesses would become viable when they would no longer compete with phones and tv (e.g bowling alleys).
I obviously agree with the latter but it doesn't change the fact that the (vast) majority of parents will fail at it similar to junkies failing at getting sober.
My father spent more time in the office than with his family. My ancestors spent more time in the field than with family. My distant ancestors probably spent significant family time hunting together.
Is there any way to make the profession a family affair again?
Time in the field would have been spent with family, too. Women used to weave and spin loom for clothing as they walked, and developed tools for it. Families used to include the children in the field work when possible, in rural areas. In addition, families working the fields used to spend less time working than modern adults do, not more[1]
> The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.
One of the reasons why children, teens, and young adults have become so infantalised is because they are socialised mostly around each other, and spend a lot of time being told "no you can't, you are a child". This is not a call for children to enter the mines, and I do not wish to see child labour laws repealed (as they are apparently being in some parts of the USA). But for children to be socialised correctly, they must maintain connections with people of all ages, both older and younger — all benefit from such an arrangement. For them to grow up, they must be treated as people, and given age-appropriate responsibility and inclusion in the tasks that adults do. It is harder to teach a teenager to wash the dishes and their clothes, than it is to ask for a child's help washing the dishes and your/their clothes. The children are happy to help and to be included, you get to teach them rudimentary tasks, and it counts as family bonding time. The alienation of children from adults, and the alienation of children from their parents' work, is a great loss to society as a whole.
Time on computer is often spent "with family" too, eg. my son is home from school today and noodling around on my phone next to me while I handle a bunch of errands online.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not here, but sitting next to each other in the same room isn't the same as spending time together.
I can sit with my butt touching someone else's on the subway for an hour, but would hardly call that "spending time together", or presume to know anything about them other than their smell.
It's a response to the GP, which makes the point that time in the field would still be spent with family. Time in the field with family is different from "spending time together" in the same sense that time on the computer adjacent to family is different from "spending time together". In both cases, your attention is on a task rather than on a person, you may be performing different tasks, and you're in close physical proximity but not necessarily doing the same thing.
Also I think many extroverts misunderstand introverts in this respect. My mom (introvert) and me (introvert) would often just read in the same room, and that was enough for us: I assure you, it felt very different than sitting with my butt against a complete stranger on the subway. My younger kids (introvert and ambivert) insist on digging their toes under my back while we sleep to make sure I haven't gone anywhere; they are not even conscious, but the proximity is important to them. This particular kid is an extrovert and has made about a dozen bids for my attention in the time between my previous comment and now (most of which have been reciprocated), but that is again the huge difference between sitting next to a family member and sitting next to a stranger on the subway. With family, that bond of trust is already there, and so you feel okay interrupting the silence to ask what your next move should be in Magic Sort, or why you can't download Township, or how do you turn the phone off silent mode, or showing me how he just beat his personal best score on 1 To 100, while you would never ask those of a stranger on the subway.
> In addition, families working the fields used to spend less time working than modern adults do, not more[1]
And they'd spend a lot more time doing all the things we don't need to do anymore. The money I get from work buys a lot of convenient _not_ needing to do a lot of menial labor.
> One of the reasons why children, teens, and young adults have become so infantalised is because they are socialised mostly around each other, and spend a lot of time being told "no you can't, you are a child".
I agree,but this has become so normalised that people think that spending time with kids one's own age is then only way to be properly socialised. People say kids who do anything else will be "weird". It is the single commonest objection to home education that children cannot be socialised except by spending the most if their time with their own age group (rather than with adults or kids of a range of ages).
I found my kids loved helping with whatever I did, whether cooking or installing an OS. There is always something they can do: fetch something or pour something or keep an eyebon something. It was more fun for me too.
Run a family business, but probably best you don't. Every family business I have worked for was basically walking into an intellectual MMA match of endless bickering amongst them. Apart time can be a good thing in moderation.
The sentiment is valuable but screens <-> family comparison bleeds too much into the polarization camp for shock value. "Time spent doing X" as opposed to Y will always have shock value. We sleep too much. Too much time reading on the toilet.
My main pushback is solitude. I don't actually want to timemaxx family interaction or any human interaction. I don't want to be the only one on the planet either, we need one another. But a life well-lived includes deep experiences in solitude if you ask me.
EDIT: and another thing! human interaction here biases toward the living and the related. Why? Human connection can span all of humanity. And it should.
I agree with most of what you said, however a big point of contention would be that the activities most people tend to spend time doing solo on their computer, do not tend to engender the types of "deep solitude experiences" you talk about
> EDIT: and another thing! human interaction here focuses entirely on the living and the related. Why? Human connection can span all of humanity. And it should
You don't think society has mostly trended towards "everyone but those nearest to us"? You dont think solitude is related to this?
This is probably heavily conditioned on one's specific experiences. An uncurated modern web/mobile sounds like a hellscape - ads in one's start menu, autoplaying videos, a flood of promotional notifications from shopping apps, people arguing with bots arguing with people about populist political garbage... blech. The real question is how this compares to your family member having a few cocktails and blaming you for their divorce or getting calls from collection agencies on behalf of somebody you haven't seen in person in five years.
My life has been more aligned with computers, and I prefer it that way. Computers don't lie, they don't pressure you. At least they respond honestly to my input, almost all the time. Everything outside of computers was awful. So I like everything that involves computers. The internet let me read and learn so much, which made computers good for me. There are downsides, like YouTube and some communities, but overall, I enjoy building things with computers and making them work
I have close family and good coworkers but they aren't all beautiful, funny, omniscient, and available 24/7 with no reciprocal demands on me, so I only spend time with them to hedge my bets in case I get tired of the computer. Prison, shelter, how about flying saucer?
You can do so many different things with a computer. If you spend hours watching AI generated YouTube shorts instead of playing outside with your kids, then yeah, that's too bad.
But if you spend all those hours building a retro/modern sim city game pair programming with your 12yo, designing the artwork, crafting the story arc, writing the music, finding and fixing bugs, building new levels -- you don't need to regret that you weren't idling around at the park all that time.
the computer lets me stay home and work with my family around, so it's not all doom and gloom... 50 years ago I'd be in the office ~40 hours a week and commuting for another 5
Why is this front page? This is just a strangely framed ambiguous question. Here's more of the same: Will you have spent more of your life sleeping than with your family? Will you have spent more of your life walking than with your family? Will you have spent more of your time working than with your family? Will you have spent more of your time blinking than with your family?
I think you’re missing the point, which is that screen time is (or, the implication is that it is) an unhealthy waste of time.
It’s uncontroversial that we need sleep, walking is necessary and/or healthy, working is (mostly) necessary (regardless of whether it’s healthy), and blinking is necessary.
The implication is that there’s almost zero about screen time that is healthy or necessary, except in some exceptional cases.
And that this has become recently common. Prior to the Information Age, it was less common that we spent this much time on screens.
Given that I got my first computer at 12, given all the screen time with video games and programming in my youth + my day-job in software I absolutely guarantee I've clocked more hours on a computer than "with my family". I'm OK with that.
Computers have consolidated work, media, and entertainment all within the same "box" and even a good deal of close friend interactions are now mediated "on the screen".
I'm certain early hunter/gatherers would've been equally as shocked seeing factory workers "leave the home" and "constantly meet strangers".
I agree with this take. When I add up all the films and shows I've watched, music I've listened to, books and articles I've read, games I've played, silly projects I've made, and whatnot else, it's hard to come to the conclusion I should have done something completely different for most of that time. I enjoyed myself for quite a lot of that time. I've learned quite a lot.
Sure, I can rot away and do things on the computer that doesn't really bring me joy beyond the Skinner box it can be, but that's at least somewhat on me if I fall into that trap (although we probably don't need to make more Skinner boxes for people to feel trapped by). There's a lot of things I really want to do on the computer, and I don't really see an inherent problem with that.
Yes! Thank you for making this distinction. The problem is that some people's perceptions have not kept up, not that screens are inherently bad. Not all screen time is equal, and everyone chooses how to spend it.
This constant purity testing needs to end already. The thinly veiled politics on HN is getting more absurd by the day.
I am taking an opportunity to learn how to make an iOS widget that can display dynamic text or an image from a URL.
It's because my dad always forgets exactly when and what channel his (our) sports team play. He has a phone but push notifications, texts, opening an app or website is too much friction, ultimately, for someone that can read yahoo, check email, and make calls, but not good with texting.
Anyway, a widget is the most immediate visual cue I could think of aside from a push notification but pushes are too fleeting. The idea is my dad just has to "swipe" to see today's games and I can curate it exactly to our teams and whether or not he can see it on the TV or needs to open streaming service X and so on.
---
Is this a good use of my time connecting with my dad? Is it better to call him instead of touching the keyboard? Should I be talking to him now rather than about him?
76 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 19.7 ms ] threadThis is breathless polemic.
As for Newspapers, how long would you really spend reading them on any given day?
The newspaper? On the computer now. TV? On the computer. (YouTube feels much more like old TV than streaming services, to me.) Games? Computer. Work? Computer. Shopping? Computer. Keeping up with distant family and friends? Computer. Banking and bills? Computer. Investing? Believe it or not, computer.
This has its downsides—it can be harder to consciously allocate time—but it also allows you to be more flexible with the ever-decreasing square footage per person allotted in the modern world.
Usage should really be broken down by activity, not lumped under “computer time”.
Of course I spend more time looking at a screen - it's my job description. It's never been different in the past. But outside of work, that's a different story.
He calculates that when a person reaches age 18, they have spent more than 90% of their in-person parent time. As a parent and a son, that hits pretty hard.
Obviously, YMMV.
[1]:https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
For white-collar jobs typically translates to, computer = work.
There's a tiny bit of truth in that, but sometimes parents need to actually do parenting and force their family to put down the phone or stop watching the tv and do things together.
It would also make it easier as more family oriented businesses would become viable when they would no longer compete with phones and tv (e.g bowling alleys).
I obviously agree with the latter but it doesn't change the fact that the (vast) majority of parents will fail at it similar to junkies failing at getting sober.
Is there any way to make the profession a family affair again?
> The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.
One of the reasons why children, teens, and young adults have become so infantalised is because they are socialised mostly around each other, and spend a lot of time being told "no you can't, you are a child". This is not a call for children to enter the mines, and I do not wish to see child labour laws repealed (as they are apparently being in some parts of the USA). But for children to be socialised correctly, they must maintain connections with people of all ages, both older and younger — all benefit from such an arrangement. For them to grow up, they must be treated as people, and given age-appropriate responsibility and inclusion in the tasks that adults do. It is harder to teach a teenager to wash the dishes and their clothes, than it is to ask for a child's help washing the dishes and your/their clothes. The children are happy to help and to be included, you get to teach them rudimentary tasks, and it counts as family bonding time. The alienation of children from adults, and the alienation of children from their parents' work, is a great loss to society as a whole.
[1]: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
I can sit with my butt touching someone else's on the subway for an hour, but would hardly call that "spending time together", or presume to know anything about them other than their smell.
Also I think many extroverts misunderstand introverts in this respect. My mom (introvert) and me (introvert) would often just read in the same room, and that was enough for us: I assure you, it felt very different than sitting with my butt against a complete stranger on the subway. My younger kids (introvert and ambivert) insist on digging their toes under my back while we sleep to make sure I haven't gone anywhere; they are not even conscious, but the proximity is important to them. This particular kid is an extrovert and has made about a dozen bids for my attention in the time between my previous comment and now (most of which have been reciprocated), but that is again the huge difference between sitting next to a family member and sitting next to a stranger on the subway. With family, that bond of trust is already there, and so you feel okay interrupting the silence to ask what your next move should be in Magic Sort, or why you can't download Township, or how do you turn the phone off silent mode, or showing me how he just beat his personal best score on 1 To 100, while you would never ask those of a stranger on the subway.
But I agree, for some people just reading together in the same room is enough.
And they'd spend a lot more time doing all the things we don't need to do anymore. The money I get from work buys a lot of convenient _not_ needing to do a lot of menial labor.
I agree,but this has become so normalised that people think that spending time with kids one's own age is then only way to be properly socialised. People say kids who do anything else will be "weird". It is the single commonest objection to home education that children cannot be socialised except by spending the most if their time with their own age group (rather than with adults or kids of a range of ages).
I found my kids loved helping with whatever I did, whether cooking or installing an OS. There is always something they can do: fetch something or pour something or keep an eyebon something. It was more fun for me too.
My main pushback is solitude. I don't actually want to timemaxx family interaction or any human interaction. I don't want to be the only one on the planet either, we need one another. But a life well-lived includes deep experiences in solitude if you ask me.
EDIT: and another thing! human interaction here biases toward the living and the related. Why? Human connection can span all of humanity. And it should.
You don't think society has mostly trended towards "everyone but those nearest to us"? You dont think solitude is related to this?
But if you spend all those hours building a retro/modern sim city game pair programming with your 12yo, designing the artwork, crafting the story arc, writing the music, finding and fixing bugs, building new levels -- you don't need to regret that you weren't idling around at the park all that time.
It’s uncontroversial that we need sleep, walking is necessary and/or healthy, working is (mostly) necessary (regardless of whether it’s healthy), and blinking is necessary.
The implication is that there’s almost zero about screen time that is healthy or necessary, except in some exceptional cases.
And that this has become recently common. Prior to the Information Age, it was less common that we spent this much time on screens.
People that did were called “couch potatoes”.
Computers have consolidated work, media, and entertainment all within the same "box" and even a good deal of close friend interactions are now mediated "on the screen".
I'm certain early hunter/gatherers would've been equally as shocked seeing factory workers "leave the home" and "constantly meet strangers".
Different praxis for different eras.
Sure, I can rot away and do things on the computer that doesn't really bring me joy beyond the Skinner box it can be, but that's at least somewhat on me if I fall into that trap (although we probably don't need to make more Skinner boxes for people to feel trapped by). There's a lot of things I really want to do on the computer, and I don't really see an inherent problem with that.
Yes! Thank you for making this distinction. The problem is that some people's perceptions have not kept up, not that screens are inherently bad. Not all screen time is equal, and everyone chooses how to spend it.
This constant purity testing needs to end already. The thinly veiled politics on HN is getting more absurd by the day.
It's because my dad always forgets exactly when and what channel his (our) sports team play. He has a phone but push notifications, texts, opening an app or website is too much friction, ultimately, for someone that can read yahoo, check email, and make calls, but not good with texting.
Anyway, a widget is the most immediate visual cue I could think of aside from a push notification but pushes are too fleeting. The idea is my dad just has to "swipe" to see today's games and I can curate it exactly to our teams and whether or not he can see it on the TV or needs to open streaming service X and so on.
---
Is this a good use of my time connecting with my dad? Is it better to call him instead of touching the keyboard? Should I be talking to him now rather than about him?