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Poll: How many hours a day are you looking at a screen?

51 points by sillysaurus2 ↗ HN
This is a followup to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6787687. There seems to be general community interest, so I thought I'd go ahead and create an actual poll.

In an average week how many hours a day are you looking at a screen? Computer/TV/Phone/Tablet/Other

30 comments

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memset
I had never actually thought to ask myself before. I answered 15. Jarring.
sb057
Monday to Friday? About 6.
modoc
I highly recommend RescueTime to give you real data on your computer habits, both hours in front of the screen, and a real breakdown of work vs. wasting time vs. entertainment, etc... It has led to a conscious change in how I spend time on the computer.
sillysaurus2
The last time I used RescueTime, it also gave me a nice breakdown on my porn habits as well, and there was no way to filter out that data without remembering to disable the data gatherer each time. So I stopped using it.

There's probably a way to do it, but the general creepiness of giving them my intimate data made me not want to use it. (I personally trust them, so this is me being illogical.)

EDIT: I just realized, this was 2-3 years ago. That's an eternity, so it's unfair of me to even be telling this story.

ricardobeat
How long ago was that? It ignores adult sites by default, plus you can tell it to ignore any specific activity that shows up in your reports.
hrktb
I think the point of the poll is that the time spent looking at a screen is far more than the time spent on "the computer" for a lot of people. Watching TV, looking at a phone/tablet during commute, reading on an e-reader after lunch, going to a theater after work. All of these cumulate as screen time, and it easily goes up to 10~15h a day in total.
alberts
there is no option for 25 hrs.
ohazi
http://jonls.dk/redshift/

http://justgetflux.com/

I started using redshift a few months ago to try and rein in my sleep schedule, but it's also done wonders for eye fatigue. Highly recommended.

For those of you who aren't familiar with these utilities, they basically adjust the color temperature of your display on a schedule with the goal of reducing your exposure to bright blue light before bed. Can be toggled if you need to do work with accurate colors.

mgrouchy
I have recently started using flux and have found the effects to be significantly positive. The sleep schedule wasn't something I was worried about, but I have found it to be fantastic for eye fatigue.
paul4096
Both help a lot when you are sensitive to direct bright lights. Without f.lux the colors were so piercingly bright, that I sometimes felt glared when I went away from my Mac. Now, because it fits my lighting, the light brightness or intensity don't seem to change (as much). I really recommend using either one, especially when your eyes are sensitive.
DustinCalim
I'd like to see HN stats on this vs your average 12-35yr old American.
ACow_Adonis
Its a tough one to estimate. There's the 8 hour job in there, but does one really spend those entire 8 hours looking at the screen? What about breaks? Lunch? Meetings?

Taking out sleep, cooking/eats (assuming not eating looking at the screen), reading (assuming not read from a screen), physical activities, hobbies, holidays, travel, etc and the number should go down a bit.

Of course, if you watch TV, use a tablet, a kindle, and don't do anything else, then the number suddenly goes up.

I settled on 10. 8 hour job. Don't watch TV, prefer real books, but end up programming on the bus and a few hours after work. Which is probably too much for a physically healthy human life. Need to do something about that...

ricardobeat
I think this would work better as ranges or less granular options, few people are going to check 13 and other odd numbers since it's an imprecise guess.
saryant
Wake up, check email on iPhone in bed.

Check Facebook, blogs, etc. while I'm eating breakfast.

Start work, staring at a screen all day.

Go home, probably work more there. Watch some Netflix.

Go to bed, read a book on my Kindle until I fall asleep.

Essentially, except for the time when I driving or at the grocery story, if I'm awake, I'm looking at a screen.

josephjrobison
Me too and it's sad when we find out in 50 years how bad this is for us. Similar schedule but exercise at lunch in there for me!
croddin
I am really looking forward to e-paper displays that have good enough color and a fast enough refresh rate that they can be used in laptops.
ams6110
I wouldn't even care about color; I don't need color to code. I'd buy an e-ink notebook in a heartbeat, likewise a display if it were at least 24"
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johngrefe
Gunnars have actually helped substantially, I was getting really bad eye strain / headaches.

(I really hope PG knows I voted 20 hours a day)

DaveAchkar
I'm at roughly 11 (based on real data) - higher than I'd like it to be.

But this whole question of how many hours we spend doing xyz, is something I've obsessed on since I left my previous job - been very curious about where all my time was going and how that changed. I went all out maintaining a minute by minute lifelog (http://david.achkar.com/life-log/), and one takeaway that's useful to mention here is that intuition about how I spent my time was often way off (vs what my data showed). It makes me doubt the accuracy of self reported numbers vs actuals

webwright
If you're curious about your actual number (and how your time breaks down), you can get it with http://www.rescuetime.com (YC08). It's available for win/mac/linux & android.

disclosure: I founded the company, love it dearly, but moved on a few years ago.

j546
It would be interesting to see of each amount, how many of them wear glasses/contacts because I have always been curious to see the correlation between time spent looking at a screen and its effects on eyesight.
guiambros
For those (like me) with 12+ hours: I bet you're not getting enough sleep. Besides f.lux, try melatonin. A tiny dose of 300mcg has helped me a lot to regain the desire to sleep (which was always my problem).

Blue light is indeed the reason why some are still active at 4am. The problem is not that you don't like to sleep; you don't want to sleep, because of your level of melatonin.

Lots of good comments in [1], [2], [3]. Search for f.lux and melatonin on HN and you'll see hundreds of similar discussions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495358

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665696

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3338601

Vektorweg
This looks funny, because there are too many options. Most chosen numbers are even in higher range.