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 focuses entirely on the living and the related. Why? Human connection can span all of humanity. And it should.
> 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? Or antisocial behavior and opinions?
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
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 This is not a call for children to enter the mines, and I do not wish to see child labour laws repealed (as they are apparently being in some parts of the USA).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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
I don't think your ancestors sat around the living room while their kids were playing threshing wheat, though. They put the plowshares down once it got dark.
My dad always used to say I was addicted to screens growing up. I don't think he was far off the mark (nowadays he's as bad as me)
One time, almost all of my hobbies involved computers. I was a coder. A gamer. A writer. A digital artist. A filmmaker. I made fun Photoshop things for friends. I built websites. I did a lot of dtp. I made music with music apps. All of these things involved me staring at a screen for hours, but I don't consider them wasted time.
As I've gotten older and had kids I've tried to dial it down. I don't game anymore. I don't do social media. If I draw, it's usually with the kids on a giant sheet of paper on the floor. I spend a lot of time with my kids and it makes me happy. But even in that, I would have to concede I spend far more of my day and week in front of a screen than talking to humans.
One of the most common regrets on the death bed is "I wish I hadn't worked so hard, I wish I'd spend more time with my family", And while I don't have the benefit of 7 decades of hindsight and any clarity of mind that comes with being near death, it does seem to me like a slightly unrealistic idea, that we simply could have chosen to work fewer hours and spend more time with loved ones.
Most of us work 40 hours a week to pay the bills, and most of us can't afford to cut down that time. And I would guess for most of the people on hn, those 40 hours are spent in front of the computer.
We all have to work, and we can't all just wave a magic wand and step away from the computer and spend time with the kids instead. Otherwise said kids will end up without a roof over their head.
Yes, you probably spend more time in front of a computer than you do talking to your children, but don't beat yourself up about it
> One of the most common regrets on the death bed is "I wish I hadn't worked so hard, I wish I'd spend more time with my family"
You are not the same person as the one on your death bed. You do not have the same priorities. The only thing left for the person on the death bed are memories, so it's natural that this is a common regret.
It's a bit of a trap, kids are so expensive, if you dont have kids working an easier job is completely viable, but obviously you dont have the kids to spend time with, if you do have kids you need to work flat out to support them. I dont think myself and my partner will be having children, and there's a myriad of reasons for that, but the economic implications are certainly up there.
Don't be so hard on yourself. Yes, valid observation and time to curtail it a bit. But I think the 'stare at a screen' thing is a bit oversimplified. A computer is a medium of connection, mostly to other humans, or at least indirectly to human's work, art, etc.. So it's mostly using a tool for 'connection.' With anything, moderation is good, even moderating the moderation. But you're not staring at a brick. Don't oversimplify it.
This is heavily contingent on one's individual 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 then blaming you for their divorce or getting calls from collection agencies on behalf of somebody you haven't seen in five years.
Both of these problem spaces run the gamut from solvable to intractable. Either way you have to put in some work.
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.
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 sleep is necessary and healthy, walking is necessary and/or healthy, working is (mostly) necessary (regardless of whether it’s healthy), and blinking is necessary and healthy.
The implication is that there’s almost zero about screen time that is healthy or necessary, with some exceptions.
And that this has become recently common. Prior to the Information Age, it was less common that we spent this much time on screens.
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.
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.
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.
I hesitate to repeat it, but I've seen reels where a woman has remarked that she realized her husband spent more time inside of his mom than inside of her. That's a pretty weird mountain to climb if you ask me.
In my view, putting a number to some things profanes or perverts it. I don't think relationships or meaning is an equation that you solve by having the right number of hours allocated to them. I only think the numbers should come up when they are close to zero.
When I have free time, I think to myself I should try to do something with friends, especially going over to their homes. Playing games remotely is fun too, but being with someone in person I think ultimately has a bigger impact. Everyone has to find a balance that works for them.
But if you did get the real numbers, I've spent more time pooping, showering, sleeping, or chilling in utero than spending time with friends.
People in my family who have spent a ton of time with me get sick of me. I'm glad my friends mostly haven't gotten sick of me. I think there's a happy medium.
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?
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 had this same realization while playing video games and my senior dog came over for pets. Realized I felt like I was wasting my downtime on essentially meaningless filler when I could be spending it with him instead.
Mind you this was solo video game so I wasn't even spending quality time with friends online or anything.
I agree with the sentiment of the other comments here that its been like this for longer than OP gives credit for (10 years). But I don't think that makes it right. As hunter-gatherers, when we weren't hunting or gathering, I feel like people were probably just spending time with each other? If we take that 40 hour/week figure as canon for how much hunter/gatherers worked, anyways.
Yeah, this has always been my take too. Assuming an even 8h split on weekdays, the awake-not-working time is heavily eaten up by commuting and general upkeep. Family squeezes into shared upkeep and any remaining time at best.
The two weekend days don't seem enough to catch up to the accumulated work-time, especially if your commute is relatively long (which is true for a large chunk of the USA), so you're just constantly in a deficit until you retire... which is more of an "if" than a "when" in many cases.
Which is clearly a problem, but I don't think computers are the cause.
Was recently chatting with co-workers about WFH vs in office and one person mentioned:
"My dad would leave the house at 6am everyday to catch the train to New York and we wouldn't see him till 7-7:30pm. He did this 5 days a week for 40 years."
In my case, my dad once spent 180 days in one year for work (he worked as a trainer for financial sales people). I probably saw my kids more during COVID lockdown than my parent's generation saw their kids in 5 years.
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.
You could say the same thing about differeng hobbies or tools. Ive held a hammer multiple times longer than I could hold any person. Ive spent unknown number of hours in a garage or barn working on various mechanics.
Time with family is valuable, but so is time doing other things. You don't need everyone involved in everything 24/7.
"The worst part is that it wasn't like this 10 years ago."
I'm from the United States. I'm not sure about you, but smartphones took-over my social circles in 2011. So it definitely was like this 15 years go for us. Before that, laptops were everywhere by 2007 and people spent a huge amount of time with those. Before that, people had been spending tons of time playing video games, watching movies, and reading books. This is how life was from as early as I could remember (the late 80s, early 90s) to be honest. Maybe just the family I grew up in? We all seemed to love to read and tinker with computers and video games.
If anything, I spend less time in front of a screen or a book today than I did 20 years ago. Just as a personal preference to spend more time with my wife and kids and more time in nature.
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.
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.
No way, a taxi triver spends more time in his car than with his family. Same goes for truckers. Farmers spend more time in the field than with their families. Vendors can easily spend more time on the market or in their store selling goods. And don't even get me started on military personnel or sailors.
What a tragedy. What a horrible revelation - work can often take more time than being with your family. Oh no. Horrible horrible computers, how can this happen to us. It's not like the same is true in many other occupations.
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.
On the other hand, the world outside computers was mostly bad—people who deceived me when I was just starting out, fraudulent contracts, and all the physical pain I went through in manual labor. Looking at it from the other side, people with real-world capital tend to have good relationships and good people around them. But for those without that capital, the world inside a computer can actually feel more real than the outside.
I've come to realize that trustworthy colleagues and respectful relationships largely depend on social status. And it feels like I don't really belong there.
Computers don't get angry when I can't do something. They don't ask me to meet some standard, and they don't get frustrated when I fail to meet it. I can learn at my own pace, doing what I want. In the past, I had to reach out to people online and exchange emails during that process, but now even that's been replaced by AI giving me answers.
For me, computers aren't a cheap substitute for human relationships. They're the infrastructure that gave me the autonomy, knowledge, and productive capability I never got from the real world.
A shelter and a prison can look the same from the outside. But I chose to be here, because this world inside the computer has been less painful than what I experienced outside.
When code fails, at least I can investigate why it failed. People, on the other hand, can twist the same words depending on relationships and power, and exclude you without ever explaining why.
That's why I like computers. At least when I turn on my computer, work on something, and see it run, I feel a sense of accomplishment, whether it's AI generated or hand written code.
Honestly, I'm not sure if having my own home or meeting someone compatible would change anything.
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?
Yes, certainly, first because passion for computer can more often than not predate being able to co-make a family. Then like any work, current societies make far easier to get room to work with computers than any other kind of activity one might want to engage into. Finally, other humans don't want to spend none stop time in company of the single same individual, no matter how much they might love them: they need space for there own personal development. Computers will respond tirelessly to any human wanting to interact with them H24, and don't have any extra psychological and sociological need to fulfill.
So on sheer level of time spent on computer, other humans don't stand a chance. Time spend on something doesn't tell much about how much we feel emotionally positively connected with this thing though.
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
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 focuses entirely on the living and the related. Why? Human connection can span all of humanity. And it should.
> 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? Or antisocial behavior and opinions?
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
No, you are not doing it solo, you are connected to the internet, just like this comment.
Depends what you're doing, doesn't it?
yeah agree "will you have spent more of your life procrastinating using screens than quiet reflection in a sacred space"
[dead]
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.
[1]: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
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.
Doing a task together is fundamentally different from watching something together - even if the task does not involve active cooperation.
But I agree, for some people just reading together in the same room is enough.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
I don't think your ancestors sat around the living room while their kids were playing threshing wheat, though. They put the plowshares down once it got dark.
Open a restaurant?
My dad always used to say I was addicted to screens growing up. I don't think he was far off the mark (nowadays he's as bad as me)
One time, almost all of my hobbies involved computers. I was a coder. A gamer. A writer. A digital artist. A filmmaker. I made fun Photoshop things for friends. I built websites. I did a lot of dtp. I made music with music apps. All of these things involved me staring at a screen for hours, but I don't consider them wasted time.
As I've gotten older and had kids I've tried to dial it down. I don't game anymore. I don't do social media. If I draw, it's usually with the kids on a giant sheet of paper on the floor. I spend a lot of time with my kids and it makes me happy. But even in that, I would have to concede I spend far more of my day and week in front of a screen than talking to humans.
One of the most common regrets on the death bed is "I wish I hadn't worked so hard, I wish I'd spend more time with my family", And while I don't have the benefit of 7 decades of hindsight and any clarity of mind that comes with being near death, it does seem to me like a slightly unrealistic idea, that we simply could have chosen to work fewer hours and spend more time with loved ones.
Most of us work 40 hours a week to pay the bills, and most of us can't afford to cut down that time. And I would guess for most of the people on hn, those 40 hours are spent in front of the computer.
We all have to work, and we can't all just wave a magic wand and step away from the computer and spend time with the kids instead. Otherwise said kids will end up without a roof over their head.
Yes, you probably spend more time in front of a computer than you do talking to your children, but don't beat yourself up about it
> One of the most common regrets on the death bed is "I wish I hadn't worked so hard, I wish I'd spend more time with my family"
You are not the same person as the one on your death bed. You do not have the same priorities. The only thing left for the person on the death bed are memories, so it's natural that this is a common regret.
It's a bit of a trap, kids are so expensive, if you dont have kids working an easier job is completely viable, but obviously you dont have the kids to spend time with, if you do have kids you need to work flat out to support them. I dont think myself and my partner will be having children, and there's a myriad of reasons for that, but the economic implications are certainly up there.
Kids are expensive, no doubt. But if you want kids, don't let money be the thing that stops you. That would be a far bigger regret
Don't be so hard on yourself. Yes, valid observation and time to curtail it a bit. But I think the 'stare at a screen' thing is a bit oversimplified. A computer is a medium of connection, mostly to other humans, or at least indirectly to human's work, art, etc.. So it's mostly using a tool for 'connection.' With anything, moderation is good, even moderating the moderation. But you're not staring at a brick. Don't oversimplify it.
But also don’t give yourself a pass.
As you said, everything in moderation. But many people far exceed the level of moderation.
I see couples/families often sitting in restaurants on their phones.
I see people sitting at intersections on their phones.
I see people driving while on their phones.
People often walk from point A to point B but spending much of that walk on their phones.
I rarely see people waiting somewhere without having to jump on their phones.
Again, moderation is fine, but I’d argue many are well beyond that point.
I've always kind of wondered...
if kids are sitting on bikes, riding together
or sitting on the couch, playing games together...
is one better than the other?
if I sit with my partner and we read books together
or we're on our phone together...
is it ok to be in our heads, but together?
I like computers more than many members of my family, so...
This is heavily contingent on one's individual 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 then blaming you for their divorce or getting calls from collection agencies on behalf of somebody you haven't seen in five years.
Both of these problem spaces run the gamut from solvable to intractable. Either way you have to put in some work.
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.
Obviously, YMMV.
[1]:https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
Shouldn’t the title actually be “Will you have spent more of your life AT WORK than with your family”.
For white-collar jobs typically translates to, computer = work.
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 sleep is necessary and healthy, walking is necessary and/or healthy, working is (mostly) necessary (regardless of whether it’s healthy), and blinking is necessary and healthy.
The implication is that there’s almost zero about screen time that is healthy or necessary, with some exceptions.
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”.
Yes, thankfully so. Computers probably got me out of my teens alive.
Exactly this. That would probably not have been a good ending without the donated PC and shared ADSL connection between neighbors.
God bless Debian.
Music for me.
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.
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".
Different praxis for different eras.
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.
> Computers have consolidated...
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.
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.
I should hope so. You can't play Dark Souls on my family.
And compared to Dark Souls, the family gameplay is often too punishing.
lol
I hesitate to repeat it, but I've seen reels where a woman has remarked that she realized her husband spent more time inside of his mom than inside of her. That's a pretty weird mountain to climb if you ask me.
In my view, putting a number to some things profanes or perverts it. I don't think relationships or meaning is an equation that you solve by having the right number of hours allocated to them. I only think the numbers should come up when they are close to zero.
When I have free time, I think to myself I should try to do something with friends, especially going over to their homes. Playing games remotely is fun too, but being with someone in person I think ultimately has a bigger impact. Everyone has to find a balance that works for them.
But if you did get the real numbers, I've spent more time pooping, showering, sleeping, or chilling in utero than spending time with friends.
People in my family who have spent a ton of time with me get sick of me. I'm glad my friends mostly haven't gotten sick of me. I think there's a happy medium.
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?
And before that it was TV. And before that newspapers.
This is breathless polemic.
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 had this same realization while playing video games and my senior dog came over for pets. Realized I felt like I was wasting my downtime on essentially meaningless filler when I could be spending it with him instead.
Mind you this was solo video game so I wasn't even spending quality time with friends online or anything.
I agree with the sentiment of the other comments here that its been like this for longer than OP gives credit for (10 years). But I don't think that makes it right. As hunter-gatherers, when we weren't hunting or gathering, I feel like people were probably just spending time with each other? If we take that 40 hour/week figure as canon for how much hunter/gatherers worked, anyways.
I could say that we spend more time at work than with our family - ~40h. Why are computers worse?
Yeah, this has always been my take too. Assuming an even 8h split on weekdays, the awake-not-working time is heavily eaten up by commuting and general upkeep. Family squeezes into shared upkeep and any remaining time at best.
The two weekend days don't seem enough to catch up to the accumulated work-time, especially if your commute is relatively long (which is true for a large chunk of the USA), so you're just constantly in a deficit until you retire... which is more of an "if" than a "when" in many cases.
Which is clearly a problem, but I don't think computers are the cause.
Was recently chatting with co-workers about WFH vs in office and one person mentioned:
"My dad would leave the house at 6am everyday to catch the train to New York and we wouldn't see him till 7-7:30pm. He did this 5 days a week for 40 years."
In my case, my dad once spent 180 days in one year for work (he worked as a trainer for financial sales people). I probably saw my kids more during COVID lockdown than my parent's generation saw their kids in 5 years.
> 180 days in one year for work
Believe you meant "traveling for work".
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.
What if better things don't pay a salary?
You could say the same thing about differeng hobbies or tools. Ive held a hammer multiple times longer than I could hold any person. Ive spent unknown number of hours in a garage or barn working on various mechanics.
Time with family is valuable, but so is time doing other things. You don't need everyone involved in everything 24/7.
"The worst part is that it wasn't like this 10 years ago."
I'm from the United States. I'm not sure about you, but smartphones took-over my social circles in 2011. So it definitely was like this 15 years go for us. Before that, laptops were everywhere by 2007 and people spent a huge amount of time with those. Before that, people had been spending tons of time playing video games, watching movies, and reading books. This is how life was from as early as I could remember (the late 80s, early 90s) to be honest. Maybe just the family I grew up in? We all seemed to love to read and tinker with computers and video games.
If anything, I spend less time in front of a screen or a book today than I did 20 years ago. Just as a personal preference to spend more time with my wife and kids and more time in nature.
I had a similar thought in the shower today: will the last conversation I have be with a person or an AI?
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.
Is a TV not an entertaining screen? Was it not in 1970, when TV use metrics were already insane?
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40375906
I have a lot more computers than family members, so that's only fair I guess?
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.
There used to be a meme “millions of years of fitting the environment to end up stuck to a glowing screen”
That's a big advantage of remote work. I can pause for a couple of minutes, interact with my kids, and come back.
Will you have spent more time working a deadend job than with your family?
"Can you stack your family?" - Michael Falk, The Onion
Goodness I certainly hope so.
No way, a taxi triver spends more time in his car than with his family. Same goes for truckers. Farmers spend more time in the field than with their families. Vendors can easily spend more time on the market or in their store selling goods. And don't even get me started on military personnel or sailors.
What a tragedy. What a horrible revelation - work can often take more time than being with your family. Oh no. Horrible horrible computers, how can this happen to us. It's not like the same is true in many other occupations.
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.
On the other hand, the world outside computers was mostly bad—people who deceived me when I was just starting out, fraudulent contracts, and all the physical pain I went through in manual labor. Looking at it from the other side, people with real-world capital tend to have good relationships and good people around them. But for those without that capital, the world inside a computer can actually feel more real than the outside.
I've come to realize that trustworthy colleagues and respectful relationships largely depend on social status. And it feels like I don't really belong there.
Computers don't get angry when I can't do something. They don't ask me to meet some standard, and they don't get frustrated when I fail to meet it. I can learn at my own pace, doing what I want. In the past, I had to reach out to people online and exchange emails during that process, but now even that's been replaced by AI giving me answers.
For me, computers aren't a cheap substitute for human relationships. They're the infrastructure that gave me the autonomy, knowledge, and productive capability I never got from the real world.
A shelter and a prison can look the same from the outside. But I chose to be here, because this world inside the computer has been less painful than what I experienced outside.
When code fails, at least I can investigate why it failed. People, on the other hand, can twist the same words depending on relationships and power, and exclude you without ever explaining why.
That's why I like computers. At least when I turn on my computer, work on something, and see it run, I feel a sense of accomplishment, whether it's AI generated or hand written code.
Honestly, I'm not sure if having my own home or meeting someone compatible would change anything.
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?
Hope you can find a place in the real world you can feel at peace in.
Quality > Quantity
I think quality can only come from quantity in this case. The every day moments
You haven't met my family. Half the reason I got into this stuff when I was young was to get away from them.
If I am luchky, yes!
Yes, certainly, first because passion for computer can more often than not predate being able to co-make a family. Then like any work, current societies make far easier to get room to work with computers than any other kind of activity one might want to engage into. Finally, other humans don't want to spend none stop time in company of the single same individual, no matter how much they might love them: they need space for there own personal development. Computers will respond tirelessly to any human wanting to interact with them H24, and don't have any extra psychological and sociological need to fulfill.
So on sheer level of time spent on computer, other humans don't stand a chance. Time spend on something doesn't tell much about how much we feel emotionally positively connected with this thing though.
You can't think of it as computers vs. family, but work vs. family. And working with computers is a pretty decent job to have in this day and age.
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
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