Are We Spending Too Much Time Online?
Also: how much screen time is too much?, is working from home making you depressed too?, and more.
TL; DR: The average adult spends about 7 hours per day looking at screens.
How much is too much? This study found that users that spend more than six hours per day online were significantly more likely to develop moderate to severe symptoms of depression. Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General found that teens who spend more than 3 hours a day “face double the risk of developing symptoms of depression and anxiety”.
It seems clear to me that excessive screen use, and the negative effects of social media and other web platforms are exacerbating an already devastating loneliness epidemic.
So what do we do?
This post is a mix of personal essay, links to texts that have helped me think about this topic, and links to data about this topic.
Just Another Screen Time Casualty
I’ve worked from a computer for the last decade.
Conservatively, if I’ve spent an average of three hours per day looking at screens, that’s about 11,000 hours of screen time over the last ten years.
Looking at that figure, there’s a part of me that feels like, “what a waste”.
On my deathbed, when asked if I have any regrets, I doubt that one of them will be, “Gee, I wish I spent more time online.”
Yes, working from home has given me a great deal of freedom over that past 10 years.
I think that it has also shaped me in ways I’m only beginning to be able to articulate. Just like one can accrue a financial debt, or a “sleep debt”, I think I have accrued a “working from home-debt”.
I probably spend about half of my daily screen time working, either for pay, or on personal projects(like this blog post I wrote about "how to buy land with your friends”).
The other half is spent amusing myself and fighting boredom. I watch a lot of Youtube videos. I scroll a rotation of Twitter, Blue Sky, Discord, and IG.
I would say that I am one of those people that is very online. One example: I write this Substack. Two: I get anxious when I can’t take my phone with me to the bathroom.
Three: I have a meme collection.
The Internet Is a Freemium Product
The focus of this post is an attempt to answer the question, “What is the true cost of being very online?”.
Experts such as Johann Hari points out that we are giving away our attention to the internet, or rather to the corporations that are “stealing it from us”.
And with that, we are eroding our ability to tolerate boredom and awkward social moments. Data shows that we are also whittling down our ability to concentrate for extended periods.
The most drastic effects of excessive screens use can be seen in children and teens, but everyone is susceptible to the negative effects of spending too much time online.
In researching this piece, I could not find any clear health guidelines for adults for “excessive screen use” from the FDA, the American Psychiatric Association(APA), or any other medical institutions, US-based or not.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy did post this advisory recently, warning about the negative effects of social media.
Link to the rest of his thread here.
I Could Not Find The Answer
Turns out, I could not find a piece of writing that fully examines the short-term and long-term effects of spending hours a day looking at digital screens, considering years or decades.
I am still searching. I am guessing that there has to be at least a few studies out there that have researched this. If you come across something, send it to me please!
As far as what I have found, this article from Time Magazine does a decent job at exploring the question, “How much screen time is too much for adults?”.
Another worthwhile read is Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus. It explores the internet’s attention economy and how it’s messing with our brains.
Tbh, I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve listened to several podcasts on which he appeared to promote the book. His article in the Guardian was also helpful in thinking and writing about this problem.
Jonathan Clary’s book, 24/7, is another great source text, despite being a decade old. In the book, Clary contextualizes the internet as an accelerating force in capitalism, which is affecting everything from how we sleep, to how we buy things, to our ability to concentrate on a given task for a length of time.
Both books offer refusals to the “always on, always connected nature of the internet” lifestyle, and both identify “profit-at-all-costs” tech platforms as the culprit.
I hold those two perspectives myself. I think I differ in that I don’t believe critical theory or awareness of the problem is enough, and I don’t think states will pass any meaningful regulation in the near future.
We are left to grapple with the addictive nature of screens on our own.
Were Personal Computers a Mistake?
I dream of lifestyle in which I am online rarely. I think I could be really happy as an artisan, a teacher, or maybe a tradesman.
I find myself saying, at least once a month, “if I never had to open my laptop again, I’d be happy”.
Historically, I’ve loved spending time on the computer. When I was a kid, I coveted the time spent making making drawings with Kid Pix and playing games like Warcraft II over dial-up.
I think I hit peak screen-time saturation during the “Zoom years” (ie the pandemic). This Nielsen report claims people were spending as much as 12 hours per day online in 2020.
Maybe I am getting older, maybe I am becoming more interoceptive and aware, but I am noticing that I feel awful when I spend too much time online.
Most days I feel depressed, alienated, dissociated. This feeling is exacerbated on days I have to spend a lot of time on the computer.
Sometimes it’s hard to reconnect with myself, and to get out of this “screen-brained” state.
When I’m depressed, I tend to self-isolate. It’s a very sticky cycle.
Some days, I won’t even leave the house. I just wake up and it’s: check phone, work on computer, check phone, finish work, watch streaming stuff, check phone, go to bed.
I often fall into it without realizing it.
I am beginning to suspect that excessive screen use has a larger effect on me than I realize, not only in the short term, but I’m starting to wonder about the long-term effects as well, both on myself, and well, all of us.
8 Hours for Sleep, 8 Hours for Screens, 8 Hours for Everything Else
In a fairer, more gentle world we might get something like “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for ‘what we will’ “, like this old famous anarchist woodblock print.
Let’s get into some data.
My own weekly average is ~7.25 hours per day looking at digital screens.
And if that seems excessive, that is actually the national average for an American adult, as I mentioned above.
According to this article from QZ, kids are spending 10x as much time online as they did in 2011(!).
We use screens for work, play, communication, recreation. We watch our favorite streaming shows, take Zoom calls, FaceTime our friends and family, and spend time shopping online. Parents use their iPads and smartphones to entertain their children while doing household chores.
Billions of dollars are spent to build behavioral traps such as “endless scrolling” on social media sites, and “dark UX patterns” on shopping sites, and all manner of notifications, in the form of SMS messages, “push notifications” from apps, and so on.
Some technologists, like Google AI scientist, Geoffrey Hinton, eventually reflect on the negative impact their work is having on society, and voice this publicly. This Vanity Fair piece shares the regrets of early Facebook workers who feel bad about “the monster they created”.
Too little, too late.
In 2023, screens are a fact of life.
But what is it costing us?
And even trickier–how do we figure that out?
Growing Up With the Internet
20 years ago, there things you could do online were limited. There was no crypto, Facebook, or AI. People congregated in online forums and internet relay chats to discuss niche interests.
The internet was a friendlier place.
10 years ago is when things really started to change.
It seems there have been several “acceleration periods” of the internet over the past 14 years, which are demarcated by major events.
There is a quote that is attributed to Vladimir Lenin, that has roots in the Bible, “there are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.”
And so it goes with the internet.
As the internet has grown in terms of total users, % of states’ and global GDP, etc, it has simultaneously given us more possibilities in regard to what is possible over the internet and demanded more of its users.
Here’s a table that shows how the “average screen time” of an adult American has increased over this period. I created it in ChatGPT and spot-checked it with Google. Call me out in the comments if any of these numbers are wrong.
The metric of 7+ hours/day for "average screen time for a US citizen” seems constant across sources. It certainly tracks with my experience, as mentioned above.
It would also be interesting to track digital ad spend and profits, alongside historical screens usage.
Seven-plus hours a day of screen time can’t be healthy.
This seems obvious.
So how much is too much?
Excessive Screen Time, and It’s Consequences
I am curious about the effects of too much screen time/internet use(to me, essentially synonymous at this point), because I have been shaped by my own excessive(?) internet use.
Intuitively, I feel like I probably spend way too much time looking at my phone and my computer, for both work and entertainment. My ongoing depression and alienation seems like proof enough.
But what do reputable studies say about spending too much time online?
Numerous studies show that excessive screen time(which implies excessive internet use) increases risk of health ailments like depression, metabolic syndrome, stroke, heart disease, and other pathologies. This study by Nakshine, et al provides categorizes and evaluates most known effects of screen time.
This study created the term “digital dementia” to explain how excessive screen use by children and adolescents increases the risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias in adulthood.
If you’re curious, here are some other studies that have researched the effects of excessive social media and digital screens use. Most of them focus on children and teens.
“Excessive Smartphone Use Is Associated With Health Problems in Adolescents and Young Adults”, by Wacks and Weinstein
“Adverse physiological and psychological effects of screen time on children and adolescents: Literature review and case study”, by Gadi Lissack
“Reduced brain activity and functional connectivity during creative idea generation in individuals with smartphone addiction”, by Xinyi Li, Yadan Li, Xuewei Wang, Weiping Hu
I found these studies through ChatGPT (browsing mode) and Google Scholar.
Nobody Knows What They Are Doing (Screen Time Edition)
Everything I‘ve read on screen time guidelines for adults proclaims it’s not so simple. One nit-picky distinction I’ve come across, if that “not all kinds of screen time are equal”.
It seems journalists and experts are very reluctant to say that, in general, spending excess amounts of time looking at screens and being online is be bad for your health.
Perhaps it’s because working in tech is paying their bills, or perhaps, we just don’t know enough yet to say definitively.
I refrained here from giving a prescriptive “here’s 10 things you can do to take back your attention and break your smartphone addiction”.
The truth is I don’t feel I’m in any place to give that prescription.
I wrote this post to better understand what I’m giving away when I am spending hours every day spending “harmless” time online.
I feel I have a better understanding of what’s at stake now. It still feels so slippery. Academics still debate whether smartphone addiction is a real thing.
I don’t see how it cannot be. It’s been a significant and lasting challenge to change my own screen time habits, and I hear my experience reflected in those of friends and acquaintances.
Technology will continue to evolve. Perhaps one day, states will catch up to technology companies and pass meaningful regulation.
Until then, it’s a cat-and-mouse game between tech platforms with billion-dollar R&D budgets, and, well, us.
As always, the only constant is change.
How have your screen habits changed over the years? What works for you in managing your relationship to your phone?
Leave a comment, I’d love to know your answers to these questions.