9 ms·

Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book

Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?

Andhurati 6y ago
Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Probably? It's not like screens shoot death rays. It seems very likely that looking closely at patterns within a rectangle has the same effects whether it's made of paper or electronics.
  - TLightful 6y ago
    Depends which game you're playing.
  - ping_pong 6y ago
    CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.
      - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
        And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    They are backlit though, that's a big difference. Not sure if any issues would be caused by this.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Is it a big difference? If you take the reverse of ray tracing, why would a light beam of given intensity and wavelength act differently on my retina because it was directly transmitted vs reflected?
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Backlit screens are brighter than a book under typical indoor lighting conditions. (Although this doesn't really support the original point, because the canonical alternative of going outside is much brighter than anything you do indoors.)
- sethammons 6y ago
  do screen damage your eyes?
- givehimagun 6y ago
  Can you provide evidence of where screens cause damage to eyes? My ophthalmologist shared with me that there is general irritation but we haven't been able to prove that screen times degrade eye sight over time.
  - snazz 6y ago
    Staring at anything too close to your eyes for a long period of time isn't good for them. If you are taking appropriate breaks, my understanding is that screen time is harmless.
    - vzidex 6y ago
      I've got the same understanding - I asked my ophthalmologist about it as well because my vision is already quite bad and I'm a computer engineer. For breaks, she recommended the "20/20/20 rule" - focus your eyes on something at least 20 feet away, for 20 seconds, every 20 minutes of screen usage.
      - snazz 6y ago
        Yes, I've gotten that recommendation as well. Apparently more natural light exposure may also decrease the risk for nearsightedness. Having a window near my computer monitor makes it easy to remember to look outside whenever I'm not actively looking at the screen.
        givehimagun 6y ago
        I think there is a nuance in reducing screen time versus increasing natural light exposure.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Do screens do damage to your eyes? The article lists some side effects, but I wouldn't consider that any sort of eye damage, and it's certainly not permanent.
- thisiszilff 6y ago
  Hey, do you have specific examples of the damage you're concerned about? I've been reading up about this a lot as it is something that concerns me, but so far most of what I've says that longterm damage is mitigated by taking regular eye breaks (ie, starting at something 20+ feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds) & getting enough sleep (giving the eyes time to properly rest). Are these mitigation strategies insufficient?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- olodus 6y ago
  Is that really supported by empirical trials? A short search online seems to point to that being somewhat disputed. I'm all for contradictory evidence though if you have some I missed. Yeah sure a screen is emitting light which maybe makes it worse for the eyes to look at in some ways and situations than a paper page, but "looking at light" is almost an oxymoron - isn't that what eyes do?
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Eyes usually look at diffusely reflected light, which has a different impact than direct light. A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 (I'm not sure how much bearing this actually has on eye health, this is just to illustrate how looking at a monitor and at a piece of paper is significantly different)
    - TremendousJudge 6y ago
      >A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 Why does it hurt my eyes to look outside after a while looking at a screen in a well lit room? (the sun is not directly visible, just buildings, trees and sky)
      - atomicnumber3 6y ago
        Because the sun is an enormous sphere of hydrogen-helium plasma with a core that's undergoing fusion just due to gravity. Even indirect sunlight is still a very large amount of light and energy. I don't mean to sound flippant, but I think sometimes people forget just how insanely energetic stars of all sizes are.
        TremendousJudge 6y ago
        But GP's point was that a screen is much brighter than a sunlit surface. You can't both be right, or I'm missing something.
    - 6y ago
- pintxo 6y ago
  probably yes. At least with [1] tpart of the problem is (very simplified) focusing too long on objects too near (book, screen, ...) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    There's always been a strong correlation between near-sightedness and reading books or looking at screens in childhood and early adulthood, and it was assumed for a long time that it was because of what you described (focusing on objects too near), but the latest research suggests something much more interesting is happening. Children who spend a couple hours per day outside have extremely low rates of near-sightedness, so they think there's something about the eyes being exposed to direct sunlight that's necessary for them to grow properly.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  Does that matter? Running damages your knees. Playing tennis damages your elbow. Throwing a ball damages your shoulder. I do the thing I love while staring at the screen. If it damages my eyes that's the price I pay. I'm not going to stop doing it.
- geebee 6y ago
  No idea, but I'm not sure it's material to whether "staring at books" is a good description of reading.
- ergocoder 6y ago
  Yes, it does, especially when reading in poor lighting and poor posture. It turns out the best way to not damage an organ is to not use it...
- jedberg 6y ago
  Screens haven't damaged your eyes for a long time. That was only true on the old CRT displays, which literally shot high frequency EM at your eyes.
- squeaky-clean 6y ago
  If you believe my parents then all the years of reading books at night with almost no ambient light would have destroyed my eyes.
literalanyone 6y ago
I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?
- jedberg 6y ago
  Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time. Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value. Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories. So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids. The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But: > The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!
    - jedberg 6y ago
      It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am. So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.
      - noir_lord 6y ago
nixpulvis 6y ago
You can make it out to be whatever you want. But there is a physical difference between a screen's light emissions and the light perceived from paper. I've always been curious exactly how much different, but anyone claiming otherwise is suspect in my eyes.
- Footkerchief 6y ago
  Your intuition is correct. Even if they have the same apparent color, two light sources can have drastically different spectra, which is perceptible. Some info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
osrec 6y ago
Funnily enough, I remember talking to a historian who said centuries ago, reading a book was considered "mindless entertainment", much as we think about our smartphones now. Eventually, reading evolved into being considered something generally "smart" people did.
- carierx1 6y ago
  I'd love to read up more on that! Any links to literature on the topic?
- logosmonkey 6y ago
  Many were quite opposed to books and have been throughout history. This is a fun read https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health
- hackmiester 6y ago
  I'd also love to read more about this, similar to the sibling comment from carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    > carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned. If you read their 1 page comment history, there's dang explaining "We've banned this account." and why.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  I hung out with some Vietnamese Zen buddhist monks on a monastery for a few days, and I was surprised to find that they viewed most fictional novels as mindless entertainment as well. Books with obvious educational value and religious texts were fine of course, but spending a few hours reading a novel would be lumped into the same general category as spending a few hours binging a Netflix show, so they did it sparingly.
fsociety 6y ago
Such a good point. I had a small existential crisis watching programmers on YouTube/Twitch because I was focusing on the sounds of the keyboard typing and realizing that they are sitting in front of a screen typing for hours on end and how pointless it was. The second part of my crisis was that I was no different. After a few months of dealing with this I remembered that actually they are engaging with an entire world, and so was I. Rhetoric is so stupid sometimes.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  Never heard it put so plainly, that’s awesome.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  I find seeing video of myself using a computer downright horrifying. I look like that? A good chunk of every day? Yikes. I mean I don't stop, because money, but I'd love to be able to take weeks- to months-long breaks from screens.
gfxgirl 6y ago
I totally agree with you. I also think we might want to compare. I suspect 150 years ago most people stared a shovel 34 years of their life or a clothes washing bowl etc..
coldtea 6y ago
>You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Well, ultimately, it is...
- martindbp 6y ago
  Of course, but nobody ever says this. Except when reading was a new thing.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Mostly because nobody (statistically) spends too much time reading books. And because books have (on average) more substantial content than social websites and other such uses of time, so that's a better tradeoff. That said, some people can (and do, more so in the past) over-read, to the detriment of their social life or even to their health...
filoleg 6y ago
Fully in agreement with your take on this. One small clarification, however. >You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? In our day and age, you wouldn't. But this was definitely a thing in 1800s (regarding books) and in early 1900s (regarding newspapers). Using very similar excuses to rant about those, as the excuses being used today regarding screens too. And even earlier, in Ancient Greece, tons of prolific philosophers were strongly opposed to writing and books as a concept, as they believed that writing things down and learning from that (as opposed to oral learning) was eroding abilities that relied on memory (which parallels really well with people currently complaining about search engines removing the hard need for memorizing things). However, knowing this only makes your original point stronger.
chpmrc 6y ago
Where were you when my parents kept telling me "get off that computer"? :'(
jccc 6y ago
This is an excellent point (sincerely), but in addition there is quite a bit of difference in what is required of a reader "staring at paper" vs. many of the couch potatoes staring at their various screens. Probably HN is packed with better than average active users of screens than the general population.
throwaway_USD 6y ago
>You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Actually there is a colloquialism for that since the early 1900's: "Nose in a book" To your point no one actually has their nose in the book.

Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?

Andhurati 6y ago

Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Probably? It's not like screens shoot death rays. It seems very likely that looking closely at patterns within a rectangle has the same effects whether it's made of paper or electronics.
- TLightful 6y ago
  Depends which game you're playing.
- ping_pong 6y ago
  CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.
- outworlder 6y ago
  They are backlit though, that's a big difference. Not sure if any issues would be caused by this.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Is it a big difference? If you take the reverse of ray tracing, why would a light beam of given intensity and wavelength act differently on my retina because it was directly transmitted vs reflected?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Backlit screens are brighter than a book under typical indoor lighting conditions. (Although this doesn't really support the original point, because the canonical alternative of going outside is much brighter than anything you do indoors.)
sethammons 6y ago
do screen damage your eyes?
givehimagun 6y ago
Can you provide evidence of where screens cause damage to eyes? My ophthalmologist shared with me that there is general irritation but we haven't been able to prove that screen times degrade eye sight over time.
- snazz 6y ago
  Staring at anything too close to your eyes for a long period of time isn't good for them. If you are taking appropriate breaks, my understanding is that screen time is harmless.
  - vzidex 6y ago
    I've got the same understanding - I asked my ophthalmologist about it as well because my vision is already quite bad and I'm a computer engineer. For breaks, she recommended the "20/20/20 rule" - focus your eyes on something at least 20 feet away, for 20 seconds, every 20 minutes of screen usage.
    - snazz 6y ago
      Yes, I've gotten that recommendation as well. Apparently more natural light exposure may also decrease the risk for nearsightedness. Having a window near my computer monitor makes it easy to remember to look outside whenever I'm not actively looking at the screen.
      - givehimagun 6y ago
        I think there is a nuance in reducing screen time versus increasing natural light exposure.
SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
Do screens do damage to your eyes? The article lists some side effects, but I wouldn't consider that any sort of eye damage, and it's certainly not permanent.
thisiszilff 6y ago
Hey, do you have specific examples of the damage you're concerned about? I've been reading up about this a lot as it is something that concerns me, but so far most of what I've says that longterm damage is mitigated by taking regular eye breaks (ie, starting at something 20+ feet away every 20 minutes for 20 seconds) & getting enough sleep (giving the eyes time to properly rest). Are these mitigation strategies insufficient?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
olodus 6y ago
Is that really supported by empirical trials? A short search online seems to point to that being somewhat disputed. I'm all for contradictory evidence though if you have some I missed. Yeah sure a screen is emitting light which maybe makes it worse for the eyes to look at in some ways and situations than a paper page, but "looking at light" is almost an oxymoron - isn't that what eyes do?
- groby_b 6y ago
  Eyes usually look at diffusely reflected light, which has a different impact than direct light. A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 (I'm not sure how much bearing this actually has on eye health, this is just to illustrate how looking at a monitor and at a piece of paper is significantly different)
  - TremendousJudge 6y ago
    >A white reflective surface (whiteboard) in direct sunlight is 1.6cd/cm^2. Consumer monitors are ~300cd/cm^2 Why does it hurt my eyes to look outside after a while looking at a screen in a well lit room? (the sun is not directly visible, just buildings, trees and sky)
    - atomicnumber3 6y ago
      Because the sun is an enormous sphere of hydrogen-helium plasma with a core that's undergoing fusion just due to gravity. Even indirect sunlight is still a very large amount of light and energy. I don't mean to sound flippant, but I think sometimes people forget just how insanely energetic stars of all sizes are.
      - TremendousJudge 6y ago
        But GP's point was that a screen is much brighter than a sunlit surface. You can't both be right, or I'm missing something.
  - 6y ago
pintxo 6y ago
probably yes. At least with [1] tpart of the problem is (very simplified) focusing too long on objects too near (book, screen, ...) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-sightedness
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  There's always been a strong correlation between near-sightedness and reading books or looking at screens in childhood and early adulthood, and it was assumed for a long time that it was because of what you described (focusing on objects too near), but the latest research suggests something much more interesting is happening. Children who spend a couple hours per day outside have extremely low rates of near-sightedness, so they think there's something about the eyes being exposed to direct sunlight that's necessary for them to grow properly.
ModernMech 6y ago
Does that matter? Running damages your knees. Playing tennis damages your elbow. Throwing a ball damages your shoulder. I do the thing I love while staring at the screen. If it damages my eyes that's the price I pay. I'm not going to stop doing it.
geebee 6y ago
No idea, but I'm not sure it's material to whether "staring at books" is a good description of reading.
ergocoder 6y ago
Yes, it does, especially when reading in poor lighting and poor posture. It turns out the best way to not damage an organ is to not use it...
jedberg 6y ago
Screens haven't damaged your eyes for a long time. That was only true on the old CRT displays, which literally shot high frequency EM at your eyes.
squeaky-clean 6y ago
If you believe my parents then all the years of reading books at night with almost no ambient light would have destroyed my eyes.

literalanyone 6y ago

I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?

jedberg 6y ago
Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time. Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value. Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories. So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids. The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But: > The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!
  - jedberg 6y ago
    It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am. So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.
    - noir_lord 6y ago

nixpulvis 6y ago

You can make it out to be whatever you want. But there is a physical difference between a screen's light emissions and the light perceived from paper. I've always been curious exactly how much different, but anyone claiming otherwise is suspect in my eyes.

Footkerchief 6y ago
Your intuition is correct. Even if they have the same apparent color, two light sources can have drastically different spectra, which is perceptible. Some info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

osrec 6y ago

Funnily enough, I remember talking to a historian who said centuries ago, reading a book was considered "mindless entertainment", much as we think about our smartphones now. Eventually, reading evolved into being considered something generally "smart" people did.

carierx1 6y ago
I'd love to read up more on that! Any links to literature on the topic?
logosmonkey 6y ago
Many were quite opposed to books and have been throughout history. This is a fun read https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health https://www.historytoday.com/archive/reading-bad-your-health
hackmiester 6y ago
I'd also love to read more about this, similar to the sibling comment from carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  > carierx1, who appears to be hellbanned. If you read their 1 page comment history, there's dang explaining "We've banned this account." and why.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
I hung out with some Vietnamese Zen buddhist monks on a monastery for a few days, and I was surprised to find that they viewed most fictional novels as mindless entertainment as well. Books with obvious educational value and religious texts were fine of course, but spending a few hours reading a novel would be lumped into the same general category as spending a few hours binging a Netflix show, so they did it sparingly.

fsociety 6y ago

Such a good point. I had a small existential crisis watching programmers on YouTube/Twitch because I was focusing on the sounds of the keyboard typing and realizing that they are sitting in front of a screen typing for hours on end and how pointless it was. The second part of my crisis was that I was no different. After a few months of dealing with this I remembered that actually they are engaging with an entire world, and so was I. Rhetoric is so stupid sometimes.

ironmagma 6y ago
Never heard it put so plainly, that’s awesome.
karatestomp 6y ago
I find seeing video of myself using a computer downright horrifying. I look like that? A good chunk of every day? Yikes. I mean I don't stop, because money, but I'd love to be able to take weeks- to months-long breaks from screens.

gfxgirl 6y ago

I totally agree with you. I also think we might want to compare. I suspect 150 years ago most people stared a shovel 34 years of their life or a clothes washing bowl etc..

coldtea 6y ago

>You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Well, ultimately, it is...

martindbp 6y ago
Of course, but nobody ever says this. Except when reading was a new thing.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Mostly because nobody (statistically) spends too much time reading books. And because books have (on average) more substantial content than social websites and other such uses of time, so that's a better tradeoff. That said, some people can (and do, more so in the past) over-read, to the detriment of their social life or even to their health...

filoleg 6y ago

Fully in agreement with your take on this. One small clarification, however. >You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? In our day and age, you wouldn't. But this was definitely a thing in 1800s (regarding books) and in early 1900s (regarding newspapers). Using very similar excuses to rant about those, as the excuses being used today regarding screens too. And even earlier, in Ancient Greece, tons of prolific philosophers were strongly opposed to writing and books as a concept, as they believed that writing things down and learning from that (as opposed to oral learning) was eroding abilities that relied on memory (which parallels really well with people currently complaining about search engines removing the hard need for memorizing things). However, knowing this only makes your original point stronger.

chpmrc 6y ago

Where were you when my parents kept telling me "get off that computer"? :'(

jccc 6y ago

This is an excellent point (sincerely), but in addition there is quite a bit of difference in what is required of a reader "staring at paper" vs. many of the couch potatoes staring at their various screens. Probably HN is packed with better than average active users of screens than the general population.

throwaway_USD 6y ago

>You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you? Actually there is a colloquialism for that since the early 1900's: "Nose in a book" To your point no one actually has their nose in the book.