Remember back in the day when your parents would shout at you for watching too much TV, claiming you’d end up with square eyes (yep, I thought that was actually true for a long time…*face palm*)!
But as I sit here, staring at my computer screen for the umpteenth hour this week, I suddenly thought, as the digital era for us is now the norm & a typical working day for most of us requires sitting in front of a screen of some sort, how long do we spend in front of a screen?
After doing some research (on my computer) I came across this article. Apparently, new research shows that the average office worker spends 1,700 hours in front of a computer a year. ONE THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED HOURS! That’s nearly 2 and a half months in front of a screen. That doesn’t even include your down time at home watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram for hours & hours hyping up your FOMO.
Thankfully this article has given us some handy tips on how to limit our time in front of the screen:
- Go back to using a pen and paper. I don’t even know if I remember how to write anymore, it’s been that long. Like when you used to go on your summer holidays & get back to school feeling like you’d forgotten how to hold a pen.
- Take your full hour’s lunch not looking at your phone. But checking personal emails/doing my online clothes shopping/searching on Rightmove (a secret addiction of mine) is best at lunchtime…what else would I do? Talk to people?
- Limit your screen time outside of the office. But then I wouldn’t be able to watch Making a Murderer for the 6th time (some parts I can now quote word for word…I’m joking of course!)
Okay, I’m over exaggerating my excuses for the above tips, but obviously, I’m a teeny weeny bit addicted to the screen. Hopefully, I’ll come up with some sort of solution to ease the strain on those square eyes of mine...have you got any tips for me?
“Computers are a relatively new concept – for millions now, staring at a screen all day is the norm,” said Katie McGeechan from ACUVUE, which commissioned the research. “However if you look back just a few decades, far fewer of us would have spent the day looking into the same glowing rectangle, and when you add mobile phones into the mix, we’re putting our eyes through a lot every day.”
Read the original article here