I think computers and phones are really bad. They must be what created the disastrous Post-2010 Man. (Did you know USA average testosterone levels were ~540 ng/dl in both 1988-91 and in 2003-04? But ~440 ng/dl in 2011-2012. Sudden drop!)
Why are computers and phones bad and how do we fix it?
Problem 1: The Light
You are literally looking into a flickering, blue-dominant, red-deficient LED light panel for hours at a time.
- It's intuitive that this is incredibly bad for your vision and your brain.
- It definitely causes eye strain.
- People with concussions often become unable to use screens without getting terrible headaches, which implies that screens have some really bad effect on our eyes and brains that these people have lost the ability to defend against.
- I believe the blue light and the absence of natural light must really mess up your dopamine, which has huge downstream effects everywhere (including lower testosterone)
- That light also hits your skin, aging it, and hits your neck, attacking your thyroid gland.
- Light and the dopamine it does or doesn't stimulate is also responsible for near-sightedness. Outdoor light stimulates dopamine in the eye, which for some reason is what prevents the elongation of the eyeball which is the reason for near-sightedness. (myopia)
Solution: I got a ~$550 Dasung Paperlike monitor that plugs into my laptop. It's "e-ink" or "e-paper" which is the same technology as Kindle screens. There is no light, no flicker, and the image is physically there - there's literally black pigment specks being moved around in order to form the image (kind of like an etch-a-sketch) I think this is the only way to truly make a screen almost unobjectionable. However it is black and white and has a slow refresh rate. I actually enjoy that, but it makes it unable to do some work I need to do. So I do the following:
I put the e-ink monitor next to my laptop. I put a cover I made of cardboard in front of the laptop screen. When I need to see true colors, I move the window over to my laptop screen, lift the cardboard cover and look at my laptop, maybe just for a few seconds to get oriented. (You can move a window from monitor to monitor by pressing Windows key - Shift - Right/Left Arrow.) Once I've seen what I need, I move the window back to the e-ink monitor and put the cover back over the laptop screen. 98% of the day, the cover is down and I'm only looking at the e-ink monitor.
The Dasung Paperlike version I got is also a touchscreen, so sometimes I like to use it like a tablet plugged into my laptop.
So the e-ink monitor totally fixes the Light Problem. My dopamine and vision isn't being destroyed anymore.
For full light improvement I probably ought to sit in front of a window with sunlight shooting through into my face. And I still need to take frequent breaks to look out over a long distance instead of doing close up visual work all day.
Problem 2: The Brain Scattering
Internet use encourages a shallow, disordered, aimless clicking which fries your brain. It hurts your ability to focus, think deeply, and connect with people irl. It messes up your dopamine, causing biological effects downstream. There's a book called The Shallows which goes into depth about this. The book is an expansion of this article.
Social media, with its attention algorithm and endless scroll, ramps up the Shallows Effect 10x.
The solution: Intentional, non-passive computer use. Just don't fall into the ipad kid brain pattern. On the normal internet, you can just keep an eye on yourself and you'll be fine.
However, when it comes to social media, it's pretty hard to not get sucked into the brain scattering pattern. So for twitter and youtube, I installed extensions to remove all the distracting stuff and make these sites intentional, so you have to type in what you want to see, before you see anything. Youtube and twitter both just display basically a blank screen on the homepage now.
The extensions I installed (on firefox) are "Unhook" for youtube and "Control Panel for Twitter." I also have "BlockTube" installed but I forget if it's doing anything right now or not (I tried it before I found Unhook) And of course I have AdBlock Plus running too.
Problem 3: The Body Smushing
Screen use kills posture and I believe your soft tissue will move around in ways you don't want because of this. Sitting at a screen is much worse for posture than sitting while reading a book because you will subconsciously begin craning your neck and body around in order to see the screen properly. (e-ink largely solves this, it looks fine from any angle. I mostly don't find myself to have subconsciously craned forward anymore.)
- The tissue under the chin collapses in an anti-mew direction. (I believe that's what neckbeards are. The skin under the beard is supposed to be higher up on the face)
- The stomach gets scrunched. I believe this causes endotoxin release, and a stomach that sticks out, looking bloated, even when you're lean. I think this causes breathing issues and less athletic ability too.
- I also think that the ribcage deformation of age is caused or exacerbated by this squashed computer posture.
- And of course there's the stuff everyone knows about - anterior pelvic tilt, neck craned forward, shoulders poking forward.
The solution: I like to lean back with my lumbar kind of extended over a pillow, stretching my stomach a bit. My neck and head are supported.
As I mentioned above, e-ink seems essential for fixing computer posture. Your body keeps putting you into computer posture against your conscious wishes, because your body's craning to get the right angle to clearly see the screen. But with e-ink, you're more inclined to just naturally sit in good posture because you can see the e-ink screen perfectly fine from any angle, like a book or piece of paper. It also seems like your body wants you to look at things like books, papers, screens out of the lower half of your eye, and when you look at a computer monitor it will crane your neck in order to accomplish this eye angle, if it has to. But with the e-ink monitor held like a tablet on my lap, I can be looking at it from above, the way my eyes seem to want, thereby preventing my neck from subconsciously craning.
You should still get up and walk around frequently too, can't just sit all day. That's huge for endotoxin, insulin resistance, and the mind.
Problem 4: EMF
This is easy, just turn off wifi, bluetooth, whatever else, and plug in an ethernet cable.
Summary:
- Get an e-ink monitor,
- use the internet intentionally,
- install extensions to make social media intentional,
- experiment with your posture and chair,
- frequently get up, go outside, walk around, look at distant things in the sunlight outside.
- use an ethernet cable instead of wifi
sent from my dasung
