Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles
The rectangles even help Americans to successfully emote, often by using a combination of visual and aural signals to indicate when laughter or tears should be produced.
“Life would be very different if it weren’t for these magical squares of light,” cultural studies professor and social critic David Ostroff typed to reporters using one of his wireless messaging rectangles. “Sry. Have 2 go. Movie about 2 strt.”
On average, Americans interact with anywhere from 53 to 107 pulsating rectangles every week. For many, however, this is simply not enough. Despite having a leisure rectangle in every bedroom, along with multiple work rectangles, a rectangle just for the children, and one or two rectangles that can do the work of several rectangles in one, many citizens admit to being dissatisfied.
If Apple really wanted to be different, they would avoid building another rectangular device and do something insanely great, like give us a glowing nonagon, or a let’s get all retro and go back to the 1950′s style glowing squircles.
Have you ever measured how much time your kids are in front of all glowing rectangles? It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if we actually did measure all of that time with TV, computers, iPods, and video games, if it would make us more likely to impose limits.
If you do come up with measurements, post them in the comments.
For my two kids, my son exceeds my daughter by a large margin. My daughter is mostly in front of her computer, while my son does a considerable amount of TV and iPod Touch staring in addition to the time he spends on the computer and it can consume an unhealthy amount of time.
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My kids only get about an hour a day. On the other hand, I am spending way more time behind the rectangle than I wish.
I work at home and sometimes work in the evening hours. When I do this, the fact that I’m in front of the glowing rectangle means that the kids are more likely to be in front of their rectangles.
I think parents who can unplug and not work too much are beneficial to having the kids spending less time with glowing rectangles.
I can’t even tell you how many days I would leave work after staring at two rectangles all day, then go home and stare at my personal rectangle to take care of my personal stuff and wind down to end the day by watching tv. It’s kind of depressing to think about.
I like the idea of re-introducing the squircle but obviously that’s not addressing the problem.