Why it is Essential to Manage your Daily Screen Time

Don’t Panic, it’s only an app. Screen time, like everything we do in life, has to do with balance and moderation. In 2019, Common Sense Media observed that American children [ages of 8 and 12] spent more than 4 hours on screens per day while teenagers [not including their academic work] spend over 7 hours! Here is why that is a worrying statistic.

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What exactly are we dealing with here?

Not only is excessive screen-time affecting your cognitive processes, but it also affects the brain’s signal communication. The result of this hindrance is lower concentration abilities and weaker memories. Information acts as a source of food for our brain and every time we absorb new bits of information, it releases dopamine which inhibits the production of melatonin which prepares your body for rest. Increased screen time opens the floodgates of physical and psychological concerns. Even if your entertainment, or more importantly, your job depends on screen time, there are still ways to monitor and reduce it. Here’s are some helpful tips.

Make it worth it

What you do with your time is entirely up to you and choose how to use your time online is exceptionally crucial. Having a nice series on Netflix with the family every night is a great bonding time. However, doing so while scrolling on your phone with no intention endlessly is not going to improve your state of mind. will simply let these precious moments with the family slip right past you and you won’t be able to sleep well for your mood hasn’t improved.

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One Type of Screen at a Time

As you battle online to multitask and get your essential admin done, you are distracted by ads, FOMO schemes, and selfies. Focusing on a singular task on your phone without the TV on in the background.

You are Sleeping for One

According to the California Department of Health, if you sleep with your phone near you, it will increase your chances of brain cancer and tumors. Allow your brain to separate from your phone and read a bit to allow the release of melatonin in your brain to increase at an earlier hour to allow you a deeper form of sleep. It will also reduce the chance of reaching for your phone first thing in the morning.

The Wisdom Segment

I The University of California at Irvine (UCI) recently announced that DeepCubeA, an artificial intelligence system devised by a team of computer scientists, has solved a Rubiks Cube in a little more than 1 second. This obliterated the record established by a human (Du Yusheng, China; 3.47 seconds) by over two seconds.

II UCI further revealed that DeepCubeA, a reinforcement-learning algorithm written by computer scientists and mathematicians, was able to crack the 3-D puzzle without previous knowledge of the game or prompting from its human handlers.

III The study, which was published in Nature Machine Intelligence on July 15, 2019, noted that the systems algorithm was provided with 10 billion combinations of the puzzle. About 60% of the time, DeepCubeA was able to solve the puzzle in the most efficient way possible (fewest number of moves required to find the solution). On average, it was able to figure out the solution in 28 moves.

IV DeepCubeA is not the fastest nonhuman solver of the Rubiks Cube. Rubiks Contraption, a robot built by Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo in 2018, was able to do this in 0.38 seconds. Rubiks Contraption, however, was specifically designed for this task, using human-scripted algorithms to perform a specific function. In contrast, DeepCubeA learned about the game in isolation in two days, working on an increasingly complex series of combinations and, in the process, figuring the puzzle out on its own.

V Rubiks Cube, originally known as the Magic Cube, is a combination puzzle crafted by Hungarian sculptor Ern Rubik in 1974. While its popularity peaked during the 1980s it was proclaimed German Game of the Year in 1980 and received similar awards in the UK, the United States, and France it remains popular until today.

VI In 1982, the First Rubiks Cube World Championship was held in Budapest, Hungary. Today, all official competitions are organized and regulated by the World Cube Association, which was formed in 2004.