Time on site, or average session duration, measures the total time a visitor spends navigating a website during a single visit, from landing to exit. It is a key metric for gauging user engagement and content value, indicating how effectively a site holds attention. Higher times generally suggest better engagement, while lower times may indicate poor content or confusing design.
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After skating for a couple hours (the first time I have seen my wife on skates after 15 years together), we spent the evening visiting my wife's colleague's family, as they also have a puppy dachshund, a few weeks younger than ours. They have met before a couple weeks ago and this time there was no shyness, it was straight into wrestling.
The husband is high up in an institute that looks into physical wellbeing at the national level, which is super interesting to me, so I will meet up with them more. However, what we were briefly discussing this evening (while eating waffles) was the challenge with improving national health, when there are so many factors that are more compelling leading the other way. As I mentioned tonight, all of the major platforms and corporations have behavioural economists and psychologists working to design their interfaces, platforms and games to draw people in, and hook them. And they have a massive amount of data fed by the user that they can use to keep refining their approach.
As I asked tonight;
Where are the "Time Outside" designers?
At the rink today, there was a small group of little kids gets some skating instruction from a couple girls from the local hockey club. The kids seemed to be having fun waddling around cones, but I wonder what would have happened if there were a couple of the hockey players themselves there doing it. Would there have been more kids - and more parents?
Probably.
One of the challenges I have identified in Finland when I first arrived and only now are people starting to talk about it, is that sport is taken too seriously, too early. Pretty soon after kids start, they essentially have to decide which of several sports they want to play, because they will be forced to have four or more trainings a week and have to compete, have all their equipment, have their insurance, their registration.... Not only does it get expensive, but by twelve years of age, kids are ending their career in sports, instead of starting it. There is just no space for playing for fun. This means that kids over the age of twelve effectively end playing outside, playing sport, and have nowhere else to physically turn.
Is it any wonder there are physical issues in so many adults?
There is more to it than just organised sports though, as previously in Finland like at the rink we were at today, it would have been a place for families not only to skate together, but interact with other families. Even when I first came here over twenty years ago, there would be a hundred people at the tiny rink across the road in the outer suburbs, skating around and playing hockey with strangers - even Australians who can barely skate. It was a social experience. Today though, I paid attention and noted that no one really talks to anyone else they don't know there at all.
The death of local community.
As I was writing the other day, when parents aren't interacting with the neighbourhood adults themselves, the kids don't build that local community very strongly either. But it wasn't that long ago that local parks and rinks and people out walking their dogs, was a rich part of social connection. People would talk together, play together, and get a lot of random life. And it was compelling because it felt good to be part of the community, which meant that people would get outside more, as well as knowing the people in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, a little too well even.
Now everyone is a stranger.
In the past, we were forced to go outside, because that was the only way we were able to survive. But more and more, everything is being made serviceable from the couch, with food deliveries, entertainment, social connection and every other function. And the house itself which used to require work, has also got much easier, with a lot of machines and robots to lower the effort required to maintain the home.
Order food from one app, and program the vacuum with another app.
Getting outside now isn't part of our daily life like it was earlier, and now we have to plan for it, like going outside is some kind of event. This is also why so many people find it hard to get to a gym regularly, because it is an extra activity on top of other activities, and it has to compete with the far easier and compelling activities like sitting in front of the TV, or scrolling through a phone.
The "experiences" that have been engineered to capture our attention, and hold us in place.
I have talked to the guy a couple times now and he seems like a decent person who loves his job, so I am also going to try and connect with him professionally, to see if I can be part of it in any way, as I find these areas interesting. And as far as I am concerned, I think it would be great to work with good people who are trying to combat some of the harm that the for-profit corporations and governments have incentivized that has led to an environment which makes us worse as individuals, and as communities.
While the Time on Site metrics are used to sell advertising, I wonder what kinds of interesting numbers would come up around health if we monitored Time Outside metrics. What is for sure, that on average, we should all spend more time outside doing something enjoyable, than sitting at home doing nothing useful.
No matter the weather.
Taraz
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