Photo credit: M E R V E – Cover Image Source: (L) Actor Sidney Poitier (Photo by John Springer Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images), (R) Representative photo by Pexels
In his collection of poignant letters called “Life Beyond Measure,” Sidney Poitier famously wrote a quote that reflected the greatest inspiration behind his success. “For most human beings, even when we briefly touch up against other lives, we leave our marks on each other,” it read. Before he became a Hollywood star, Poitier didn’t even know how to read. In his young years, when he was wrangling with poverty, and juggling the odd job of a dishwasher, he came across an elderly Jewish waiter who spent day after day relentlessly teaching him to grasp words and punctuation, until he finally learned to make sense of the written word. In a 2013 interview with Leslie Stahl for “CBS Sunday Morning,” Poitier nearly choked up with tears while revealing the story of the Jewish man, who left an indelible mark on his life.
Image Source: Actor & director Sidney Poitier on the set of 'Lilies of the Field' for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, in Tuscon, Arizona. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Poitier, who passed away in January 2022 at the age of 94, was the first Black man to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor, for his starring role in the 1963 movie “Lilies of the Field.” In this 2013 interview, host Leslie expressed her curiosity as to why Poitier chose to become an actor in the first place when he knew that he couldn’t read and his thick Bahamian accent was no match for Hollywood. “I had no way of knowing that there is madness in what I’m trying to do,” he replied.
Leslie described that after a disastrous audition with the “American Negro Theatre,” where Poitier could barely read the script, a man extended an act of kindness. The man was the waiter at the place where Poitier worked as a dishwasher. According to Goalcoast, this was when Poitier was around 16 to 17 years old.
Image Source: 15th September 1980: Sidney Poitier, the American actor and film director. Hollywood's first real black star. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)
Poitier grew up in poverty in the Bahamas and struggled with illiteracy for much of his childhood. He only attended school for two years. He told CBS News that his father was a tomato farmer. When he was born, three months premature, his parents already had six children, and they didn’t have any hope that he’d survive. His mother consulted a soothsayer. “The lady took her hand and started speaking to my mother,” he said. “‘Don’t worry about your son. He will survive,’” Poitier recalled. “And these were her words, she said: ‘He will walk with kings.’” And the prophecy came true, “Everything she said, including walking with kings, yeah.”
At the age of sixteen, he moved to New York City to pursue his dream of acting. However, as Leslie described, his inability to read scripts left him stranded as an outsider in the industry. But then, there was a turning point in his life. “One of the elderly Jewish waiters had a newspaper,” Poitier told Leslie, “and he walked over to me and he looked at me and said, ‘What’s new in the paper?’ And I looked up at this man and said to him, ‘I can’t tell you what’s up in the paper because I can’t read.’ He asked, ‘Would you like me to read with you?’ I said to him, yes, if you’d like.” Every night, Poitier recalled, the Jewish man would sit by his side, and teach him to read. This happened for weeks and weeks.
Sidney Poitier – the first Black man to win an Oscar for Best Actor, has died at age 94
In 2013, he spoke to Leslie Stahl for "Sunday Morning" and reflected back on the moment things began to happen in his career – when someone taught him to read https://t.co/VWCYyCGZc4pic.twitter.com/Os5zcIEIko— CBS Sunday Morning ? (@CBSSunday) January 7, 2022
Eventually, after about six months, Poitier was finally a fluent reader, per Aish. He tried his luck one more time at the American Negro Theater and was accepted as an apprentice. But still, being a newcomer, his first job in the theater was not as an actor, but as a janitor. Then one day, a theater actor, who later became the superstar Harry Belafonte, couldn’t show up for the rehearsals for a Broadway play. That’s when Poitier got the opportunity to act in the play.
Image Source: President Barack Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to Sidney Poitier during a ceremony in the White House on August 12, 2009. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Starting with a role with the American Negro Theatre, he went on to become one of the most accomplished actors in the industry. He starred in over 50 films. He won numerous awards, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Yet, a regret lingered in his heart for all this time. He never got to say “thank you” to the waiter who had changed his life. “One of my great regrets in life is that I went on to be a very successful actor, and one day I tried to find him, but it was too late, and I regret that I never had the opportunity to really thank him,” he once said, per The Forward.
Image Source: Actor and director Sidney Poitier on the set of the movie 'Lilies of the Field' for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, in Tuscon, Arizona. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
The modern workday unfolds largely indoors. Long hours spent commuting, sitting in meetings and staring at screens can make time outdoors feel like a luxury. Finding time for nature in an already packed workday can feel impossible, especially if you think nature only “counts” when it involves hiking boots and camping gear.
But a growing body of research suggests that nature’s benefits don’t require an exotic vacation getaway or weekend adventure. Even brief, routine interactions with green space can reduce stress, improve mood and promote overall well-being.
I spent the spring of 2026 teaching and studying urban landscapes in Denmark, a country consistently ranked among the happiest in the world. I expected to find thoughtfully designed parks, courtyards and bicycle paths. I did see those things. But what surprised me was how seamlessly people moved through those spaces as part of their ordinary lives.
These green spaces weren’t aspirational destinations, reserved for special occasions. They were places to eat lunch, meet friends, walk through on the way home from work, or just pause for a few quiet moments. Getting outside seemed a part of the natural rhythm of the day.
Denmark‘s outdoor culture stemmed not only from the creation of a meticulously planned network of parks, but also from the way green spaces were fundamentally woven into the routines of everyday life.
A wooden bench in one of Copenhagen’s forest therapy parks invites people to sit and soak in their surroundings. Todd Lookingbill
Everyday parks, everyday benefits
Evidence linking time spent in nature with health benefits has increasingly shaped public policy. In the U.S., for example, the National Park Service’s Healthy Parks Healthy People and ParkRx initiatives reflect a growing recognition that access to parks contributes to well-being.
For many Americans, however, the word “park” brings to mind iconic national parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. Yet visiting parks of all kinds can improve your overall health. The greatest public health value may come not from the parks people visit once in a lifetime but from those close enough to visit again and again.
My own research on Civil War battlefield parks illustrates this point. These are parks that were established to commemorate historic conflicts that were frequently fought on the fringes of major metropolitan areas. Consequently, many of these landscapes preserve forests, grasslands and trails within easy reach of millions of Americans.
Because they’re accessible without extensive travel or planning, they can become places people return to repeatedly – such as during a lunch break or after work. Reframing the notion of “park” opens up millions of acres of land for everyday uses.
Designing for everyday nature
At the University of Richmond, where I work, a stream restoration projects became an opportunity to rethink how nature fits into campus life. Landscape architects designed an Eco-Corridor, as the project became known. It has walking paths, gathering spaces and seating areas for quiet reflection alongside flowing streams and native vegetation.
The result was a landscape that supports biodiversity and improves water quality while also creating places for students, faculty and staff to walk between meetings, eat lunch alfresco or spend a few quiet moments outside during the workday. Its ongoing care depends on an army of volunteers who spread mulch, remove invasive plants and tend the community garden. For these volunteers, stewardship between classes and meetings meant another opportunity to interact with nature.
Students walk through the ‘Eco-Corridor’ at the University of Richmond. Haley Herrmann
What we learned was that nature doesn’t have to compete with work, studying or everyday responsibilities. Thoughtful landscape design can make spending time outdoors, even if only for a few short minutes, feel like a normal part of the day.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest person lived to the ripe age of 122 years old. Such a lifespan is an incredible feat, but what if the average person could beat that record by 34 years? Recent research done in Russia has led scientists to believe that the average human lifespan could be up to 156 years.
The researchers at Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center developed a mathematical model that allowed them to “switch on” a variety of aging mechanisms. This allowed them to calculate a human’s lifespan where mortality risk never increased with age. After experimenting with different scenarios and conditions, they found the biggest barriers to longevity were caused by non-renewable tissues and somatic mutations.
What are these barriers against longer life?
Somatic mutations are DNA changes within a cell. They accumulate over time during a human’s life and cannot be reversed with any existing therapy. These DNA errors that pile up in our cells contribute to the aging process.
Many human organs like the liver and skin continually replace cells and regrow damaged portions of themselves. However, there are two organs that can’t do this: the brain and the heart. Brain tissue (neurons) and heart tissue (cardiomyocytes) cannot regenerate. This proves to be the most prominent biological limit that shortens our lifespans. This explains why issues like dementia and heart disease are prominent causes of death and morbidity later in life. Since those organs’ tissues don’t replace damaged cells, they’re prone to irrevocably decline over time.
“The key finding of the study is the discovery of substantial differences between tissue types. Neurons and cardiomyocytes, which lack the ability to divide, turned out to be the main limiting factors: when all other causes of aging are eliminated, somatic mutations alone reduce the theoretical median lifespan from 1,759 years (for a hypothetical non-aging human organism) to 156 years,” said Evgeny Efimov, a research intern at the Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center, researcher at AIRI, and one of the key authors of the study.
This suggests that somatic mutations and DNA damage is what ultimately prevents humans from living indefinitely, even if our brains and hearts regenerated cells like other organs.
So what’s next?
Now knowing these biological limitations, the researchers hope to study other areas of aging impacting the human lifespan that could plausibly be reversed. This includes mitochondrial dysfunction, telomere shortening, epigenetic drift, and loss of proteostasis.
The hope is to have a clearer priority list of issues for future therapies to tackle. This is not just to possibly extend life, but to improve lives in general. By developing a fully comprehensive theory of aging, Skoltech hopes to pinpoint which aspects of aging are within our scope to address. After all, thoroughly studying each puzzle piece that makes up human life gives us a better understanding of the whole.
Of course, other impactful factors in a person’s lifespan can be addressed today. As most know, things like diet, sleep, and exercise are among them. A person’s living environment can also negatively impact their lifespan if it doesn’t have clean air, access to clean water, and so on.
For now, the best method for living long is to follow instructions from your physician. Whether you make it to 156 years or not, living well is best for whatever time you’re given.
In the U.S., as of mid-2026, more than 30 states have passed laws banning or restricting cellphones in K–12 classrooms; in 2023, the U.S. surgeon general issued a formal advisory on social media and children’s and adolescents’ mental health; and bestselling books tell parents that smartphones are “rewiring” their children’s brains.
These concerns and policies are part of a quickly changing national and international conversation around how young people spend time on screens and its relationship to their overall health and development. My reading of the mounting research on this issue across disciplines is that the popular narrative blaming screens and smartphones for an adolescent mental health crisis runs well ahead of the current evidence.
I study adolescent digital media use and its influence on social, emotional and academic outcomes. A growing body of research suggests that one-size-fits-all solutions are not the answer and that managing appropriate use of digital media needs to take into account a child’s developmental milestones, how parents and adults around them use media, and the ways kids use it to connect and learn with friends and family.
Screen time: From monolith to multifaceted
Wide adoption of digital media and the internet broadened the range of experiences young people could have online. At the same time, the digital age introduced newfound uncertainties. As with the advent of radio, comic books and arcades, adults worried about how children might interact with or be affected by internet use.
Policies introduced by the academy in 2013 and 2016 continued to advise that school-age kids and adolescents – those ages 5 to 18 – be restricted to no more than two hours of “entertainment” screen time a day. The goal was to curb risks associated with heavy media use, among them disrupted sleep, online safety, cyberbullying and physical inactivity.
Originally created for young people’s engagement with stationary media that tend to be confined to one room or context – for example, watching television – these hourly limits became outdated with the integration of smartphones and other digital devices into everyday life. Compared with watching television, online media was far more difficult to track and define, and more nuanced in its use.
In January 2026, the American Academy of Pediatrics retired its decade-old framework that had largely organized its advice around hourly screen limits. The new policy statement on children, adolescents and digital media diverges from this blanket approach. Instead, it suggests parents consider the larger picture in which this media use exists rather than lumping all screen use together.
Both the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics also recommend that when children under 24 months use screens, they should be limited to content and devices that encourage children and caregivers to interact. For ages 2 to 5, screen time – including TV and interactive apps on devices – may be extended to more solo use, provided it’s high-quality digital media designed around learning goals in mathematics and reading. But recreational use should be limited to roughly an hour per day.
For school-age children and teens, the newest guidance has begun to step away from fixed screen time limits and asks families to weigh online activity in the context of everyday life.
Doing so recognizes that a child’s digital experiences are shaped by diverse factors rather than the hours spent online. Current guidelines call on caregivers to distinguish among types of media, from television and social media to video games and interacting with artificial intelligence chatbots. They also call for taking into account a child’s individual characteristics, such as their interests and personality, family members’ own use of screens, and the type of content children are spending time on.
Rethinking screen time
Moving beyond strict screen time limits includes questioning the kind of digital activities kids and adolescents participate in. Do the activities encourage time spent interacting with others online, which can help young people develop important skills and competencies?
Scrolling an algorithm-based, auto-playing video feed likely does not equate to the same opportunities as video-chatting with friends, creating digital art or working with teammates in a multiplayer game. Research suggests these different uses relate to development in different ways and can help kids develop varying skill sets pertaining to everyday life and schooling.
Indeed, a large review of current research found that young people who take part in a range of digital activities, such as browsing the web, online gaming or interacting on social media, show positive associations with social connection, identity exploration, civic participation and learning.
The current evidence suggests parents and caregivers are best positioned to be digital instructors. Cutting children off altogether can carry its own risks for social and emotional development. Caregiver mediation of children’s screen time can produce widely different outcomes and effects, depending on whether the guidance is supportive or controlling.
Considering your own digital media use is the first step: Are family members engaging in problematic or heavy media use that children in the household might emulate? What applications and uses are most common in the family, and what positive or negative effects might they have, depending on the child’s age? How could these digital activities be safely integrated with other everyday experiences to increase their benefit for children? Conversely, what online time might be better spent on face-to-face experiences?
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Family Media Plan tool turns these ideas into concrete questions. For example, it recommends working out what each child needs from digital technology, what activities screens might be crowding out, and where their family or household can build in screen-free time. The recommendation is to talk with each child about why they are drawn to particular apps or online activities, what they encounter while browsing, and what might be lost when kids bring phones to gatherings such as mealtimes.
The debate over young people’s screen time is not going away. But the most up-to-date guidelines, and the growing body of research behind them, make a strong case for a more holistic approach. The guidelines treat digital media as a complex, diverse and evolving environment that children need to learn to navigate in the digital age. The risks and rewards depend, as with any developmental setting, on the child, the content and what online time might be crowding out.
