Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression | Hacker News Reader

Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

westernsydney.edu.au

439 pointsrustoo141 comments

I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here. When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. When I'm feeling great, I'm generally motivated to go outside / do DIY / read / have a lot less screen time. I initially spent lots of effort trying to reduce my screen time (parental controls, etc) before realising that it was probably an indicator, not a cause!

You're highlighting the feedback mechanism that this disease uses to maintain itself. The spiral of doom.

Any attempt to break it is beneficial, though it may feel like the opposite is happening.

I remember once explaining to a friend that depression wasn't really "feeling sad all the time"

It was more like "Emotional AIDS" - it's not that the depression made me sad, it just took away all my emotional immunity/resilience

No idea why this would be downvoted.

I lost my only sibling to an overdose last year.

I lost the mother of my child to cancer in February.

Three days later, my current gf was diagnosed with cancer.

Even when I'm not sad, I'm definitely highly irritable, easily overwhelmed, lack patience...

> When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone.

Switch "on my phone" with "drinking alcohol" and that's literally how all alcoholics think.

Ehh -- I'd just reconsider the 'literally all' part. There are alcoholics who just chase the feeling for itself -- a quick fix for sad thoughts, but not for all. It's a complicated disease, but some with issues crave booze regardless of how they're doing mentally. At least in my somewhat limited experience.

I am an alcoholic and for me it's more you replace any activities outside of work with drinking as a substitute for doing stuff. Later you realise you didn't just replace activities alcohol replaced people too. So in the end all I had to do was drink.

Uh, that doesn't mean it isn't true. Alcoholics don't drink for no reason. (Source: had to quit drinking because of the problems it was causing for my life.)

Of course not. Nobody does things for "no reason." It's more that sometimes we don't understand the motivation. With alcoholics (and drug addicts in general), my guess as to the reason is that it feels good, or otherwise does something for them. I've been told one's first time doing heroin or smoking crack is pure heaven. People who quit generally do so because it causes secondary problems for them. And, that makes sense to me, because why quit something that feels good, but doesn't cause any other problems?

Most of this is pure speculation and extrapolation from my own experience. I had a short period of time when I was drinking excessively to deal with work stress. Once I noticed, I was able to stop, because I knew it would cause me problems later on. Luckily, I never suffered any health effects or legal issues from it, mostly because it was only about a 2-3 week period when I would drink every day after work.

Stopping drinking doesn't make your other problems go away though

This is my exact problem with all these studies. I thought "people who don't care about themselves eat unhealthily" was a bit of a no-brainer. I started a clinical psychology course on EdX recently and the first exercise was Common Advice. They went on the say the only useful common advice to give to a depressed person is to tell them to go for a run, as that was the only correlation supported by evidence. A RUN! That's so unhelpful that it's actually a common joke between the depressed people that I've met. If you can't get out of bed, you aren't going to be able to go for a run.

Similarly, if you ruminate on horrible things every time you stop and think, you're going to want to go on your phone late into the night until you're so tired you can go straight to sleep. If you don't even know if life is worth living, it's quite hard to avoid eating that bag of chips. I thought these were obvious, but perhaps it's not to people who've never experienced depression. Perhaps the reductionist view, as unhelpful as it is, plays into it too.

Well it's not totally crazy. I suffer from mild chronic depression and I have noticed that doing my morning exercise routine makes it much more likely that my mood will be decent throughout the day than if I wake up and decide I just don't feel like exercising that day.

I have also experimented on myself to see whether 30 minutes of exercise improved my mood in the middle of the day. Not totally surprisingly, it _usually_ did. Not always, but usually. It never once had a negative impact.

The main problem is one of motivation/willpower. Telling a depressed person that they should exercise to feel better seems like solid advice on the surface of it, because it stands a high chance of both being true and actually working, BUT they are not in a place to usefully implement the advice. The brain gets in the way and overrides what we see as "common sense." The same way you can't tell an alcoholic to have a nice big steak instead of a beer for dinner. The person usually even knows the "right" thing to do, they are just literally unable to take the right action in the moment.

For running/jogging, a good trick for when you really don't feel like it is to put running clothes on, go outside, and then just start walking. If you still don't feel like running, you can just go for a walk instead, but many people will actually want to run after a bit--the bottleneck is getting out the door.

It's the same for other kinds of exercise. If you're dreading lifting weights, start by just doing some sets of really light reps. If you still feel bad, you can just stop after that, but you'll probably often find at that point that you actually feel like doing more.

Weirdly, I seem to often have my best runs/workouts with this approach, when I started out feeling like crap. Motivation is a strange thing.

Yes to this! Similarly, I got myself out of a rut by buying running shoes that didn't require socks. Totally pathetic, but that was my motivational block.

Well, it works both ways. You may not be able to bring yourself to go for that run 9 of 10 times. And maybe on the 10th time, you could actually do it, but you say "well, what's the point, I'd never stick with it". One of the most powerful things for me is doing the right thing. Even if it's just once. It's amazing how small steps can turn into habits.

It's helpful to take subtle actions toward change for better when you are depressed. A key part of human tendency is to be consistent with what we have already done. It's a strong motivator to keep habits.

On intrusive thoughts, I think identifying them early and accepting them is important to re-directing them. It takes lot of patience and practice. Don't give up on the first few tries. Just remember that eventually you will be consistent with your actions.

I am having a horrible day -> what's the least I could do to make this day better? and then do it.

Please don't aim for something you can't do. It's okay if you can get out of the bed. No need to go for run. Aim for the least and gradually increase otherwise you will not do anything due to fear.

Another skill that will help you immensely is ability to prioritize the right things. Writing down what you really should do in order and sticking it to somewhere visible helps.

In the end, no clear solution exist. For some, medication might be the best option and for others, it's lot of training to control the factors leading to intrusive thoughts and eventually depressive episode.

This was a longitudinal study which compared lifestyle factors at baseline with depression at follow-up, so the causation was confirmed.

That is not to say that depression doesn't cause more screen time, or worse sleep.

By that logic there is nothing useful you could say to a depressed person, as they won't get out of bed anyway.

I am willing to believe that there are people who won't feel better by going for a run or will be unable to do so, but I think there are probably also people who feel better by simply doing it, even if they don't feel like it.

Especially with depression there also seems to be an ideological battle, were some people absolutely want to believe that it is caused by chemical imbalances and medication is the only thing that can possibly work. (Again, I am willing to believe that such cases exist, but I also think there are people who would rightfully have been classified as depressed who came out of it without medication).

I can't even understand why there's an ideological battle. If you take a perfectly healthy person and put them into solitary confinement, there's a good chance they'll become depressed. It's an extreme example, but my point is that for most people depression is very much circumstantial. If the circumstances can be corrected and no serious trauma was experienced, the depression will probably go away. When cirsumstances cannot be changed or there's lasting trauma, medications are an option but outcomes are mixed..

There's a minority of people whom regardless of their circumstances will be depressed. In this case, the argument that a person's monoamine neurotransmitters levels (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine) are just naturally out of whack makes sense and medications might be the best option.

Anecdotal, but a few observations that work for myself:

* Lack of sleep lowers my energy and creative function. I no longer have energy to try new things, or to think out-of-the-box. The brain enters "survival mode" of just following the routine to make it to the end of day. If I let this accumulate over multiple days, the overall motivation and happiness starts dropping exponentially. This makes sense, since a lot of my happiness comes from envisioning goals and achieving them, which I cannot do if I don't sleep enough.

* If I get more than 1 night of bad sleep, I usually try to squeeze in a strenuous hike or just go cycling around the neighborhood. At least 1-2 hours, ideally 4-5. It increases the physical tiredness and makes it easier to fall asleep. It also fills in the short-term memory buffer with random stuff, that seems to have a positive correlation with subsequent sleep quality.

* Screen time generally depends on what you are doing. Routine work or clickbait browsing is bad because it doesn't make you tired and doesn't give enough short-term impressions. Playing games can give impressions, but they also raise excitement, that makes it harder to fall asleep. What works for me is to read for 30-60 minutes just before bedtime. Classic books, sci-fi, anything that is not exciting, but involves imagining what I just read about. After I'm done reading, I make a conscious effort to NOT think about work/plans/stressful topics. Thinking about what I just read usually works pretty well.

* You need to be very careful with alcohol. Moderate amount (say, 1-2 beers) makes it easier to fall asleep, but there's a high chance of waking up after 2-3 hours once it wears off. It also seems to recalibrate the nervous system, making it harder to fall asleep without drinking. So if you are having sleep problems, completely cutting of any booze for about a week shows wonderful results, despite the initial setback.

With alcohol, your REM sleep is suppressed, and resting heart rate is quite a bit higher.

I watch my sleep cycles on my Garmin (and also track their 'body battery' thing, which I think is based on stress which is based on heart rate variability). If I have "some" drinks (eg, more than just 1 or 2 small ones), I can easily see how RHR is high and my recovery doesn't even BEGIN until say 3am. When you start tracking and watching those stats every day, you can see how different you feel when you get a good night's sleep. Vs an alcohol-aided-but-not-drunk-not-hungover sleep.

> I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here

Your framing assumes that there has to be a clear, unidirectional arrow of causation.

In reality, behaviors and moods are in tight reciprocity, affecting each other simultaneously. For likes of depression (or addiction) that reciprocity can narrow and narrow to the point of only moping around and doing whatever maintains the depression.

Which means avoiding depression maintaining behaviors is one of the multiple things to do in order to prevent it, or prevent a relapse, conversely it will indeed be incredibly hard to treat it with only reducing screen time.

I suppose its a negative feedback loop. Either way, cause and effect in psychology isn't always obvious. When society regards drug abuse as problem, whereas it stems from say troubled youth, then you get that kind of shifting the blame reasoning.

I love how a lot of commenters are redefining “screen time” to suit their opinions or otherwise rationalise their screen time, rather than taking the study as is. I mean, sure, perhaps different types of screen time have different impact and this requires further study, but using anecdotes and opinions isn’t that.

Isn’t it pretty obvious not all screen time is the same? If it was then you could do these studies with people staring at simple glowing white rectangles and get identical results.

Yeah, screen time "doomscrolling", screen time "playing online board game with friends", screen time "reading a book" and screen time "watching a movie" are pretty different screen times.

But they're all... screens. And you're spending your time looking at them, regardless of what's on them and how you interact with it.

I do agree that they are different. But they're still screens.

Right, so just because this study doesn’t bother to differentiate between different things people can do with screens, you are saying it’s all the same?

Insufficient information to make a reasonable conclusion, I'm guessing.

It could very be related to what's on the screen, but it might not. Insufficient data. Screens are very new in relation to the development of human physiology, so I don't think we can assume that screens themselves are not a cause.

Screen time at work is not correlated with depression though. The explicitly choose to remove that factor, since many jobs with tons of screen time like software engineer have very happy people.

To me it is not obvious. What causation do you think is at play here? A lot of commenters seem to think it is some kind of emotional mechanism, mentioning things like social media and such. But it might just be a physical mechanism, like being too sedentary, or eye fatigue.

How about something like e-ink? That's a screen, but in terms of optical properties I believe it should resemble paper.

I never tried e-ink for prolonged times, but I always found the contrast to be a bit lacking, which is something that contributes to eye fatigue. Last I used such devices was over 5 years ago though, so maybe technology has improved now.

Reading a book on a screen is basically the same as reading a physical book. There is no reason one would cause depression while the other wouldn't, unless it is due to the physical screen which is a problem that can be fixed. I've never seen a study saying that reading books causes depression, so it shouldn't.

If you somehow managed to convince a group of people to stare at a glowing white rectangle for 10 hours day, I would be pretty surprised if you couldn't notice any mental health effects.

True, but I argue that those mental health effects would be different than other kinds of screen time :)

Probably, but the effects of different types of screen time would likely be more similar to each other than going for a walk in the woods.

After reviewing all the porn on the internet, I am no longer able to sustain an erection.

It certainly seems very likely that what you're doing with said screen matters quite a bit, but this is also an extremely complex thing to try to study. Not only can the net result (i.e. a hypothetical positive or negative result) of a given activity change based on the individual instance of that activity, but it can also change based on the person doing that activity (whose mindset could also change depending on the instance, which could effect the net result of a given instance of a given activity).

The point is, while it might be "pretty obvious that not all screen time is the same," it would also not be that surprising if screen time was still negatively related to the average number of common screen activities over a certain amount of time (which is what you would expect from a study like this).

I'll of course hedge my statement, by saying that the Hacker News community is likely not a representative sample when it comes to common screen activities relative to the general population.

My comment wasn't meant to agree or disagree with these statements, just to comment on how I find it interesting that people are making assumptions or defining screen time to suit their own opinions.

As for whether its obvious: maybe, but there are many cases where something seems obvious (certainly to laypeople in the subject) but that are actually flat out wrong.

So, as someone who hasn't studied these things, I say, yes, it seems obvious, but just because I think its obvious, doesn't necessarily mean its true.

we can only think things when a double blind study of 100 people on average think them. we are all excatly the mean of N>100 other people, and anyone who believes otherwise is mistaken.

In my humble opinion passive consumption of media is entirely different from engaging in a creative process. Perhaps it's just projection on my part but surfing the web for hours reading Reddit, Hacker News and YouTube is entirely different than banging out some new chapters for your NaNoWriMo novel, updating a blog or making a github commit.

The researchers attempted to control for this:

"Sedentary screen time Sedentary screen time is calculated in hours per week, adding together the participants’ answers to the questions ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend watching TV?’ (FC: 1070) and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’ (FC: 1080)."

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

>and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’

Sure, that's at least an attempt. However would you characterize spending time on a personal project work? That's why I called out my specific examples of side jobs and hobby projects.

I'm not rejecting the findings In particular, maintaining optimal sleep and lessening screen time (which is often an issue in youth), while having adequate physical activity and good dietary quality, may reduce the symptoms of depression,” of lessening screen time in favor of more constructive activity like exercise. I'm suggesting there's probably room here for a deeper dive into the kind and quality of screen time, because even bucketing it into just work vs everything else is arguably too broad. I believe some kinds of screen time are constructive.

That's interesting, but have you got evidence for your belief? Are you sure the wish is not father to the thought here?

Well clearly not, any more than I have evidence to the contrary. I did my best to qualify my statements that it's just one person's opinion. Sorry if that's not obvious.

The onus is on those making the initial claim that they have properly accounted for error and that their interpretation of the evidence is the most reasonable. Questioning if a potential error has been accounted for or if another interpretation has been considered is important.

That seems like a terrible control. Plenty of people do non-constructive things on computers at work (I'm doing so right now) and lots of people are productive at home.

I don't understand how this controls for GP's concerns. You'd need something much more precise, like "how many hours per week do you spend using the computer in an active creative pursuit such as writing, drawing etc."

> In my humble opinion passive consumption of media is entirely different from engaging in a creative process. Perhaps it's just projection on my part but surfing the web for hours reading Reddit, Hacker News and YouTube is entirely different than banging out some new chapters for your NaNoWriMo novel, updating a blog or making a github commit.

I will second this so hard, as it is my experience as well. Just staring slackjawed, mindlessly scrolling for hours on end, is a noticeable difference from writing code. I wish there were studies on these differences.

I actually agree. My point was just that our opinions are just that: opinions. We did not actually study it in a controlled scientific way.

The researchers appear to have tried to look at Sedentary Screen Time, but had to correlate passive TV watching and non-work computer use as those were the questions from the data bank they sampled.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

That's a fair point, but remember that the map is not the territory.

We've come up with the semantic concept of "screen time" that bundles together a lot of disparate activities, because it seems intuitively and linguistically compelling. But imagine an alternate universe where the equivalent term "screen time" also included origami for some reason. The study would reach almost exactly the same conclusions, because such a small fraction of people engage in origami relative to binge TV watching. That doesn't mean that origami is actually as unhealthy as binge TV watching. The map is not the territory.

People are very resistant to the idea that something they enjoy could be bad for them. Instead, they tend to rationalize their own use as good while looking for ways to conclude that others' use is bad.

The same thing happens with social media. It's fascinating to watch people bash social media on their chosen social media platform, under the assumption that social media is some other website that they don't use. That's why Reddit and Twitter full of people bragging they've deleted Facebook, for example. It's also interesting to watch the mental gymnastics people use to claim that the Hacker News comment section is somehow not social media for vague reasons (pseudonymous, moderated, technical niche, not mainstream enough) while ignoring the fact that we're all here posting content and up/downvoting it like the other social media platforms.

It was specifically "sedentary screen time" defined as the total "hours per week, adding together the participants’ answers to the questions:

1. "In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend watching TV?" and

2. "In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)"

Since it is an observational study, any talk of screen time causing/worsening depression (or abstaining from screen time helping it) is going to be speculation anyway.

The problem is with these studies which (probably due to lack of funding) measure such a gross metric in an age where there is such a variety of activities that take place over a screen.

Screen time was initially a deliberate positive spin in response to the studies demonstrating the negative effects of social media use on mental health, and somehow gained mainstream traction.

Commenters should be able to fine grain their definition of "screen time" because we have previous studies that do clearly indicate what type of "screen time* has the most detrimental effects.

Not all screen time is the same and it’s far beyond time for us to stop equivocating Facebook/Instagram and other social media nastiness with all the positive things that can be done on a screen.

It confuses people, and as we stare down another quarantine and a long cold winter telling people to spend less time with what could be their only contact to the outside world can be actively harmful.

Agreed computers are tools for productivity and entertainment. You should set yourself up for success and utilize your machine/time accordingly. These are the first steps to exiting the screen time nightmare one may find themselves in.

I just read the abstracts of one of the studies[1] and it's really including TV and general computer time, not necessarily social media time.

It also references a study that seems to focus more on computer time and "information" overload (at least from the abstract).[2]

I think it's a mistake to assume that sedentary screen time is not impactful so long as you're avoiding social media.

[1] https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31059635/

I think there are big questions on what screen time actual is though. Isn't general computer time essentially social media? At least for most people? Most people also aren't watching documentaries on TV or doing things that exercise the brain. All admit I didn't read your sources but I'm assuming reading books isn't detrimental so it's probably not the sedentary nature of the activity (I could be completely off). I do think that since these days we use computers so much that it does warrant breaking down the activity.

Does anyone have a study that does do this comparison?

I think a lot of people perhaps underestimate the value of an iPad that's not signed in to anything, and is just loaded chock full of epubs (and perhaps offline maps). You don't even need to turn on the Wi-Fi.

Computers can be simple tools for reading and study, if you want them to be, and make deliberate choices to that end.

The last few months I've spent a lot of time consciously re-engineering my screen time into what I want it to be and do, not what is easiest or most convenient. Getting off of most mainstream social media has helped tremendously, as it's truly insidious how engineered it is to seem like the most important, engaging thing in the world.

I'm doing much better now that I'm not exposed to strangers screaming about nonsense for a few hours each day.

>>> I'm doing much better now that I'm not exposed to strangers screaming about nonsense for a few hours each day.

When you put it that way... :)

I agree and I've mostly switched to a bedside Kindle after hours.

If you're spending a lot of time reading, I'd suggest getting something work an e-ink display. It's much easier on the eyes

I significantly prefer backlighting for reading. To me, an iPad is way better than a printed book. For some reason, light-emitting is easier for my eyes.

How about a ebook reader that has a light built in? I also dislike reading printed books due to the lighting issues but much prefer a kindle oasis over my ipad.

> Getting off social media

Can anyone who lives alone at home, get rid of social media? I have lost contact with my parents, I’m single, I do have 20-50 friends in my city but not enough to feel loved during lockdown anyway. I know social media and movies are a poor man’s affection, but I removed that, I’d be madman #10000th. I’d also argue most studies don’t check whether it’s not the lack of affection/social fabric which causes addiction to social media and other problems.

You can have direct internet contact with your friends without social media. Send emails, have chat conversations, make video calls, the lot of it. It’s real, and not filtered and sorted to benefit advertisers.

you're commenting on a study with what sounds like an opinion that feels right to you. maybe it's not just about social media vs "positive" activities. some of it may be related to screen addiction and inability to focus due to externals stimuli. any unhealthy habit could have a configuration where its not as unhealthy to some people, but it doesn't mean the study is "confusing people"

This will remain opinion until we can get longitudinal studies that account for this. Current pediatric recommendations are basically no screen time for small children even though there are apps specifically for educational enrichment. It may be that all screen time is bad. Until the educational and informational parts are accounted for, all we can do is speculate.

The study considered "screen time" as an unvariegated whole[1]. That is confusing. Screen time is not a singular activity - there's an infinite diversity of things that you can do on a screen - some great for your health, other very poor.

It'd be like a study came out saying "food proven to make Americans overweight" because, on average, people eat junk food. Strictly speaking that is true, but it's not useful information.

[1]: Alright, it considered "non-work screen time" as an unvariegated whole - but my point still stands here.

I guess that as screens become ubiquitous lumping everything into “screen time” will become increasingly meaningless. I imagine that in medieval times illiterate tribes who came across writing would see it as a kind of technology and be surprised how much “paper time” scribes or monks spend, without regard for the content of the information or the actual task being accomplished.

It's not entirely clear to me from reading the points in this article and skimming the paper that they are able to control the direction of causality for this. That is the question as to whether or not "healthy" activity prevents depression or if depression causes us to reduce our healthy activity (and increase our unhealthy ones).

The pandemic has been a great experiment in this and has me starting to think that many of these studies might have the causal arrow wrong. I absolutely spent less time on the screen, ran more often, drank much less and slept better immediately before the pandemic.

Running as an example became much harder to do emotionally after the a few months of the stress induced by the pandemic. The lack of other runners out there seemed to confirm that other people were also feeling this impact.

I spend more time glued to the screen "doom scrolling" and you can bet my drinking is up as well.

But it's certainly not like all of these behaviors happened and then stress set in (in this case I wouldn't say "depressed" as much as "stressed", ironically I'm probably the least depressed that I've been in years).

It seems to me much more likely that compulsive behaviors in general, and in this case especially the example of screen time are produced by the depression rather than it's causes.

Certainly there is the possibility of positive feed backs: depression causes excessive drinking which unchecked can clearly lead to more depression. Same goes for screen time, sleep etc.

Yeah, in my personal experience causality is not easily discernable. I definitely believe that for me a very regular sleep schedule helps my mood. But as you say, it's not a straightforward relationship. Bad sleep triggers bad mood when triggers bad coping behaviors that can disrupt my sleep, making it worse. Same thing for what I'm eating, exercise levels, amount of time invested in rewarding activities, how clean the house is, and I'm sure other things. It's a big causal snarl.

That said, I do think focusing on good sleep is one of the most effective things I can do to manage my mood, so if people are going to have a too-simple understanding of things, "more sleep critical for preventing depression" is probably a pretty good one.

From the article:

"A higher frequency of alcohol consumption was surprisingly associated with reduced frequency of depressed mood in people with depression. This may potentially be due to the self-medicating use of alcohol by those with depression to manage their mood."

So they explicitly consider your point for alcohol consumption. But they don't seem to consider it for sleep, screen time, or exercise.

To complicate things, I find alcohol negatively impacts sleep and exercise, so the hypothesed self-medication with booze could score multiple hits.

Lately I have been doing my best to limit my "optional" screen time (optional meaning anything that is not for work and school). I fingered though Cal Newport's "Digital minimalism" [1] about a month and a half ago and decided to try out the 30 days tech fast in the book. The idea is to use this time to reset your relationship with tech and to really figure out what you value and what you are trying to accomplish with your tech habits. If other people are like me and struggle with compulsiveness with using the internet and computers, I recommend giving it a shot.

[1] https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/business/d...

Thanks.

Just ordered this book. I had to recently delete my Reddit account as I found myself getting drawn into needless arguments.

Don't get me wrong, occasionally I would have fun learning new things, but like all other social media it turns into angry people yelling.

Aside from Reddit I have been Social Media / Online Dating free for just under 2 years.

It's amazing how much mental energy I would waste on this stuff. No judgement to people who enjoy social media, but it cutting it boosted my emotional health by leaps and bounds.

More time for making music !

The paper Multiple lifestyle factors and depressed mood: a cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the UK Biobank (N = 84,860) [1]. The study compares questionnaire results of healthy controls (HC) to people with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD):

> Cross-sectional analysis of 84,860 participants showed that in both MDD and HCs, physical activity, healthy diet, and optimal sleep duration were associated with less frequency of depressed mood (all p < 0.001; ORs 0.62 to 0.94), whereas screen time and also tobacco smoking were associated with higher frequency of depressed mood (both p < 0.0001; ORs 1.09 to 1.36).

This is correlation; it does not measure whether lifestyle interventions improve depressed mood.

[1] https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

I've been suicidally depressed my whole life. I currently self medicate with reddit, youtube, etc. If I let my mind wander for just a minute the thoughts come flooding in.

I also find it very difficult to go to sleep because it involves turning off my distractions and being alone with my own mind. I think the title should be changed.

I felt this way long before tech entered my life; as a child I used books for this purpose.

Try yoga. The three week yoga retreat that the Beachbody app has is great to learn it without going to a class. I simply repeat the final week’s flow. It may teach you how to still your mind by using the distraction of body movement to achieve a meditative state. This may allow you to ultimately meditate without the need for yoga. In other words, this may be a path for you to be alone with your mind without needing distraction. Best of luck.

I strongly recommend finding a good counselor or something along those lines for the flooding-thoughts. Self-medicating will help you survive, but it will not enable you to thrive. I've been doing what is effectively group counseling for the past couple of years and I've slowly learned to identify what the pain is that is driving my behaviors (it sounds like you might already be there), and from there, identifying the needs that are getting unmet. In my case, it's a desire for what St. Augustine describes as "home", a place where you are welcomed, or more broadly speaking, "community" (as opposed to a collection of friends which is what I have). I still have no idea how to get that, but I am making concrete changes to my life to at least randomly walk that direction.

> If I let my mind wander for just a minute the thoughts come flooding in.

I have something vaguely similar with OCD - needing constant stimulation to draw myself away from intrusive thoughts and compulsions. I've found that occasionally deliberately just letting it happen, initially just for a couple of minutes and building up to 10-15 minutes or so, has been extremely useful in gaining some kind of control over them rather than just being overwhelmed. I don't know if something similar would be helpful with depression, but it may be worth considering.

Good point. We should ban correlational studies like these. Science is littered with these types of after-the-fact surveys that explain nothing and provide no real information. The lack of a mechanistic understanding of cause and effect in systems produces hot air, as we've seen in Psychology and other soft fields.

I was not trying to diminish the study; correlation with N=84K participants is useful.

I don’t know. I feel like screen time is a misnomer. From my anecdata less social media more sleep is the key. If my screen time is reading a kindle or learning programming I doubt the impact is so bad. Of course anything taken to an extreme...

This and endless reloads of news sites

This is what something like a kindle shines. That isn’t such a bad form of screen time. Other devices are dangerous for me because, well, here I am on HN rather than preparing for my day. If I picked up my kindle instead I wouldn’t be on HN.

Does anyone have experience where newer kindles or other e-readers keep them awake less than other ones? I have a 1st generation kindle paperwhite, but I still feel like the front light on it keeps me from getting sleepy versus just reading a physical book.

More sleep time is critical for preventing depression period. It is not rocket science. Everyone can tell from their own person experience.

Now it could be sometime when one is depressed one can't sleep. However, sleep pretty much helps every many things.

this is the reason why I think tech company ought to let employee sleep whenever they want as long as they want at work (not at meetings of course, although that is tempting sometimes), as long as they get their work done on time.

When I work for myself, I nap at the slightest sensation of drowsiness. I’m not productive nor efficient while sleepy. Yet I’ve wasted so many hours in mindless stupor for my employers (especially after lunch) because napping on the clock is taboo.

I can't tell you how many times I wished there were "sleep rooms" in our university to wind down in afternoons and get refreshed for more study and work.

They should at least offer them for PhD students who spend most their life in office.

But not too much. I used to sleep 10-12 hours during depressive episodes when I had nothing important to do, it just makes things worse.

Over 7-8 hours of sleep just makes me tired and sleepy the whole day (paradoxical, yeah).

Forcing a limit helps a lot more.

The article seems to agree with you - it presents optimal sleep as important, 7 - 9 hours.

Yeah I either sleep 0-5 hours or 12+, rarely in between. Interestingly I usually feel better with the former (for a few hours before the microsleeps hit, at least). When i sleep late, I normally wake up with a bad headache, sore, really bad brain fog, etc.

Yet another bullshit headline.

They correlated less screen time with less depression, they did not demonstrate that taking action to reduce screen time resulted in reduced depression, much less indicating it to be “critical”.

I think sleep is critical for mental health and simply glancing at your bright cellphone screen during the night is an act of self sabotage. Even on the low setting with blue light filter on. It is still spectacularly bright compared to what our bodies have gotten used to over the past several millennia.

I intuitively agree that optimal sleep and exercise and diet and screen time probably make a difference to wellbeing, but am I alone in thinking that trying to determine a "link" between these things is lazy, easy, obvious and just wholly inadequate?

We want to know, definitively, what are causes and effects. I appreciate that's hard. But why waste so much time and money just trying to establish "links" which are fundamentally just correlations.

It's like admitting causation is hard, just aim instead for correlation - and call it quits after getting some headlines and maybe more funding...

Here is a cause and effect: Optimal neurotransmitter function highly depends on sleep quality and quantity (and you can further the connection to movement and nutrition as well). Sub-optimal neurotransmitter function can lead to sub-clinical or clinical depression.

"Studies have shown that NREM sleep is important for turning off the norepinephrine, serotonin and histamine neurotransmitters, which in turn allows their receptors to “rest” and regain sensitivity [13]. This allows norepinephrine, serotonin and histamine to be more effective at naturally produced levels."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651462/

Thanks - that's more like it!

My iPhone X died recently, and I put my SIM card into an old iPhone 5. It's been great for limiting screentime. It has limited storage, so I can only put the most essential things on it. I can get spotify for podcasts, tethering, google auth for 2FA, and basic texting/phone/facetime functionality. It does basic web browsing, but rather slowly. Haven't needed much more than this.

The main thing I miss is the ability to take lots of photos/videos of the kids....

It starts off with this extremely neutral and reasonable statement that says nothing about causation:

Screen time and tobacco smoking were also significantly associated with higher frequency of depressed mood.

And then goes on to say "We need to limit screen time" which is a baseless conclusion.

Smoking is known to mediate depression because of what it does to brain chemistry. One medication that gets prescribed to treat depression has such a strong track record of causing people to stop smoking as a side effect that it now gets prescribed for that purpose.

I will agree with commenters here objecting to the framing that "You need to reduce screen time as a means to treat depression." That assumption is unwarranted and not nuanced.

Screen time likely goes up when you are tired and sick. Being tired and sick can help foster depression.

The solution in a case like that is not "You need less screen time." It's "You need to get well and better rested."

When I'm sick and tired, I spend all my time on the computer and/or playing games on my phone to keep myself occupied so I don't go nuts. Taking away my screen time at such times would be a net harm (yes, I know this for a fact).

Granted, I have at times had to make judgment calls about how I spend that time to make sure it's constructive and not a bad habit.

Anectodal of course, but I can tell from my own experience that sleep cures so many things for me. Also lack of sleep causes many ailments in me.

I am definitely sad and angry when I don't get enough sleep, on top of not having enough energy. If I have a headache, taking a nap or sleeping longer always fixes it for me. If I have aches in my thighs and calves, taking a nap or going to bed early and catching 8+ hours of sleep fixes it right up.

A couple of interesting things about the journey from the press release to the story: the press release says "associated with", but the summary says "impacts on", and the headline says "critical for preventing"! Also, they pick "screen time and sleep" from among five factors, the others were less tobacco smoking, more physical exercise and more (yes) alcohol.

I don't have a problem with causal claims from these kinds of methods in principle, if the regression is well done with good controls. But I'm not at all convinced that they can isolate self-reported sedentary screen time reliably from self-reported physical activity.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s129...

What are the options for voice based interaction with software?

Eg it might be cool to have audio based Ingress style AR/reality games, that would involve narration and speech recognition. Do they exist? (edit: apparently yes - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/playcrafting-and-bo... - but also no: https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/bose-ends-audio-a...)

Isn't that addressing the effect of someone's depression? It's a bit like saying you have a headache because you take painkillers. If person is unhappy "screen time" is just a coping mechanism. If you take it away, then the person will find something else to numb their worries. You need to have an honest talk with yourself or a therapist to get to the bottom why you feel this way and then see how you can address it. These "rule of thumb" things are akin to "why don't you just smile?" or "stop worrying" and don't help.

Cause and coping mechanism are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, you can get into a feedback loop, but that needs to be talked about, not just outright dismissed.

I don't feel it's dismissive at all. Yeah "rules of thumb" and correlational studies are imperfect, but I think they are better than nothing.

It's usually easier to break out of a feedback loop once you recognize that you are in one.

This is exactly what therapy helps with, but if you don't know what triggers it, then simply reducing screen time will not solve anything, because you'll be missing something. It's good to learn about mindfulness, asking yourself questions e.g. why am I spending time on my phone now? and going deeper.

Depression is not a lifestyle choice. Our eating, exercise, sleep, etc. are habits developed over a lifetime. Chronic health issues, sexual abuse, traumatic death of a loved one, and bad luck are what to avoid. And of course some formulations of brain chemistry.

Casting depression as a lifestyle issue is a step backward. Mental health is already stigmatized far too much. Depression is not a moral failing of will power. It’s a response to adversity. A way profound unhappiness manifests.

Kale, a peloton, and deleting Facebook won’t change the past.

I think this is a little too one-sided. Yes, there is a group of people who have depression due to factors outside of their control, and we should all be cognizant of that. But that doesn't mean that literally every person who's depressed falls into that group. There's another group of people who are depressed due to factors at least somewhat within their control.

The assertion that people suffering depression can be divided into those suffering due to factors beyond their control and those suffering by choice is not supported by the article. People with a mental illness often are able to manage their symptoms. But the symptoms are not the cause of their mental illness. A schizophrenic is not schizophrenic because they choose not to take a prescribed medication that mitigates the visible symptoms of schizophrenia.

An unhealthy lifestyle is a common symptom of depression. Lots of screen time, poor diet, low quality sleep, and inertia are factors in clinical diagnosis of depression. They are things that might lead a person to decide someone might be depressed.

Depression does not have to be moral failing of will power, but it definitely can be cured by moral success of will power.

The more I think about this comment, the more it just seems so wrong. Yes, depression is not always caused by lifestyle, but it definitely can be. What you are saying just sounds like an excuse for taking the easy path. If trying to change your lifestyle to fix your mental health is a bad thing, what is your counter suggestion? Taking pills that make you addicted, not solve the problem and make everything worse if you stop taking them?

I know there are cases, where medication is inevitable and is the only option. But this is a minority. The vast majority of mental health issues we have today, are caused by lack of virtue and values, choice of diet, sleep and lack of social interactions.

An alternative which has shown substantial empirical success is clinical treatment with a qualified psychotherapist experienced in the treatment of depression through the application of clinical treatment in a clinical setting. Such treatment may or may not involve the use of pharmaceutical and/or alternative medicines and/or medical and alternative treatments.

Incidentally, this is the context from which the study draws validity and makes rational sense to conduct. Without the clinical context depression is not a medical diagnosis.

The vast majority of mental health issues is caused by a lack of virtue?

Sure. General issues, maybe. Actual clinical diagnoses? Absolutely not. Yet you decide to paint both with the same brush. there are 3+ million diagnosed bipolar people in the US. Clinal depression, anxiety, and ADHD rates are higher. This is not a mere “minority”. There are significant numbers of people with chronic mental health problems.

The attitude people have towards mental health is horrible. The first assumption is always that the person with the issue is at fault and it’s up to them to convince any given person they meet that person’s bar for not being at fault for their problems. Even if you meet that bar, they still treat you like shit.

Was this controlled for social interaction? For young people screens are just the standard fallback when you have nobody to hang out with (although surely not the healthiest one).

Is this "just" another observational study? (I.e. subject to all manner of confounding factors that affect the multitude of similar studies that already exist.)

For anyone interested in this thread - "The Upward Spiral" is a related book worth reading, that dives into both the neuroscience of depression and practical steps to work one's way out of it. https://www.amazon.com/Upward-Spiral-Neuroscience-Reverse-De...

I’d really like to see Apple/Google or others try to turn screen time into a sort of currency.

A child does some chores? They get 30 minutes of scene time added to their bank account. They keep some screen time unused and they earn interest on that time they can cash out later. Their sibling has a birthday? Let them transfer some time as a gift.

Limit screen time and build some financial literacy and delayed gratification at the same time.

I prefer managing my childrens' screen time myself rather than delegating yet another thing to some cold institution or those outright evil companies. Thankfully in my case they are usually more interested in real three dimensional things so there is very little to manage.

In my opinion screen time is like the worst reward for your child. Screens should be treated like inherently evil tools that can be of value if used with awareness.

Longitudinal study is better, but still, the causation likely goes both ways. Decreased sleep, worse diet, and more screentime are all things that happen due to getting increasingly depressed. They also drive depression (at least decreased sleep and worse diet do, and screentime likely does to the extent it is a proxy for lack of sunlight and human interaction).

> critical for preventing depression

How did they make the jump from "people with high frequency of depressed moods have more screen time" to "less screen time is critical for preventing depression"?

Its possible that is true but claiming this based on the study is like saying "less lying in your bed all day is critical for preventing depression"

I made it as far as this quote (which is from the paper) "higher frequency of alcohol consumption was surprisingly associated", which then opened the question as to whether the researchers had pre-determined their results and fit the data to them. Researchers expressing surprise at the results in a study I take as a sign of bias.

Neither this article nor the research paper support the claim from the headline. A correlation was found, no causation afaict.

I think it depends what you're doing on the screen. Unfortunately, people no longer seem to distinguish between activities such as 'endlessly scrolling through Twitter' and 'making music in Ableton'. It's all just 'screen time', and it's bad for your mental health.

It says [0] the question excluded computer hours at work. Which seems bizarre in itself and to address the title, but does go quite some way to your point. (Most people's recreational computer time, I dare say, is 'mindless Twitter scrolling' and the like.)

And as a more general point, it's looking at 'history of major depressive disorder (MDD)' or not, not merely feeling a bit glum. I don't think the takeaway is supposed to be a tabloid-style 'avoid screen or become suicide risk', it's more like lifestyle choices you can make to maybe mitigate an issue you already present with. (IANA GP/psychologist/anything relevant, though.)

[0]: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

"lessening screentime may reduce the symptoms of depression"

Can anybody explain how they could possibly distinguish these two scenarios:

- A) Depressed people watch more TV/screen.

- B) Watching more TV makes people depressed.

I would expect both to be true to varying degree (maybe A even more so than B), yet they seem to expect B to be the dominant causation.

One small thing that has really helped me mitigate the downsides of screen time is keeping my phone out of my bedroom. It charges at my desk. No more laying in bed scrolling before or after I wake up. I sleep better and feel better.

Is the screen time thing about blue light? I mean I sleep way better and feel way better when I am camping away from artificial lights. In that respect I think artificial lighting causes depression and lack of sleep.

That could help explain why it seems like 50% of users on Reddit and Imgur suffer from depression. They’re (partly) depressed because they spend to much time the media where they write about being depressed.

The causality could also go the other way. The most visible users will be those who post a lot. And those who are depressed because their life sucks and they don't have much valuable stuff to do, or those who aren't doing much valuable stuff because their depression makes it too hard, are likely to have a lot of time during which posting on the site seems like the best available activity.

It seems really difficult to separate causality here. Which is something that disappoints me about the article. The string "caus" does not occur on the webpage; three of the four bullet points say "associated", and the only bullet point that uses a causative-sounding phrase ("were protective of") sounds like it may be used to mean another statistical association rather than an established causation. Clicking through to the study, it seems to be 100% based on association of results that they got via surveys.

Yes, the title is very misleading. It's very important to educate people about this.

Does this mean recording music on a Tascam cassette recorder is better for me than doing the same on Ableton?

Not trying to be snotty here, just wondering if it makes sense to categorize different kinds of screen time.

Personal experience says this is 100% true. I can do all the other things perfectly but if I don't get enough sleep and consume a ton of social/news feeds, forget about it.

Makes perfect sense. When you eat, sleep and exercise well your body and mind gets better.

You can always ask if more screen time causes more depression or more depression causes more screen time.

I'm pretty close to selling off all my smartphones for this reason, it's the only way I can remove the temptation.

Anecdotely, I can confirm that most of the time that I read hackernews comments I tend to get depressed.

So you're saying depression is incurable? Fuck!

sleep deprivation also leads to irratibility, you just become a shitty human

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