Flawed data led to a connection between time spent on devices and mental health
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
At the end of the day, I guess the two are not mutually exclusive in the current context.
My intuition is often wrong, but it is undoubtably useful for me as an individual. But the intuition of crowds is bad. It is no substitute for randomised controlled trials, mendelian randomisation, or even cohort and observational studies. For public health policy I prefer to use evidence over intuition.
My intuition is that the connection between digital environment and mental health will prove similar to the connection between family environment or school environment and mental health: the quality of the environment is overwhelmingly what matters, not how much time is spent in different environments.
As time passes, I have less and less confidence in other's intuitions. Why should other people trust mine?
I do spend a great part of my time on "devices" yet I am happy, see a lot of people, and I don't let devices interrupt me when I'm with people most of the time. I usually do not wander mindlessly on the web. The connection between time spent on devices and mental health is far from obvious, there's a lot more to this.
That said she also pushes back against the idea of using things like notifications and gamification to try and mold our behavior. I'm kind of inclined to agree; my instinct is to say that this is a spot where the ends don't justify the means; encouraging addictive behavior patterns is still encouraging addictive behavior patterns.
The companies using them know, and that's the goal. It's all intentional, and many companies have had many meetings over many years about it. For lack of a better term, they simply aren't good people safe for polite society, and their mission in life is to reduce the quality of your life. This they call "engagement."
People buy houses with these techniques. They like it when your kids have to yell "Mom!" 10 times because you want to finish that one level. Their bonuses depend on it.
A good, effective habit is one that is internalized like that. I really don't think you can effectively replace it with an external interruption.
I especially see gamification as problematic for learning things. It seems to me to be a 21st century version of teaching to the test. You end up learning what's easy to gamify instead of what you should be learning. If that's literally the only way you can motivate yourself, I suppose you've got to do what you've got to do. But, if you will take for the sake of argument that learning a language is a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself, my experience with Duolingo is that I got really good at using the language to earn achievements on Duolingo. My real goal, though, is using the language to read books and have conversations. So I've had much better results with (non-gamified) language learning methods where the reward for my work is getting to do the thing I actually want to do: reading books and having conversations.
There might remain a question of whether it's better than what's currently being done by the short-sighted. But if more humane approaches stand a chance of winning out, then it might be best to not give any support to the competition, and even discourage others from doing so. That type of conclusion one should hesitate to draw, but it might be right.
As for gamification, perhaps if you could gamify "reading books and having conversations"—but as you say, by default what you'll get is just what's easy to gamify.
At least in my experiences, the highs in the "real world" are much higher, but the lows are much lower. That doesnt mean you don't have highs or lows digitally, but they're not as extreme. Both my happiest and most depressing memories are from the real world.
Devices can offer escapes and distractions from bad situations and that might actually help your mental health.
However, if real life is good, escaping isn't what you want to do and probably isn't going to help your mental health.
Maybe not but is that really the alternative? If we're allowed to use intuition then my intuition is that people haven't replaced this wholesome cliche of friendship with mindless clicking; they have replaced mindless TV with mindless clicking.
Is a life engaging with rich virtual worlds ever going to be good as a real one, spent in the company of bitter old farts who just want to complain about things?
> Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one?
Is a beautiful artist driven sunset scene more satisfying than your cloudy real life nothing over a boring looking town?
It's all relative. There are definitely cases where a technological interaction is better than a natural one.
I'm sorry but this entire thread is a collection of various complaints. In fact I would argue that HN is nothing but an endless feed of people complaining about things.
Of course complaint can also be a really dumb waste of time, or even harmful. But few things beat the utility of the right complaint to the right audience.
But that's not the question, at all. It's: how does it affect mental health? One way of looking at it is: are we so social we need contact with a physical human being for certain aspects of our well being?
> It's: how does it affect mental health? One way of looking at it is: are we so social we need contact with a physical human being for certain aspects of our well being?
No I don't think that's a good way to look at it. By that metric anything that is not socializing with other physical human beings is equally bad. Reading a book is bad. Eating is bad. Showering is bad. The way you've phrased this question, you've assumed that digital content is so pervasive that you don't get enough physically present socializing, which isn't necessarily true to evaluate the question "does it affect our mental health?". If we're open to extreme cases, everything affects mental health. The question you really want to be asking is "does it materially affect most peoples' mental heath?". Personally, I think the answer is no not really. Obviously it becomes a vice for some.
The real question is how would you know if it did?
Addiction thinking sounds a lot like self reflection too: “I’m not addicted, I just like it very much. I can stop at any time I want, I just don’t want to”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting everyone who likes something is addicted. It is just the means of finding that out is pretty tricky, especially for hyper-normal stimulus like processed food, porn, cocaine or some bits of the internet.
We can’t infer our ways out of self-deception, if we could it wouldn’t be self-deception.
Hence the requirement of proper objective tooling to measure such effects on (mental) health.
Rigorous statistical studies?
The technology you seem to be talking about ("virtual worlds", "artist driven sunset") seem to obtainable only by top-tier gaming hardware & artful games that 99.9% people will never use (it actually doesn't even exist yet in the ideal form right now)
This 100%.
Some things you just know are bad news. No one feels good after several hours of late night doom scrolling. You don't need mountains of research to understand that spending ours on your device instead of in the world is bad for your well being.
I didn’t start that way but just noticed patterns over a decade of meeting such folks. Some of the reasons include:
1. Many are often trying really hard to find meaning in travel, as if a forest or a mountain trek would suddenly change their outlook in life. Correlated, many of the most depressed folks and people who struggle to find their place in life I know almost all universally “like the outdoors” and would rate a trek in a beautiful path as their ideal past-time.
2. They look down at least subconsciously at the “urban” way of life as if they’ve somehow disconnected themselves from that hypocrisy. Like you realize you burned down a few trees personally (the equivalent) by flying to Hawaii right?
The general wisdom seems to be that travel will open your mind to new perspectives and tolerance but I’ve not experienced that personally. The folks who travel seem to do it mostly for pleasure, and rarely Appear to have gained any real insight into any worldly process. In this connected age if you want to understand the ramifications of capital punishment in China you don’t need to travel there to know it. In fact you might get a more unbiased picture if you don’t.
An analogy here would be like learning science by making a vinegar volcano or that “heavy pendulum to the face” trick - in principle it’s science I guess? And everyone’s happy to do it, but the kids don’t learn much at all, and clearly given the scientific acumen of the American public which grew up with this stuff they haven’t learned much about what science even stands for. Probably the same with travel.
In modern connected society, nature is a great refuge. I think you are conflating a few namely “time in nature”, people who enjoy solitude, and broadening horizons with travel to new places. IDK, I guess I feel, even in my tech and urban circle of friends, there is a great appreciation of nature and that it is pretty healthy. I’m sure some people patch up issues in their life with it. Most of the folks I know aren’t Doing the Instagram, travel, my life is awesome thing. They just go to nature for a nice scene, chill, peace and quiet, read some books, contemplate life. Do it with friends who enjoy it.
My take, I love getting deep into nature for solitude and quiet. It’s a forcing function to disconnect. The travel is just a means to new vistas, but we usually drive to places. The point isn’t really to broaden horizons so much as to see new places. I don’t really broadcast my lifestyle. I don’t promote it to others. I just do it. I also enjoy many things only urban and suburban life really offers (martial arts, etc). Anyway, you touch on some good points, but I also think the views are narrow and don’t capture the spirit of why many people are drawn to nature :)
Balance in most things tends to lead to a deeper and healthier relationship with those things (nature, travel, etc) over time.
I do definitely judge quickly and summarily. But my thought process is I’m ready to change my opinion on anyone at a moments notice as I learn about them, and I don’t avoid people due to preconceived prejudices, so why not go wild with my judgement? It’s fun, it makes me look for underlying motives, and I’m happy to be wrong more often than not!
The moment I say this out loud, I typically don’t keep too many people around, for sure, but I’m not bothered by it that much. The ones that stick around are in the end much more fun for me to hang out with anyways.
I've seen many sunsets that people like to call "the best" sunset (sunsets at sea on a boat, on mountaintops, in deserts) and some of my favorite sunsets I've seen have actually been in urban areas. The reflections of glass and the sharp angles of the buildings can combine in beautiful ways. Obviously there are popular things like "Manhattanhenge" but if you just walk around and look for a nice angle, you can find something special in many cities. The haze and rough angles of poorer, industrial areas can play with the setting sun in beautiful ways.
>Not everyone Can afford to camp or trek or take a break year
I've hosted travelers on Couchsurfing and many of my guests had an income, when they were working, of a few dollars per day. They'd budget a pittance for food and plan to couchsurf and hitchhike their way through Europe - and they seem to have a great time doing it. Now, sure, I was in the Netherlands, so not everyone could visit if poor (visa issues keep out many poor countries, but not all - Ukranine, Venezuela, etc can visit visa free.) Even if a visa or a plane ticket is beyond prohibitive, you can travel in your local region. If you're Russian you have access to all the CIS countries, if you're Chinese you have access to most of Asia. Visit those areas and you'll see people traveling en masse on tiny budgets. In Russia especially I've seen many people travel with only money for food - couchsurfing and hitchhiking to get around otherwise. Sure, there are people living hand to mouth and people with dependents that can't do this, but billions can.
...Except you seem to have completely ignored the actual words in my comment. I was explicitly not talking about my experience (as you’ve astutely deduced, I’m a privileged guy from a first world country.) I was talking about the direct words of countless people I’ve hosted through Couchsurfing, the majority (!) of which were from countries that my guests themselves would describe as third world and impoverished. I’m simply repeating the words spoken to me by many a traveler down to their last pennies: their almost religious creed, which they will repeat happily, that anyone can travel no matter how broke. Whenever I would ask if I could tell their story, they insisted I should, proud of it as a giant middle finger to the cynics of the world. So when you respond with “check your privilege”, you’re really telling an impoverished Ukrainian guy whose house was bombed to pieces to check his privilege - I'm simply the storyteller for him and his compatriots, because HN rarely intersects with their world.
I would implore you to talk to the same people you claim cannot exist - the millions of impoverished travelers of the world. I don’t think I do their stories justice. But the ridiculous claim that they cannot exist, that they must live their lives without so much as a sunset (!) as you said - that to me is disgusting and strips them from their agency as humans. But hey, take it up with them, I suppose. Feel free to pick up a hitchhiker and lecture him how he doesn’t and shouldn’t exist - but don’t forget to tell him to check his privilege before you let him out.
That's true, my bad.
That said: It's not just a few people that have exited the rat race. In many impoverished countries there is no rat race even available to join if one wanted. True youth unemployment is higher than the official numbers in pretty much every country on the planet, and even by those official numbers there are several large countries with the majority of the youth unemployed.
>the billions of folks who can’t travel (according to you because they are too weak to decide to)
I never said that. In fact, I respect people who would never want to travel regardless of the opportunity - it's an unusual preference to have. Amusingly enough I believe people like this are partially necessary to preserve the magic of travel; many of the most authentic characters I meet, rich or poor, are people who are 100% their village, they were born there and will die there. Those people are often the fabric of their local community.
Worth noting, I don't disagree with your initial assertion, which I'll summarize as "if your life sucks, a screen can be a good escape." What I disagreed with is that the urban poor can't watch sunsets, or that money is a prerequisite for travel.
Anyway, to articulate my point clearer, what I dislike is stripping agency from the poor. Yes, obviously, living in poverty is devastating to your health and happiness and stress and so many other things. But it doesn't mean you can't watch a sunset, or that it's impossible to travel. So, hey, if you can and you want to, stick out your thumb and see where it takes you.
cigarette and oil companies paid off researchers for decades to drown out negative research results. Facebook and other major tech companies have literally trillions of dollars incentivizing them to try and discredit all these research results
That's our legal and court systems being influenced by junk science funded by shitty corporate actors.
Actual science is what they're trying to drown-out. And yes, big-money can influence academic review and publishing, and it's a real problem. (actually a HUGE problem). But that's not what you're describing. There are good scientists doing real and valid work in both establishing the cancer-tobacco link, and climate research with regard to carbon from fossil/petroleum fuel burning. That's not being drowned out in academia. It's being drowned out in the profit-driven political and newsmedia spheres.
Absolutely drive your own life in accordance with your own intuition. Without accurate and compelling research it's all you have. If you're a scientist though, intuition is the starting point of new research.
That being said, I have disconnected from technology for up to a year at a time and overall it's not better. Technology introduces a lot of convenience and can reduce the time we spend on a lot of mundane chores, clearing up more time to spend in the real world ultimately. In the end it's all about balance.
we also love rational argument, and this is an emotional appeal/argumentum ad populum/"appeal to taste" fallacy. Also, "mindless clicking" is disparaging, I wouldn't call what I'm literally doing right now "mindless clicking"
> Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one?
Depends on the fidelity of the reproduction ;) I've certainly seen some quite impressive skyboxes in games. And somehow, people seem to survive without ever having seen a sunset over a body of water...
> I’m happier, my wife is happier, my two teen kids are happier
what's good for the goose is not always what's good for the gander
A typical case is what to do when it's cold. Most people prefer to close all the windows and turn on the heating to prevent getting cold and catching the flu or a common cold. (That is a very confusing name.) But we know they are caused by virus, so it's better to keep the windows as open as possible and use warm cloth. (Unless there is a blizzard outside.)
Possibly more, I'd argue: that work of fiction may have a much more emotional arc than your own life.
Not everybody's direct immediate "real world" life is great, or has the ingredients available to be great "in person." This goes back as long as we've been telling stories.
I think it's not so surprising since everybody "feels" this is true. Making people look where they can confirm their bias.
I'm not saying it's not a thing, but I think this is an issue with a lot of studies that look at something where people either do it and don't want to feel good or bad about it or have some beliefs about it being good or bad, e.g chocolate/wine/eggs are good/bad for you.
I haven't followed the field, but it's hard for me to imagine published research in serious academic journals where causation claims are made without at least some discussion about the direction of causation and hidden confounders.
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/173276/is-it-corre...
https://study.com/academy/lesson/negative-correlation-in-psy...
> If the researchers make no causation claims
But sentences like "kids using their phones more than x hours a day are on average sadder" very much imply one.
The causality fits very well into our world view. It also gives a very "simple fix". Limit video games, limit screen time, limit X.
When the real problem is significantly harder. Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism.
If there's a real, reproducible, verifiable link, I'm all game for it, but when the problem is so wide spread and the answer is so simple, it really needs to be reproduced across multiple studies.
Because rarely is the problem + solution truly that simple.
While I don't question that systemic racism is real, I don't quite see the link here. Isn't the kind of violence video games get blamed for more commonly committed by non-minority people who have mental health issues and/or were "social outcasts" rather than racially motivated? I mainly remember the topic as coming up in connection with school shootings and the likes, not potentially racial hate crimes.
100% agree on the looking for simple (and comfortable to admit!) fixes though. It is so much easier to say "we made a mistake letting kids play these games" than it is to face the truth that some people are either completely left behind by society or descend into incomprehensible madness for no comprehensible reason.
Solving that will go a lot further than worrying about the comparatively tiny number of suburban white kids shooting up their schools.
Note that "systemic racism" here doesn't need to mean any individual involved in this is still racist. It can just mean the lasting after-effects of institutional racism from decades ago that we never bothered trying to actively undo and just hoped everything would get better when we told the institutions they could no longer legally be racist.
> Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism.
Some people use video games as bogeyman, some people use time spent online, and you just used racism. Could it be that you are from the US (alternatively: from the anglosphere) and i am not?
At this point i find it hilarious how US people point at every second problem and be like, "racism is behind this". I hope i'm not the only one who feels this is some kind of insane.
No, its not.
> Every disparity between races has one simple explanation, racism, disregarding all other possible causes.
No, “systemic racism” is not “all racial disparities are caused by racism”. It is “some racial disparities are caused by institutional features that may seem racially neutral on shallow analysis but which structurally disadvantage particular races”.
> The data contradicts the narrative
Well, it certainly contradicts your strawman narrative, but that has nothing to do with what systemic racism is about.
Additionally, if your goal is to "expose" people instead of working with them to figure out what is happening, then all you will ever find are exposures. That doesn't mean that's all there is to find.
I say this is a emotionally driven pattern and nothing rational or fact-based. In my eyes, the "systemic _ism" is just a pretext, the kind of pretext people make up to conceptualize their feelings. And i think it needs to be exposed to prevent it from interfering with the constructive talk.
What caused me to be bugged by irjustin's post: They accurately point out how humans pick the easy answers even when they are wrong, and he continues to make the exact same mistake in their next line. Just, how? Is it easier pointing at others than to reflect upon yourself?
I think most people, right or left leaning, could agree to recognize that as systemic racism?
Furthermore, how do we know housing discrimination is caused by racism instead of class? If a landlord doesn't want to rent to black Americans he's racist. If he doesn't want to rent to white Americans he's not. But what if in both cases he's worried about not getting rent because of perceived class, is one racism and the other not?
if that's not housing discrimination, I don't know what is.
IMHO this is the elephant in the room. The US is a bad place for poor people, and the black folks are overrepresented in the poorer social classes.
The social and economical system of the US is failing, and media and politicians are sprouting anti-racist slogans to distract attention away from their failings to improve the living conditions of the poor.
Its not racism, its poverty that is eating the country.
When we look at Nigerian Americans we see they earn more than whites and they are more educated than whites. We see the same with other ethnic minorities. If class was determined by the color of someone's skin this would be impossible. Clearly there are other factors at play.
Political discourse in the US would be a lot more healthy if the focus was on class instead of race.
This post is a perfect example of Poe's law. I genuinely can not tell if it's satire, it is so extreme.
I'm not trying to demean the post or poster, but I think this is a good microcosm of current Western society, especially the US. Taking this post on face value, I genuinely don't know how to respond this this. It triggers the same feeling I get when someone tells me Jewish people secretly control the world.
It really seems like these conspiracy minded beliefs are getting major uptake on both the left and right, and that strikes me as extremely dangerous. I wonder how this sort of thinking correlates with excess screen time? It does seem like these ideas largely spread online.
This lead to a lot of low-fat diets and products that advertised themselves as "99% fat free", "fat reduced" etc. - many of which contained extra sugar.
Of course, now we know this belief was not only wrong, but harmful. At the time, though it "felt" true.
I am almost certain this cultural phenomenon is what GP was referencing.
1. A person's mental health is likely to improve if they reduce their social media usage.
2. A person's mental health is likely to improve if they and all/most of their friends reduce their social media usage.
Intuitively, I can see why the first one might be false, even if the second one turns out to be true. So much of modern social life is deeply involved with social media, including a lot of the conversation at IRL social events. Unilaterally cutting yourself off from all that doesn't seem like an obvious boon to mental health.
It was a helpful structure for me: as much Facebook as I wanted on Friday, none the rest of the week. (I use the Messenger app for FB messages so didn't put any limits there. There's even a separate Messenger website!)
I'd end up naturally spending only 20 minutes or so on Fridays; enough to check notifications and realize nothing really interesting or important was actually on there.
I found Facebook Fridays to be more sustainable than going totally cold turkey. Now I just go on Facebook every once in a while if I have a specific purpose.
Hmm, maybe I need to try Twitter Tuesdays or HN Thursdays...
It's pretty simple: walking outside in parks, where there are trees and green and fresh air, is good for everybody. Staying inside 4 walls is always unhealthy, sitting for too long, or not being exposed to enough sunlight.
But using a smartphone and social media is compatible with all those things.
The only things that bothers me in social media:
* Narcissistic tendencies
* Bullying and doxxing
* Political bubbles
* Abusive online advertising and influencing, and privacy problems caused by internet giants.
Other than that, social media is not so bad.
1. as a publishing and sharing platform for your art, adventures, and life events
2. to keep in touch with your friends.
Of course when every other avenue of socialization is limited, online access becomes better than nothing.
It's rather convenient that the article doesn't mention the study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...) was performed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We use this insight with our children. E.g. it’s not “no devices” it’s “no consumption right now, you can only use your devices for creation/discovery, consumption time is limited to 1 hour at these times”.
The link is between sedentary lifestyle and mental well-being. Not device use and well being.
Why do we need to imagine something that actually takes place? Phase 3 trials of vaccines relied on self-reporting of symptoms by participants. E.g:
https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_P...
See section 8.13. COVID-19 Surveillance (All Participants).
A lot of other medical research relies on self-reporting of symptoms as well.
Also, time spent may not be related so some types of mental health issues like depression, but we have many other mental health issues like anxiety, loneliness, etc.
Any skepticism of these experts is clearly rooted in hatred of children.
Less snarkily, I'd like to see more parenting credentials for those purporting to advise me on how to raise mine, as these Really Smart People don't seem to have society on an optimal course.
Regardless of what one thinks of Brexit, I think Nigel Farage very accurately described technocratic class as people who've never had a "proper job". This could be expanded to "people with no real life experience".
Like the parent commenter, I'm increasingly skeptical of advice given by people who have more schooling than meaningful life experience -- especially when they lack experience in the exact area they're an "expert". I'll gladly take parenting advice from a plumber with four kids over that given by a childless Ivy Leaguer with a PhD, loft apartment, and a French bulldog.
Or put another way, you treat being "triggered" by being exposed to the triggering mechanism.
But i think we should also look at happiness of kids starting from their families, we live in a corporate era of bonus coming from mass layoff, speculation, crisis, crashes, instability, and so on, which i guess affect families and the happiness of the youngest of those families, i think maybe politicians should also stop blaming everyone else except them, especially those who have been sitting at congress for centuries