Commuting time of more than 30 min one way linked to higher chance of depression | Hacker News Reader

Commuting time of more than 30 min one way linked to higher chance of depression

sciencedirect.com

57 pointsbelltaco52 comments

I know back-to-office people like to pretend that commuting is this amazing thing, and that working in stuffy offices together whilst still staring mostly at a screen and communicating via Slack is somehow tons more productive than remote work, but I'm sure most people can see the obviousness that it's a net negative for mental health, no? And so if we know that, why are we still pushing for the unhealthy? Who cares about productivity when it comes at such a cost.

one of the biggest losses with commuting is the amount of housework that then doesn't get done. A half hour commute one way is an hour of my life I spend sitting every day. I would gladly spend half an hour a day cleaning house etc. if it meant I had a spare half hour to do fun things, instead I get home with just enough time to eat, shower, watch an episode of something and sleep. That's the real killer to mental health I think. You come home to a house with chores piling up, so things don't feel like a home, and you cannot find the willpower (after some time) to continue doing those chores at the expense of free time.

Is a 30 minute commute that bad? I feel like a lot of people mindlessly browse for 60 minutes a day at home. You could do that on your commute instead of at home and get housework done at home.

My commute, if I were to go in, is 40-60 minutes of intense, aggressive, vigilant driving. Parking (which I have to pay) and walking to the office then requires evading potentially violent people.

I'm not saying working in the office is a bad thing, I quite enjoy it, but when you have a commute like mine, not commuting the better option.

It is extremely frowned upon to mindlessly browse when you're driving a car.

And frankly when I used to take transit the busses and trains were so cram packed at rush hour I could barely move, nevermind hold my phone and scroll. It was often all I could do to keep from falling and squishing someone.

It also was more like a 40-60 minute commute each way, which I think is more common than a <30 minute commute in many big cities.

> frowned upon to mindlessly browse when you're driving a car.

Here, illegal. Traffic safety. Same goes for cellphone usage. Even on bikes.

But then perhaps OP was thinking bus, train, etc... but there you often have other problems like you mentioned, available space being the most important one. Smartphones seem to have solved that problem judging by the behaviour of my fellow commuters.

They seem to manage staring at a screen no matter how impossible the setting is and even regardless of the potential dangers of them being totally unaware of what is going on around them. Impressive, really.

30 minutes would require me to be paid very well. It’s also not just 30 min, but 30min with 5min being 2 standard deviations.

Being within 5min or even 10min of work/school/gym/grocery store and close family friends is such a game changer. Bonus if one or more is walking distance, especially close family/friends.

That mindless scrolling is not the same as staring at a wall, which is what commuting is more analogous to. Besides, my free time isn't spent on mindless scrolling unless I've had a long day and am mentally so drained that's all i am still capable of.

Don't forget how easy it is to skip grocery shopping or feel too exhausted to cook after your drive home, and instead hit a drive thru or order Skip The Dishes.

This has to be a factor as well.

I’m guessing a lot of pro office people optimized their life more for a short commute. I’ve stubbornly always been at most a 10 minute drive away and it was never that annoying to go in (open offices aside).

A lot of pro-office people, or just people in general that I know, would go insane if they didn't have people nearby to talk to every half hour or so. That seems the most compelling reason most of the time.

I guess pro-office people are all extroverts then. Really sucks for the rest of us.

So every time you change jobs you also change homes, or how does that work? Or you only look for new jobs near the old job? With an average turnaround of 2 or so years for a software engineer, I can't imagine having to move every 2 years.

Exactly. Every new job I have had involved a move. I now have a house and a short commute, but if I want to change jobs now, it will almost certainly have to be remote. And this was a consideration even before Covid. I really don't want to move again.

For me I just lived somewhere with a lot of companies close by. I’m not saying everyone can or should do this, I just think a factor in the large sentiment gap between people who think RTO is crazy vs people who think WFH is crazy might be that one group has put themselves through hellish commutes for years and the other hasn’t.

Not many people like the commute itself. A few people do, as it may give them time to themselves. But people do like to work in the "stuffy" office. It takes them away from distractions at home. It makes it easier to separate home and work. It gets them out of the house and around other people. Personally I'm not one of those people, I prefer to work from home. But I don't think it is obvious that working on the office is a net negative.

Choice quote from this article about a study in Korea:

> Finally, data on transportation modes—such as car, public transit, and walking—are not available in the KWCS database. Different transportation modes may lead to different physical and mental health effects (White and Rotton, 1998).

That seems like a big understatement. I expect in roughly increasing order of depression, or decreasing order of satisfaction:

walking, biking, train, subway, bus, car

Yeah, the comfort levels affect this hugely.

I'd rather do a 45 minute commute via a clean air conditioned train with few and well behaved passengers than a 30 minute one on a crowded dirty bus.

A thirty minute stroll from home to the office could be considered a net benefit, in all honesty.

When I had the option of a 25 minute drive or a 35 minute bicycle ride I took the bicycle all the time. Exercise, sunlight, and the joy of passing stuck motorists in the bicycle lane.

Sightseeing feels also different, in a better way, when cycling or walking than when using a car.

I have 15-20 comfortable train ride followed by a 15 minute stroll. It's pretty relaxing... If I'm in a hurry I can use a bike share to bike from the train station to the office but that's less relaxing since you have to watch out for cars...

In a Mediterranean climate, yes.

Fair point.

and a crowded dirty bus, for me at least, is wildly more preferable than driving unless the drive is some beautiful leisurely rural setting

> train with few and well behaved passengers

Few? If you are commuting you will be doing so in the same drove as all the others that are trying to reach the office space within the same window of a select few hours. And, probably the same when you return. Few is not an option.

As to well behaved, well... we all live in more or less mixed cultural groups these days thanks to i18n, expats, immigration, and travel and stuff... "one man's meat is another mans poison..." ... don't even get me started on the joys of smartphones - other peoples' smartphones...

Added:

With trains there is also the specific issue that your nominated 30 minute one-way commute will at random intervals be of much longer duration, possibly hours (most of these spent idle, waiting for something out of your control). And, the fact that you will not know this in advance. I have no knowledge of any train system anywhere in the world where this does not hold, but I would love to be enlightened.

> walking, biking, train, subway, bus, car

You grade subway as less depressing than bus and car? In which one of these transportation means are you stuck in a dark tunnel?

... but using transportation which requires little to no mental exertion or fear of getting into a violent car wreck.

For many, the fear of being harmed by someone on public transportation has a much greater effect on the mind than the risk of getting in a car accident, even if the latter is more likely.

Probably just a person to person thing, but I used to commute on the tube, and I loved tunnels. Way more than riding bus through some parts of London.

I live in a city with good public transport systems (Prague) and subway (metro) is pretty enjoyable except for maybe very late evening hours. Buses brake super hard and are crowded (which subways often are too but there it is more bearable than in a bus because Prague subway lines are relatively spacious and the trains are quite large as well unlike for example in London). Car you don't need to share, but you're definitely sharing the traffic jam as you are in a bus. Prague subway is not perfect, but it is definitely workable and at least for me would be more enjoyable than driving to work (if I didn't work from my home office).

You don’t have to drive the subway.

I would take a subway over a bus any day. Shoot I would even take a car over a bus. In general I think a subway is more convenient than a bus. They don't have the same traffic problems a bus does. They tend to run more often. Buses are slow, don't run very often. And generally transfers take up too much time

Comfort level includes transportation reliability:

Anecdote: I rode the BART/MUNI every day in San Francisco to work for over 10 years. When I moved to the suburbs, I would drive to the BART and then take BART in, rather than take the bus to BART. What I noticed was whenever I had a bus transfer, the wait time and frustration would increase substantially. Buses were less reliable and trying to catch a connection was stressful. Driving enabled me to avoid those frustrating transfers by going to the most direct route on my own accord.

Due to working from home, I tend to reverse commute in my area rather often while running chores, and I can't understand how people sit in that traffic on a daily basis. It must be maddening.

The quality of the time is very important.

I used to have a 1hr+ commute each way, but it was 70MPH on open highway.

This is in stark contrast to a 1hr commute in gridlock traffic.

My current commute (which I don't do daily) is 1:15, 1:30, and a mix of high speed freeway and slammed transitions.

I'm very good friends with my XM radio.

And, honestly, it doesn't depress me at all. I just roll with it.

Yeah other people here who rank car so low in satisfaction must be talking about traffic jam only. If the road is free and I can go fast, the satisfaction shoots up above any public transportation.

Do it on a bicycle, it will have the opposite effect.

Once commuted bicycle + ferry (SF Bay). I looked forward to it every day.

Yeah but where do you park the ferry when you arrive at work?

I've commuted using bicycle for years as I used to live-and-work in one of the top bicycle-friendly cities of the world. With that particular bias, I would agree. However, for many people cycling will not be an option, either because the commute is too long, or because of other obstacles.

My bicycle commute time back then was higher than 30 mins per way, but it still was a net positive on my mood. It is just not an option for everyone.

I commuted 1.5 hours each way for a summer job once, it lasted just long enough to really internalize how awful it is. I don't understand how anybody does that for more than a few months who doesn't absolutely have to.

If I had to commute by car every day in traffic… that would absolutely suck. Hopping on the train always feels better though. I get to see random people, relax, listen to music, not worry about crashing…

I have an hour commute to and from work. Your playlist for music will never be long enough it will repeat regularly.

Some recommendations after doing that for a couple decades, get into audiobooks or long form podcasts. Or schedule your drive in during a morning meeting and call in via teams/zoom/etc. Or use that time to call a different family member, friend or loved one.

I wonder if it's because long commutes are comorbid with not being able to afford living close to work and poverty, and poverty is well-known to be corrosive to mental health.

I disagree with these conclusions in principle.

At 2 different stages of my life I've had a "long" commute. One was ~90km the other was ~20km. I drove one, and rode a bike for the other. Each took about an hour.

I would listen to audiobooks on each one, and it was my favorite part of the day. I sincerely beleive that this is a `making lemonade out of lemons` type of situation.

You can still "do something" with your time. Listen to a book, a lecture, podcasts. Anything that engages you and you enjoy. Stop looking at it as `wasted time in traffic`.

It is quite interesting the various anecdotes in the comments that all seem to have different opinions and contradict each other. All of which of course can be true--including the article. One thing can be linked to another and there still be outliers of course.

For my story. I moved within walking distance of my office 20 years ago. Since then, I will never do any sort of commute. It completely changed my day. I since changed to remote work, but if I have to go into an office again, I will move within a couple blocks of wherever that office is.

This is a confusing attitude - you felt OK with spending that time listening to something, so you "disagree with these conclusions"? The conclusion isn't that some people can't be OK with a long commute.

You sound like you're trying to be helpful, but you also sound accusative toward people who are miserable commuting (regardless of what they are listening to while doing it). Obviously we can't solve the misery of the majority of those people by saying "you have the wrong attitude". "Making lemonade out of lemons" is simply inapplicable in this context. If a person can give up that time to commute, then that same person, without the commute, could give up that time to listen to something if they actually wanted to. The listening is merely a mitigation, which will help some people a lot, some people a little, and some people not at all - it's not some kind of opportunity.

I can listen to an audio book on my comfy coach without risking permanent injury and death at home.

A "link to higher chance of depression" does not mean that 100% of the people with 1 hour commute develop depression. Even if it meant that 99% do, your belonging to the remaining 1% does not invalidate the study. Personal experience is anedoctal evidence, i.e. not science, not _true_ in the sense that it generalizes beyond yourself. People are different from one another, and what might be neutral or enjoyable for you might be depressing for other people. All this study is saying is that on average, a long commute is more likely to be depressing.

Also, there is some arrogance in assuming that all those depressed people just _haven't thought about_ cycling to work, or listening to a podcast, and should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps to start feeling better.

Not everyone gets to make lemonade out of lemons. For one thing, you need to be able to afford sugar (_but it's cheap to me!_). For another, you need to like lemonade in the first place.

Besides... Correlation is not causation, and the depression might not be a direct consequence of being bored on transport. Perhaps it's because they get to spend 30 fewer minutes with their family, pets, or hobbies. Perhaps it turns out people with longer commutes tend to have worse paying jobs, or live in areas with less opportunities for recreation (even a local park counts). But I think it's at least plausible that lengthening your already-too-long workday by an hour can't possibly make your life happier.

Waiting for an RTO supporter to argue the opposite.

Water is wet.

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