Continuous Social Media Scrolling Negatively Impacts Eye Movement | Hacker News Reader

Continuous Social Media Scrolling Negatively Impacts Eye Movement

optometryadvisor.com

65 pointsyamrzou41 comments

Hard to tell from the article if this is something specific to "social media" scrolling, or (as my guess would be) just a finding that reading via scrolling is potentially bad for your eyes.

Be interested to understand if other ways of consuming content (swiping pages or whatever) would be better, as I do almost all my reading on my phone these days, so would prefer not to screw my eyes.

I don't even understand what leads to the exact conclusion that it is bad for the eyes.

Repetitive movements of tiny muscles that were never designed to do that kind of movements in the last millions of years of evolution and suddenly have to handle it hours per day.

That can be applied the same to pretty much every modern physical problem (diet, sitting all day, bad posture, carpal tunnel syndrome, &c.)

Scrolling horizontally is physically painful for my eyes. And today's user interfaces use horizontal scrolling a lot, for some reason UI "designers" think it's a good idea to go, probably only because it's different than vertical scrolling, and that's the only reason.

Unlimited lists are also a bad UX paradigm (they're the main consumer of vertical scrolling). I don't get why people don't think about UX, even if it's their sole job to do so. It's like most web developers are on autopilot, taking what's available and using it without thinking about it. This is also why I don't like this web application trend.

I get really depressed when I think about today's user interface designs.

>probably only because it's different than vertical scrolling,

I've working with... Questionable UI designers coming from mobile gaming. I can totally hear one suggesting the side scroll because "users associate a right swipe with sex ever since Tinder. So it will lead to more engagement because users won't stop swiping right!"

I'm confused. The conclusion seems to say that while participants were scrolling horizontally, their eyes moved less vertically... duh?! And that the effect was more significant if they had cycled before? Ok, so?!

Seems like an absolutely pointless finding, not to mention the fact that this was based on only 12 participants.

This seems less an article, more notes by a grad student excited to attend their first big conference and with missing details added post hoc.

At least the author linked to the original poster... A link that is now broken since the conference was in 2021 and it's Eventbrite

2 sessions of 15 minutes of 12 participants? This can hardly be statistically relevant?

Don't look at any double-blind studies for cancer medication!

Of course it can, as long as the sample is truly random, you just need a really strong result with a population this small.

I am very confused by the study. Participants who scrolled and biked were less able to bike as well at the same time? Wouldn't you expect any activities done simultaneously to affect each others performance negatively?

I'd pay money for a non-smooth scrolling option in Android (like the PageDown key).

I'd pay more money for such a feature in iOS

You can PageDown by tapping the circle icons to the right on: https://hw.leftium.com/

I think this could be generalized into a bookmarklet or extension.

It's a smooth scroll on my android device...

I'm not seeing control groups scrolling books and/or using a paginated interface?

Wait, so the only option besides doomscrolling is to hold something else against your face?

How about not looking at a screen? [Escape the matrix]

My sentiments aside, I'd like to know if it will actually help, and if my ebook reader (which doesn't scroll) is actually okay. So, looks like they could have extracted more knowledge here...

I don't think anyone is confused whether hiking or doomscrolling is better for you.

But to understand the mechanism behind the claim in the title it would be useful to know whether social media plays a role here, or if it's continuous scrolling, or something entirely different. Understanding that might not make people go outside more, but it would help make the things people are already doing less harmful.

At this point, are there any positives for the use of social media at all?

There is no benefit to ultra-processed fast food, but a lot of people eat it anyway. Social media is just fast food for the brain.

Well, there is one to fast food: it's fast and uncomplicated to prepare.

It's more soylent green.

In the early 2010s there were definite upsides. Before social media there was corporate media, which is almost always controlled by the rich and powerful, or in many places outright by the government. Social media at its core is media by the masses, so when early-ish social media broke the mold we got a lot of people striving for positive social reform, like Occupy Wallstreet, the Arab Spring and the Hacktivism that happened under the Anonymous umbrella. Most of them got successfully snuffed out, but had social media continued like back then a lot of good might have happened.

This changed about 2015 as the weak and powerful alike learned how to manipulate discourse of social media, and bots started flooding most platforms.

Right now the biggest "positive" effect I can think of is that people are less idolized. Before social media you only saw the good side of most public figures. Now that we get to see a lot more unfiltered thoughts from them we get a much more nuanced picture of everyone, both their good and ugly parts. Not sure if this is a positive overall, since lower expectations also means we don't hold people to as high standards. I guess we'll see how this plays out as society adapts

>are there any positives for the use of social media at all?

Making tech- /ad- companies rich?

Depends on what you count as social media. Are we on social media right now?

No. This is only Web 2.0.

HN is literally social media

I can't add you as friend/contact or follow you here, so why do you think this is a social media platform and not a discussion board?

Because a discussion board is social media

citation needed

Did people ever expect any apart from the dopamine hits experienced during consumption when you find something that interests you?

I've found social media use a good yardstick for identifying lunatics and avoiding them. Since I stopped hanging around with anyone who uses TikTok, Facebook or Instagram and LinkedIn, I seem to have made better real life connections with people who aren't lunatics.

How else are you going to see relevant ads?

I do think the ecosystems that developed around mobile tech will be viewed as the cigarettes of our era.

However this account hardly contributes to that conclusion since it's so small a study without any controls, at least according to the rewrite. I really wish the link to the original poster wasn't broken

Customer support

Don't know about everyone else but if I'm on my phone my eyes tend to fix on one place on the screen as I scroll anyway. Hell I even tend to scroll at the same speed I'm reading an article so I'm basically reading in almost the same spot the entire time.

Those who don’t have an Eye Movement Day have only themselves to blame at this point.

Do you have more information about that practice? the only thing showing up in google is your very comment...

It was a joke, a play on the Leg Day/Chest Day/... of bodybuilders.

I think I’m up to 45 days now in my regiment for dealing with the ailments of modern living.

thanks, as if anyone going to stop scrolling after reading this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com