What excessive screen time does to the adult brain | Hacker News Reader

What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

longevity.stanford.edu

270 pointsrzk191 comments

“One of the biggest issues with picking up the phone right away in the morning is that when you have an object close to your face, it’s registered as a threat,” says Loeffler. “You wouldn’t want to wake up and look a bear in the face every morning. On a physiological level, it’s the same thing.”

This is interesting to me. It does make some evolutionary sense but at the same time, i wake up every morning and look at my girlfriends face, hopefully that does not subconsciously trigger the same response.

That said, the "sky before screens" idea has been rummaging in my mind since i first heard about it https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/sky-before-screens-has-ma...

This sounds like hocus pocus to me, along the lines of the claim that phone alert tones activate the "love centre" of the brain. Just so happens that the "love centre" is also the "vomiting centre" along with a load of other stuff. I'd treat this hand-wavy claim with the same kind of skepticism - your counter-example is an excellent one. I agree that looking at a phone first thing in the morning is a bad idea, but for very different reasons.

Striking a balance in our morning routines can be more beneficial overall.

I assume you don't mean an equal ratio of drivel and truly meaningful experiences, though I'd love to hear more.

I got into "deep work" a while ago, keeping my internet off until noon every day. It blew my mind how calm and focused I was when I didn't fill my head with nonsense first thing in the morning.

I think it also depends on what you’re doing on your phone. Big difference between waking up and checking Twitter and waking up and messaging a loved one across the world.

I'm unsure how much of a difference that really makes as there's lots of distractions in my (and probably most peoples) morning routine that are not related to my phone. Boring things like the hygiene routine but also things that come up and require thought such as (almost) empty grocery items or things related to the commute such as radio in the car or ads in public transit. While most of these are not specifically engineered to be attention seeking, I still see most of them as distracting and my focus only starts when I sit down to do some work.

It's all about your body's natural response to dopamine highs and lows.

Social media, doom scrolling, candy crush, etc. are all high-dopamine activities. After you engage in these activates for a while, then stop, you're left at a relative dopamine deficiency, which your brain abhors. It attempts to rectify the deficiency by encouraging you to engage in high-dopamine activities, which you experience as being 'distracted' from the relatively low-dopamine-rewarded work you're trying to focus on. If you avoid engaging in high-dopamine activities in the morning, your brain WILL be more amenable to focus on low-dopamine-rewarded work.

Read Dopamine Nation for a handy primer on this.

To be clear, I woke up, opened a sugar free red bull, and began working immediately.

The rule was to spend at least the first hour offline, but I'd find myself getting so much done, I'd want to keep going, and usually extend it to 3 or 4.

In fact I was so productive during this time, I found myself looking actually looking forward to work the next morning.

I generally avoided opening my email until lunchtime for the same reason. That meant I could work all morning while I was fresh and alert on the things that I had planned the day before. Then I'd spend the afternoon on the more administrative side of software development including planning what to do the next day.

My BS-meter also went off on this.

Mine too

Maybe if you attached googley eyes to your phone so your brain recognises it as a being? Worst thing my phone is gonna do in the morning is fall on my face and make me do a weird pouty lip airbag sort of move

Having said that I was washing my face this morning and in a moment of fight or flight I did rip the washcloth to shreds with my teeth

Bears also have eyes, so I imagine this wouldn’t inherently solve the problem.

Agreed that justification sounds like rubbish. Especially when one of their stated alternatives is to read a book. Unless you’re reading a digital book through a projector, that too is an object close to the face.

A while ago, there was a new wives’ tale going around how the red notification dot on replicate a slot machine so people would get addicted (1).

This was completely ignorant of Apple’s history of first using the numbered dot over the Apple Mail stamp icon that looked like a postmark.

I’m really skeptical of all these experts.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/magazine/red-dots-badge-p...

There is only one reason why my phone alerts: something gone wrong, and they need my attention.

I hate phone alerts with all my soul. I wish they never existed as a concept.

You do know that you can turn alerts off?

Given the first sentence, that seems quite likely.

Other things that are regularly close to my face: my glasses, several pillows in my bed, my fork as I eat, my children as I hug them.

Of course, my children can also jam their face into mine when they're being all manic and running around and that's not fun

But clearly, there is a big difference between "things I choose to put in front of my face" and "things that appear in front of my face outside of my own agency".

Similar to how you can't tickle yourself.

That wasn't even hard to figure out. First 15 minutes of the day, haven't gotten out of bed yet, with my phone in my face.

I also find it interesting how these sorts of articles never talk about reading books. I find that reading novels too much can also give me feelings of being stuck, not wanting to do anything else, just trundling along doing the same activity over and over again. It's how I got through all 9 books in The Expanse series in only a couple of months.

The problem isn't screens or light or not seeing the sky. It's over indulgence in consumption. It's just plain ol' addiction.

To me it completely explained why we wake up every morning with our hearts racing, thinking our pillow is attacking us.

Or why people who fall asleep cuddling their partners wake up in terror.

/s because Poe's law.

Best thing I’ve done is configure my iphone to not ring but just softly vibrate for calls/texts with “custom taps” and removed any “pending notifications” app badges to avoid this sense ouf urgency. Only thing left is silent breaking news from the Guardian and app notifications on the Lock Screen I can quickly glance at and discard in a tap.

First time hearing about Sky before screens. Lifestyle advice that would work well with software as a profession, I imagine.

> i wake up every morning and look at my girlfriends face, hopefully that does not subconsciously trigger the same response

Giggled out loud, funniest thing I heard all day.

> wake up every morning and look at my girlfriends face, hopefully that does not subconsciously trigger the same response

Do you mean in her or in you?

> It does make some evolutionary sense

Does it? It sounds total bs to me.

"When you have an object close to your face, it's registered as food, because you need to get close to your meal to eat it."

"When you have an object close to your face, it's registered as love, because parents needs to get close to their child to look after them."

When you have a statement that you can bend in an arbitrary way and still make some sense out of it, it's nonesense.

Yeah, sometimes I put a morning banana by my bed, and I'm pretty sure my body doesn't treat it is a threat.

Seeking a charitable explanation, "near things are a threat" is a garbled form of "near things cause physiological arousal"?

That more-inclusive version would then cover cases like "delicious fruit" and "scary spider" and "the thing I put down next to me as a reminder to do something with it as soon as I got up."

I would put sounds much more in a category of threat assessment for the brain than objects. Waking up when there is a big sound (lightning, heavy machinery etc.) can really interrupt one, especially if you haven’t had your full REM cycle.

I do think objects can be affective, but one would never willingly put scary stuff near your bed, unless you’re into that sort of thing.

Now your phone can be threatening if you always expect the worst, e.g. your employer constantly prodding you with messages , but then you have bigger problems.

> morning banana by my bed

this person is living in the year 3200 with moves as smart as this one

Heh, I wish I could say it was because of time-optimized hustle grindset [0], but really I'm just trying to make myself actually eat in the mornings in case it helps me stop with the crazy late nights. [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/delayed-sleep...

And if a bear is close to your face, I'd think it's much too late.

You wouldn’t download a bear

> This is interesting to me. It does make some evolutionary sense but at the same time, i wake up every morning and look at my girlfriends face, hopefully that does not subconsciously trigger the same response.

Yeah, exactly. If my adult brain can distinguish between my wife's face and a bear, or my pillow and bear, why can't it distinguish between my phone and a bear? Plus, the phone is an object I hold in my hand. Is TFA saying that other objects I hold in my hand and bring close to my face so I can get a good look at them register as threats?

It reads like nonsense to me.

I've come across many people in life and I can't remember a single married couple saying anything positive about their circumstances.

I wonder if this theory, as bullshit as it probably is, is on to something?

> when you have an object close to your face, it’s registered as a threat,” says Loeffler

Someone sleeps alone.

> You wouldn’t want to wake up and look a bear in the face every morning

That guy has lived god knows how many years being blissfully unaware of the existence of furries.

> You wouldn’t want to wake up and look a bear in the face every morning.

Sure I would! If I’m alive every day when I look at that bear, that’s a pretty good sign they don’t mean to harm me. In fact, sleeping next to a bear sounds like great protection from other predators, and quite warm and cosy too, like a giant cat.

> like a giant cat.

I'm pretty convinced my cat would eat me when I'm late with her lunch if she could.

That quote made me lose interest in anything that article had to say. It's such a ridiculous claim to say that everything that is close to my face is automatically registered as a threat, and I bet that 99.99% of things that regularly gets close to peoples faces (even disregarding smartphones from that statistic) are actually not threats at all. I don't think it makes evolutionary sense at all since it would cause us to perceive our babies and food as threats too.

Either that quote is taken wildly out of context or the interviewed therapist is full of shit.

I'm surprised you made it that far before filing it as the BS it is, given that "Screens" in general have been the enemy in that article.

Not what they display, how they operate or any other detail. No. Screens. A thing that displays information.

stanford.edu :)

Yes this sort of logic always maddens me. And it has extended to medicine for sure. Simplifying "screen time" as if what type of screen, the size of the screen, brightness, and what you are doing on it are insignificant. Anecdotally I had a "sleep specialist" actually give "no screens before bed" as medical advice. So what am I supposed to do- stare at the wall and think about if I'll be able to sleep? Reading a book will require more illumination which will disrupt circadian rhythm

What's more important is being conscious of what we are doing with screens at what times. I stop using my computer after 7pm typically, no social media before bed or upon waking

Two things work for me, either reading on my phone (I have a support thing) with the eye shield to avoid the blue light or listening to music until I feel sleepy enough to stop.

When it comes to bedtime reading, I found that nothing beats an OLED smartphone so long as you can fully control the brightness and the colors; e.g. a reading app that lets you set whatever you want - i.e. not Kindle - or else things like "color calibration" in GrapheneOS. That way, you can set the text to dull orange or red and dial the brightness very low. With OLED, the blacks are basically non-emissive, so the whole thing can be made extremely little light. This works even better if you gradually dial it down as your eyes get accommodated.

It is just-so. That is the primary method in evolutionary psychology.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

So, hold the phone further away and it will become less appealing?

Other than sounding "bad for you" for some reason to some people, what's wrong with waking up with a threat? Like why would that inherently be bad for you? Nobody explained that in the article and it's taken at face value.

What's wrong with "activating your fight or flight"? I could easily see some pop-sci book being written about how activating your fight or flight boosts testosterone or makes you more aware during your next tasks or whatever. Stress that makes you anxious is correlated with some diseases, but stress that you can deal with can many times be beneficial.

The problem is that basically nothing that happens on the phone is something you can deal with more effectively with a dose of stress hormones. Unless there is a text message that says you suddenly have to literally run somewhere and/or literally fight somebody, you will "deal with" it by like...posting more stuff yourself, and possibly not even that.

What if it's a nice bear

Surely the same thing could be said about picking up a book or a newspaper first thing in the morning?

This strikes me as likely over extrapolating from weak or shaky data. I highly doubt that objects close to you are generally registered as threats. that's absurd, and completely dependent on context, etc. No parent views their baby from a foot away as a threat. The phone is a different context as well, and might be a thread, but certainly not in the general sense.

As someone who has woken up to looking a bear in the face while camping, I can say with 100% confidence that on a physiological level these are not the same thing.

While trying to go a bit deeper into the sources, they honestly feel extremely weak...

An example of how negative impact on the brain is backed:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-019-00182-2

From the abstract: > we systematically identified articles meeting the following inclusion criteria: published in English between January 1999–July 2019; human or animal subjects; primary and secondary sources including original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and narrative reviews. Primary search terms focused on “smartphone,” “mental health,” “substance use,” “neurodevelopment,” and “neurodegeneration”; secondary search terms focused on “social media,” “anxiety,” “cannabis,” and “dementia”.

They basically went fishing for studies that focus on the negative impacts, came back with enough content and packaged it as a meta-study. This sure could show some negative traits potentially associated with screen time. But that's very far from justifying TFA's title, worded as a causation, and not some random association when singling out pathological subjects.

Yeah and it’s not hard to come up with a hypothesis with reverse causation: people struggling with mental health tend to (on average) live more solitary lives with more screen time.

Also people watching five hours of TV a day maybe aren't doing too much exercise.

The author's fairly active elsewhere online, looks like she's a "Health Coach" at UC San Diego with a MS in Kinesiology.

This isn't science journalism, it's closer to influencer health blogging. My impression is that the author doesn't have a background in technical writing and probably wrote this for an audience different from the typical HN crowd.

I'm not very confident about the quality of this study... It already begins like this:

Evidence suggests that chronic sensory stimulation via excessive exposure to screen time may affect brain development in negative ways. Excessive smartphone use may increase the risk [...]

Do they consider "screen time" only to be "smartphone use"? Is it better to use a tablet? Or PC / laptop? What if I use a 6.7" screen with my computer? Does it count as "bad" screen time?

Also, do they take into account what you do on said screen? Reading a book, learning something or binging tiktok videos, watching the facade people put up on facebook / insta don't sound the same to me.

I'd guess that you can equate "screen time" to "smartphone use" in most of the population but here. Similar to what people are using the screen for.

To include so many variations of screen would complicate a lot the study, and without a prior about why it should matter, you are probably safer starting with something more homogeneous.

A huge number of people are professional screen-users. Almost every office job, and quite a few otherwise. I probably spend more time on my work laptop than my phone, and I'm pretty bad for using my phone a lot.

> smartphone use" in most of the population but here

Presumably you don’t think that all the white collar workers who aren’t in tech spend all of their work-hours scrolling tiktok/etc.?

> I'd guess that you can equate "screen time" to "smartphone use" in most of the population but here. Similar to what people are using the screen for.

I'm fairly confident this is not a safe assumption.

> To include so many variations of screen would complicate a lot the study

How so, though?

> without a prior about why it should matter, you are probably safer starting with something more homogeneous.

That's not very scientific, is it? There's no prior as to why it shouldn't matter, which is what the authors seem to think.

Jesus, isn't it at least a bit obvious? OK so let's call it 'interactive screen time'. No, reading ebook doesn't count, as long as you don't keep switching to something else frequently. It will mess up your eyes worse than physical book, but that's about it.

I can see the proper cancer that screens cause to small children development. Heck, some parents are proud how 'digital' their kids are, like scrolling through social media videos is some hard earned skill only few posses. What I see is failed parenting, and I call it like that. Then you look at the mood swings of those kids, how they behave socially, what they eat etc. and its often a sad story. Then you look at parents glued to phones themselves, often overweight, living unhappy unfulfilled lives, and it starts making sense (broad generalization here of course, but I see it very often among peers & a bit younger).

Kids ain't adults for sure but screen time, if not done for actual work or learning, eats time we could be actually doing something with our life. Relaxing, sporting, socializing, learning new skills, making ourselves properly happy. That ain't happening in front of screen, any screen. The energy recharge and 'soul' regeneration that me and everybody else I know experience in nature and wilderness can't be achieved in any other way. Screen time also sets unrealistic expectations on how 'baseline' of normal daily life should be with its always-stimulated-neocortex as such, no wonder kids have attention issues with 'boring' stuff that regular life simply is.

I may be a luddite re this despite being software dev, but in this case happy to be one since I've figured my path to happy fulfilled life, and it sure as hell doesn't need more screen time, nor any made up justifications for some form of addiction to such.

A bit tangential but how does a digital book mess up your eyes? Or a physical one. I don’t think reading has any effect on your eyesight.

People are quick nowadays (or always have been) to bring out the good old „todays kids are rotten to the core“ trope - just because it’s now you who is old and doesn’t get how the world moved on, doesn’t mean it’s any different to the centuries of complaining about the youth before us.

I wasted thousands of hours as a kid on unproductive stuff - I don’t see it as being much different to what kids do today.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9139974/

Reading can absolutely have an impact on the eyes. Close distance reading as well as lack of natural light seem to be conditions that can favor e.g. myopia.

Yes in some cases close distance maybe causes myopia in very young children - this is not the same as „reading is dangerous for your eyes“.

In general it’s good to take care of your eyes, like you do for the rest of the body and doing anything 8h+ without pause is bad.

But concluding that there is some kind of danger associated with reading is nonsense. Almost anything else you do is more dangerous.

Not convinced that the study you posted is evidence of reading being dangerous: >This is a cross-sectional study and therefore causal relationship could not be determined. The data analyzed in the study were drawn from a questionnaire study conducted about 40 years ago

Try figuring out how to not get worked up over a random post next.

Regarding the recommendation to not spend the first hour of the day in front of the screen. I found the other way around more helpful: Not spending the last 1-2 hours in front of screens. This helps me to get better sleep. In the morning, I find it not so difficult and screen time (+coffee) helps me to wake up slowly.

What do you do instead of TV/Computer before bed?

What about a nice book?

I read but every night for 1-2hours? No way.

There's also chores, talking with people, board games, going for a walk, a bath, sex, exercise, just doing nothing in particular for a bit, etc. The choice isnt only screens or books.

Doing the dishes is a nice balance of meditative, boring, and feeling accomplished. A good nightly chore.

Exercise can backfire in terms of sleep. A bit earlier in the day and it's great. But not right before bed, at least not in my experience.

What's so strange about that as a concept? As someone who grew up in the 90s, the idea of doing so is totally normal for me. I mean, I don't do it, but I wouldn't blink at someone else saying they did.

How do you think people achieve the goal of 50 books in a year, for example?

I read but 50 books in a year? No way.

That's only ~1 book a week, which seems perfectly doable? Definitely if we're talking about spending 1-2h/d on it.

It's literally a thing people do, sometimes specifically because it forces them to disconnect in their down time outside of work.

I could do 1-2 books in a day if I made time for it like I used to.

Also a 90s kid.

I hated going to bed as a child (all that wasted time!) but my parents cleverly said I could read in bed if I wanted to stay up.

I usually fell asleep within an hour or two anyway, and I ended up reading a huge number of books, which served me well.

My wife and I sometimes read together before bed now. It definitely aids sleep.

Why not? You can make reading a habit if you want to. I find it highly rewarding and glad I have this habit instead of something else like scrolling social media.

Not disparaging your hobby, its just not for me. I already read enough

Not sure if you are being facetious. I'll put my hand up as someone who reads at least an hour at night before going to sleep. Like anything it becomes normal eventually.

As a matter of fact I'll put my phone away and get my book out.

Good night! :)

i listen to audiobooks -- because i can get some "book time" to myself without having to strain my eyes.

You might be interested in this collection: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/wiki/index/#wiki_how_to_use_...

/r/nosurf is a good start (but isn't particularly a high quality sub)

Nice resource, thanks

I think both make sense. Although I go through phases of following it. I find that in the first few hours of the morning, I prefer to limit inputs to things I don't have control over but instead achieve some small to do list items (starting with making bed). Things I know I can get done and build some momentum. A few hours of productivity gives me enough momentum to take in external inputs.

I try and avoid screens before sleep but also use a Kindle for reading before sleeping - wondering if the e-ink displays count as screen time in studies like this?

LED backlight might. If no backlight probably fine.

Yeah but you need some light in order to read, and most lights are LED nowadays. That said, I have a Philips wake-up light that has a very pleasant yellow and dimmable light. I wonder what its frequency is though, some cheaper leds don't blink fast enough and especially when I'm tired it's noticeable. I just checked it with the slow-mo camera of my phone, my overhead lamps have a visible flickering, but the wake-up light has an interesting shuttering / interlacing effect, when I up the brightness (which increases brightness and shifts the light more to white) it seems to alternate between a white and orange light source. Might be multiple bulbs interlacing.

Anyway, LED backlight shouldn't be a problem if it's not white light. Best to have some additional light in the room though, to reduce contrast / eye strain between the screen and the background.

What about yellow(ish) backlight? I switched to Kobo bc of that

No, only actually candlelight is fine. Ideally an open fire. However reading itself is unnatural so it can only lead to negative outcomes..

This is surely sarcastic, right?

I take it you you’re sarcastic but natural is dying at age twenty from a broken leg, miss me with natural living

I know it's just an example, but it didn't take modern medicine for us not to die of broken legs at twenty. There's some risks sure, but the norm was presumably lying down and resting because it (especially doing anything else) bloody hurts, it gradually healing, and then varying degrees of hobbling for the rest of life because it healed without a splint.

(And then it wouldn't be that surprising I don't think if we figured out splints long before anything you might call medicine.)

We didn’t need modern medicine to heal broken bones but for sure more than what was „naturally“ available.

You can switch out broken bones for „being dragged from the campfire into the dark and devoured“ - another natural occurrence that I gladly live without

IIRC, most of the evidence regarding screens before bed being detrimental were focused on the "blue light" thing, so a warmer light is probably better.

(I think the science behind blue light being bad for us is still up for debate, but it's hard for me to ignore the amount of anecdata I've heard, including my own experience using flux and the like)

Blue light has been shown to affect alertness in the evening in 13 young men here https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

Would be interested in studies refuting this.

From anecdotal experience, it makes essentially no difference.

I read for an hour or two before bed every night. Paper, kindle, or my current iPad mini make no real difference to my sleep.

Dim lights, relaxing, and trying to clear my brain of distractions other than what I’m reading make more of a difference. It’s almost but not quite like meditation.

I am the first one to wake up (with an alarm) in my house on weekdays. I also find the light from the phone actually helps me wake up slowly. If I don't wake up early (get ready myself) and get the kids ready for school, it'll have a cascading effect on the whole day, so screen time works for me for that purpose. And it's usually only 10-15 minutes max. In that time, I don't see or do work stuff. Since, we have family around the world, I usually just go through the family chat messages, some light social etc in that time. I get why it's a bad habit but I also have a reason why it works. On weekends, of course the alarms are off and I wake up when I wake up.

No screen before bedtime/no screens in bed is like the easiest health improvement hack that anyone can implement.

With that said, anecdotally I can vouch for the "no screen in the first hour" suggestion the article is making. I've been working for home for the past few years, and I feel more sluggish since I just move to my laptop first thing in the morning, instead of having that preparation-breakfast-commute routine. Granted I live in a walkable city so commute doesn't mean what it means in SV, but it's the same idea.

When the pandemic forced me to work from home, incorporating a 20 minute morning walk in the neighborhood before work was one of the first things I added to my routine. It's great to make the 'transition' and also starts up the body faster.

I open the lichess app in bed and do chess puzzles. Not even 2 minutes and I'm out like a light.

Article and its linked studies fail to establish a causal relationship. Put another way the findings can also be summarized as, "broken people tend to have these habits."

"What the adult brain does to excessive screen time". I imagine there are probably feedback loops here too.

Lost me in the second paragraph:

> excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours

Oh, is that how we define it?

What are work hours, how do my eyes and brain know then they've ended, and why does the author default to assuming that employers should have first rights on this apparently finite resource?

On my family's iPhones, we have a Shortcut (automation) that kicks in every evening at 9 pm:

1. Turn Mobile Data Off

2. Turn Bluetooth Off

3. Turn WiFi Off

4. Turn AppleTV off (this one is fun because it can cut off a show mid-sentence)

5. Set brightness to 10%.

Then, a reverse of the above at 6am the following day.

Normal phone signal is still enabled for any emergency calls, but most apps become useless without the internet.

> Then, a reverse of the above at 6am the following day.

I understand that's not the case, but I want to imagine your AppleTV coming back to life at 6am every morning, resuming the show mid-sentence at 100% volume. Instant alarm clock.

Sounds about right.

Curious question, up until age 18 did you have a similar upbringing?

That's kinda hard to answer without dating yourself, which the OP might not want to do.

When I turn them all of them off somehow it stays connected to my car (when I am in my car).

This is great, thanks.

Android user here. Is this something built into iOS or do you use an app for that?

https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/intro-to-personal-...

I wonder if any of these studies distinguish between people who use screentime more productively. I use my phone on a morning for Duolingo and logging my workouts. That's quite different to doomscrolling, but I still wonder if it's good or bad.

There's also the category of people who stew infront of a TV all day - it's unsurprising that these people will have lower cognitive functions, but is that because they don't have the drive or ambition to do anything else? Is that comparable to someone who comes back from work tired and watches 3 hours of Netflix while doomscrolling?

> I use my phone on a morning for Duolingo

Duolingo is extremely passive. you're not learning a language, you're learning how to answer correctly on an app.

It's a lot more time efficient to do exercises from a grammar. But... It doesn't feel as good. Which is exactly the point.

That's too dismissive in my view. Duolingo isn't as good as in-person lessons, but it's still way better than nothing. I'd also argue that grammar exercises are cripplingly boring for most people, so if the choice is not learning or grammar exercises they'd choose not learning, which is worse. I'd also argue that you're only talking strictly about learning language in the most efficient way, but missing out on the fact that if you can make it fun, the enjoyment in itself is a valid reason for doing something.

Learning fast is fun to me.

Edit: yes, I am dismissive because I've tried it and seen that its obviously a scam, in the sense that it's sold as a fun way of learning but it's actually just a fun way of not learning.

> Duolingo isn't as good as in-person lessons, but it's still way better than nothing

I disagree. Duolingo makes you feel that you are being productive and you are learning (when you actually don't).

That is worse than nothing, because when you do nothing you know you are being indulgent, will feel bad about it, and react.

Duolingo is like a candy wrapped in package that says "this is a healthy vegetable".

I think that there are a lot of issues with the way Duolingo motives people through unhealthy incentives, but research does show that it works. Though it will need to be used in conjunction with other methods of learning to be truly helpful. But then, why would you learn a language if you’re not going to actively use it?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379288394_The_Effec...

> Though it will need to be used in conjunction with other methods of learning to be truly helpful.

This reminded me of that story by Feynman where he meets a painter that claims we can make orange paint with just red and white.

No, research doesn't show that it works.

That research you link has been conducted by Xiangying Jiang and Bozena Pajak (first and last authors). If you want to contact them about how totally objective and unbiased they are, here are their emails:

xiangying@duolingo.com bozena@duolingo.com

There's a subreddit for this, it's r/MurderedByWords

Touché!

Don't forget the second author, ryanpeters@duolingo.com!

I imagine, like most things, it's on a spectrum. No screen (for the first hour of the day) is probably better than Duolingo, which is better than doomscrolling. I also imagine it varies between people. I can get overstimulated by screen use, so I feel much better if I don't use it for the first and last hours of the day, but I'm not always good at keeping to that rule!

I think all the activities mentioned stimulate the little dopamine rushes; Duolingo and workout loggers both gamify progress, where getting the points or progression in those apps is more important than what they're intended to quantify. Doomscrolling will get you the dopamine rush of the various emotional ups and downs it provides.

I mean I'm guilty as well, I often browse reddit mindlessly, often r/all which opens up the floodgates (although it's not really 'all' anymore, it used to include porn as well and subreddits can opt-out I believe).

> workout loggers both gamify progress

I agree but I just find it too useful to be able to see what my workout is going to be and what I did last time, as well as my progress on different exercises. The alternative would be printing out my workout app before each workout, filling it in with pen and paper and then inputting it back into the app later. I'd love an alternative.

My Suunto sport watch logs the workout and automatically syncs to the phone. You could get your work tracked and avoid screen time that way.

It sounds like you're using the phone for a workout plan though... Nothing is perfect

Yeh it's weightlifting not cardio so I need to see specific lifts and my history with them, as well as being able to switch out exercises depending on how I'm feeling/how much time I have.

Duolingo has just as many smart people working on making its app addictive as anybody else.

I would think more?! It would be my first example of something horrifically gamified etc.

I suppose it's just the worst I'll put up with / I don't generally use those kinds of apps, but if that can seem like nothing to people...

Screen time feels like a very weird concept. I mean, it feels very different if I read news, write code or watch a movie. Similarly, the screen size and the environment (busy street vs. silent room), changes a lot of the experience too. And what about computer interactions which do not involve a screen like having an AI on a call?

I would expect that all these factors play a role in the effects on the brain.

Personally, it also makes a difference how busy the screen is. A bunch of cookie banners and popup ads immediately spikes my cortisol level.

> excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours

Why would "work hours" have anything to do with this?

They can't make it through a second paragraph before demonstrating that the thinking that contributed to this is garbage. Why would I read more?

Spoiler: I didn't.

"Instead, we suggest engaging in a lifestyle medicine activity upon waking to promote whole-body health"

For me, keeping a book next to my phone has been a game changer.

We recently built a whole feature in our screen time app around this concept. When we onboard users we ask them to select a number of "scroll replacements" — these are simple things you can substitute for scrolling, like going outside or reading.

The app will block you from scrolling and direct you towards a chosen replacement.

One I make the split second decision to pick up the book it's easy to stay there. That single moment of decision can make a big impact.

(I'm the founder of an app called Roots)

Do you have plans to release an Android version of your app, as well?

You can't make conclusions based on that... At best these studies are a start to show where proper studies should be conducted.

You may as well measure an impact of looking at printed paper. What about the impact of the actual activity you're having? It is completely different to mindlessly watch TV, or a YouTube stream vs playing games (online or offline). Then within games there are more and less intellectual or dexterity based ones and so on. There is social interaction or just exploring the game world. And so on.

> excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours.

Having read Michel Desmurget's "La Fabrique du crétin digital", this sentence was moderately triggering. Has anyone here read it? I don't know if it's been translated to English yet, and I know it received some very bitter reviews [which mostly seemed beside the picture he was trying to construct from the studies he used, it seemed to me]. However, it did seem to attempt to take the problem seriously.

"La Fabrique du crétin digital" was translated to English as "Screen Damage": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61723668-screen-damage

Here is an interesting review: https://www.frontiere.eu/children-and-excessive-smartphone-u...

Oh thank you! That is a nice review.

Adult here that NEVER used any kind of mobile phone/tablet- never even had a flip/dumb phone.

I do programming amongst other creative computer based things- the thing I've noticed between me and the normal phone/tablet human- is the ability to focus. I can focus for hours, weeks, months, years on tasks etc.

Everyone around me feels like focus wimps- they focus for 15 minutes or an hour and are proud of themselves and want some kind of pat on the back. They even use apps on the devices to "help them focus" its hilarious. I don't use any medications at all or nootropics/drugs for focus either btw.

These devices destroyed peoples ability to focus amongst a myriad of other things. The solution to me seems very simple. Stop using them BUT thats like telling a heroin addict to just put down the needle. They can't do it- and neither can you (shrugs)

Also using phones has always seemed nerdy/dorky- no matter who the person is- when I see someone using a mobile phone they seem like a dweeb- like whatever aura they had fades away and they just become cringey. It doesn't matter if their screen is cracked or what case they have- there is no way to be cool while using a mobile phone- just a sea of dorks with broken brains begging for more.

You should be really fun at parties!

Adult here that has always had a device with a screen since they first became available. From a black and white Palm which required learning a special cursive script to write quicker, through iPhones of the 3G era to latest Samsungs today. I spend many hours "with screens" every day in addition to a programming job.

Before portable devices I always had a computer from age 10 when I got my first 8 bit computer. I was glued to screens ever since.

I never had problems with focusing on tasks. In fact when I have a particularly interesting thing I'm doing, unless I actively remind myself to have breaks I'll forget to eat and drink for many hours. So there's my anecdote :-)

>Also using phones has always seemed nerdy/dorky-

Nothing nerdy about sitting behind a terminal emulator...

When engaged in a difficult task - perhaps when working at the limit of one's working memory or understanding, I often get a jolt of frustration and want to 'switch tabs' (figuratively or literally).

It's becoming more apparent to me that important traits are:

1) raising the threshold of discomfort that makes one want to task switch 2) the ability to avoid task switching immediately once the task becomes uncomfortable or difficult (or at least avoid task switching in a mindless way)

I find that impactful work often takes sustained periods of focus with some level of discomfort. (For example, watch chess grandmasters at work. Their behaviors of often are a mixture of grimaces, frowns and exasperated sighs.)

Having said that, I find taking a walk is often fruitful, and has a different valence/intentionality to a mindless task switch.

> I can focus for hours, weeks, months, years on tasks etc.

What do you mean by focusing on tasks for years ?

For instance does a parent get to say they focused on raising their kid for 10+ years ? Or can a accountant say they focused on keeping books straight for decades ?

Aside from that I feel what's lost in this argument is whether a specific task merited focus in the first place.

Let's say someone is watching a movie but decides after 10 min to look at TikTok instead, to then go cook some popcorn and ends up doing the laundry. Should we blame them for doing chores instead of staying focused on the meh movie in the first place ? And does getting easily distracted even matter if they're otherwise decent adults who do what's required from them to do ?

While incredible sounding to never use a mobile phone I find it hard to believe given societal restraints. It’s more common than no that homeless people have a cellphone, at least in westernized countries. This is because phones are seen as a basic need.

How is it possible you could make by as a working professional without ever using a mobile phone?

This may be because I no longer live an isolated American lifestyle, but my impression in Taiwan is that adults are hopelessly addicted to their phones.

This is gonna come off as obnoxious but I can't help it, whenever my partner and I go out for a nice dinner we're unable to comprehend how literally every other couple spends basically the entire meal on their phones. Sometimes one of them even has a little phone holder and just watches videos while they eat.

This plus absolutely mad levels of Instagram engagement makes me feel like we're at a critical era of phone addiction. You thought Americans were taking to IG and threads hoh boy go look up some Threads posts about the typhoon.

Anyway when I use reddit, IG, and even this site too much I am unhappy, and yet I continue the behavior. Clearly addictive relationship. Am I just sick and have an unhealthy relationship with my phone and other people just use and enjoy their phones? Or am I just more aware of the harm it causes me?

> whenever my partner and I go out for a nice dinner we're unable to comprehend how literally every other couple spends basically the entire meal on their phones.

I used to play a game when out to dinner: If there’s another table with two people and you notice one of them getting up (likely to go to the bathroom), see how long it takes the other person to take out their phone. It stopped being fun pretty fast because everyone did it instantly.

> Or am I just more aware of the harm it causes me?

It’s that one.

My wife complains that I take my kindle to the bathroom and will read on the way and back. I'm nowhere near as addicted to my phone though.

To be fair, pre-kindle we used to have a stack of magazines in the bathroom for toilet reading. And my chess instructor used to assign what he called "toilet puzzles", or chess puzzles that were thoughtless enough to be done on the can (as compared to the "actual" homework puzzles which were more cognitively demanding and required dedicated work)

So it was definitely a thing pre-modern-tech too. Plenty of people used to read the newspaper on the can (and in the Soviet Union you would then use it to wipe afterwards - extra efficiency!)

Oh yeah, in my parents house there were always magazines and comic books for toilet reading. We had a full shelf behind the toilet... So, yeah I guess I'm just continuing the trend :)

I've seen this advise from other sources as well: "Spend time outside and get morning light" (In the first hour of getting up).

That is a really stupid advise, it only for a few months a year. The rest of the time it's dark when I get up and will remain dark for more than an hour.

Maybe it's consistent with hyperfocus on doing things 'naturally' though? Before timekeeping we would've just risen & started work with the sun, gone to bed when it was dark and we tired.

I'm not actually advocating that (I kind of like it but it's also a bit incompatible with interacting with a society not living such a way, to varying degrees depending on your job, family, etc.) I just wonder if that would be the author's response - well what are you doing up over an hour before sunrise.

Your perceived inability to follow the advice because you live too close to the poles does not mean the advice itself is wrong, and definitely doesn't mean it's stupid. Many people in similar climates to you use sun lamps during winter, for example.

It's not wrong, but I still think it's stupid, because of how it's normally stated. I've never heard it presented as "if your location allows it" or "We understand that that isn't an option for large parts of the world so here an alternative". People have been living in this part of the world for thousands of years, without sun lamps, it might be good if you can get it, but sun light first thing in the morning certainly isn't a requirement.

It might be good thing to do, but as general advise, it's has a pretty obviously flaw. That is NEVER address by the type of people who brings us this advise and to me that hurt credibility.

"Get sun light into your eyes first thing in the morning", perfect, I'll just sleep until 10.

If I say "it's good to go running a few times a week", do I need to provide alternate advice for people with no legs? Or if I say "a low-sodium diet is healthier", do I need to specify that if you're getting cramps you should go eat some electrolytes? Is the advice bad if I don't cover every single edge case?

In my view that's a ridiculous requirement.

This reads like people spend and hour in bed looking at their phone before getting up... lol

i wake up, turn off my phones alarm.

then i get up, go wake up my kid, take a shower while he eats breakfast and we're off after that.

I do. It takes me ages to wake up in the morning. I need at least half an hour and it can easily be an hour if I'm able to. I do most of my tech news reading during this time so I don't consider it wasted.

>This reads like people spend and hour in bed looking at their phone before getting up... lol

This is very normal for a lot of people I know irl (at least those within my generation).

I'm more thinking that it is not the medium(as in screens). But the content. Which make it harmful. Social media even something like HN is tiny chunks of dopamine rushes. Same effect could be achieved by TV channel surfing or even by audio. Just have to split it up small enough. And why not even gambling like blackjack, craps or roulette?

Many of work task done on screens are much longer like writing or editing document. Maybe something like iterative debugging or coding could also be partly harmful. Or chat messages...

"when you have an object close to your face, it’s registered as a threat"

Ok I wonder to what extent the flight / fight response can be unconscious and not noticed

And I get that FoF can be triggered. But from seeing the phone it can't be nearly as much as with seeing a bear coming at you can it?

I'm also curious what kinds of objects do that, and why does the phone do it and not something else?

Like would reading the news trigger that? Playing a game of chess?

I think I will ask Perplexity AI on those later

Seeing a phone triggers exactly the same response as when you see a 300kg bear charging at you.

What a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. So an object close to your face is registered as a threat in the morning? Well, say bye bye to your coffee mug. I am sorry, but this is technophobic back-to-nature hippy babbling.

Some people are mentally challenged, I give you that. But why is this projected onto everyone else? How about these people get help, instead of trying to convince the wolrd that X is bad?

While I agree the conclusion of the article is likely accurate, the arguments lack warrant.

“Since the eyes are directly connected to the brain, Loeffler encourages us to think about our eye health to ensure overall brain health.”

My arm is also connected to the brain. We can argue the definition of direct. Warrant connects the evidence to the claim. This article lacks warrant in many places.

> The negative effects of screen time are insidious because you can’t see what’s happening in your brain as you’re staring at the screen

Well, I can feel it. It's subtle but especially in comparison to screen-less activities I can _feel_ that I am doing something that impairs my mental health. (Doom) scrolling, binging on youtube etc.

> Rather than looking at our phones upon waking, Loeffler recommends starting each morning looking at the horizon or an object outside and far away.

Looking at the sky - okay. But looking at the horizon? That's a bit unrealistic. I'd argue that you could also have a plant. And the first thing you do after waking up is watering it and checking its health. Just as an idea for folks like me who can't see the horizon from their apartment.

> Since the eyes are directly connected to the brain

The eyes are actually a part of the brain.

> This rule suggests that individuals look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes of the day.

This is one of those totally ridiculous health rules. Not even worth talking about it. My suggestion would be to embrace a more dynamic work style. I'm working in front of a computer - technically for 8 hours a day. But I'm walking around _all_ _the_ _time_. Not because I think I should - but because it just feels right.

> This study found that excessive screen time can hinder sleep, especially when looking at screens late at night.

This I can confirm 100%. I don't even think that the screen's light is the biggest issue. For me it's more the content I tend to read and consume lying in bed, half-tired.

> One of the biggest issues with picking up the phone right away in the morning is that when you have an object close to your face, it’s registered as a threat,” says Loeffler. “You wouldn’t want to wake up and look a bear in the face every morning. On a physiological level, it’s the same thing.

I call BS on that. There are many reasons why not to take up the phone first thing in the morning. In fact that is why I use a separate alarm-clock (no need to handle my phone right before bed time and no need to take it up right after waking up) and I put my phone into flight-mode. So, there won't even be any notifications irking me. But this theory feels like what "scientists" come up with just to come up with something.

Very shallow article but good reminder to again put a little attention to discipline around phone usage.

> The negative effects of screen time are insidious because you can’t see what’s happening in your brain as you’re staring at the screen

The same holds for just about anything, like reading books.

the effects of excessive "screen time" (primarily meant to mean scrolling through social media, playing games on a mobile device (phone/tablet), not sitting at a computer doing work), may be harder to established in adults, but it's been pretty well established in teens by measuring the correlation between screen time and test scores, primarily stemming from high schoolers lack of ability to focus (short attention spans).

I use an App called FlowBuddy to reduce my screen time on my phone. It really helped me to be less on my phone :)

This is Stanford? Where is the research?

> excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours

It's just so arbitrary

I have no choice but to use screens for work. What should I do then?

Take breaks? Maybe not worry so much about "wellness" articles? More often than not the anxiety these articles create is more detrimental than whatever the topic is about. For example, the article introduces an absurd "20-20-20" rule which states:

"This rule suggests that individuals look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes of the day."

Now clearly this is a rule that is impossible to realistically meet or maintain but yet the seed of anxiety is planted in the reader that they are not following yet another "rule" for better health (in this case eye health).

and many spend 8 hours at work in front a screen :(

"screentime" is the worst term because it has almost nothing to do with what they're actually talking about - i.e. does an eReader count as screentime? Why? Why does a book not?

i don't know but i think it does indeed, i guess there is a relationship between body and mind that screen completely efface. even moving pages, physically, make reading more meaningful: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/well-read/202402/the...

I guess there are two main effects of “screentime”: consumption only (doomscrolling or binge watching) and the light effect.

A book would not tick any of those marks

An ereader would account for looking into a light source only if you use background illumination. And even then, it can be set to emit significantly less light than a smartphone screen, especially in the blue frequencies

If you want to read a book then you need some source of light.

Obviously true. The difference is that the you usually don’t look directly into the light source when reading a book

8 hours in front of a screen while working is not the same as 8 hours doomscrolling content, at least that's my guess.

there's probably a lot of overlap

Some, work has less of the gamified aspects... although sites like github do have some of it.

Well, work is probably one of the least healthy things adults do. And sitting for 8 hours is hardly the worst version of it.

> negatively impacted by excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours.

I see a simple solution: a 6-hour workday to bump that excessive screen time up to 4 hours.

Seriously, though, I wonder if people who do not work with a PC are less affected.

From the article:

>however research shows that adult brains are also negatively impacted by excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours.

My first thought was it's funny that 8 hours at work is fine but 2 hours at home isn't.

It would be great to see research which screen time activities have these detrimental effects, because umbrella term "excessive screen time" can be too generalizing.

24/7 screens bring it on.

> more than two hours outside of work

but that 8-10 of work screen? can't be bad! smh

Seriously. What does "screen time" even mean if it doesn't include the 9 hours a day I spend staring at 8 square feet of monitors and the ~45 mins the TV is on during meals?

If they mean "phones" say "phones". If they mean "social media" say "social media". Oh but then all the bullshit about stuff being close to one's face wouldn't make "sense" (I wear glasses, I must be constantly terrorising myself.)

It may be a very slight overreaction but my first thought is that everybody in the entire faculty that produced these findings should be re-employed doing something actually useful like grocery deliveries.

This seems like bullshit to me, I am fully for reducing time spent on screen but the arguments given are not serious.

For instance:

> Another study found that adults who watched television for five hours or more per day had an increased risk of developing brain-related disease like dementia, stroke, or Parkinson’s

So what? It doesn't mean tv is going to make you have dementia, stroke or parkinson. This prove nothing, it could be causality but also correlation.

Aka, you have issue so you watch tv instead of going out.

The whole article reads like pseudo-science.

Thank you America.

TL;DR: Go outside, touch grass

... with your bare feet to get grounded, get maximum full spectrum sunlight.

Excessive artificial light (which means ao screentime) is the source of all health problems.

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