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New Research About Kids’ Screen Time and Mental Health

39 points by leksak 8y ago

lern_too_spel 8y ago
Why is this worrying? Some kids have mental health problems. This doesn't show that more kids have mental health problems now.
- flashgordon 8y ago
  Actually this article starts with that right? ie 7 hours is worse than 1 hour (implying more is worse). >>> Young people who spend seven hours or more a day on screens are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety than those who use screens for an hour a day, finds a new study published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports. Are you suggesting 1 hour is harmless and 7 hours is extremely rare (assuming that is already proven) and hence nothing is new in this article?
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    No, I'm saying that there is no causation here. Kids who spend a lot of time in front of screens could be doing so because they have mental health issues or because of another reason entirely (e.g., lack of parenting) that also causes more mental health issues. If the same number of kids have mental health issues as before there were so many screens, there is nothing to worry about. I'll start to worry if more kids have mental health problems, and then it makes sense to figure out what is causing that increase.
    - darkerside 8y ago
      Wouldn't this still be useful information as a diagnostic tool? If someone is on a screen for 7 hours a day, it's twice as likely they're depressed. That seems worth disseminating.
      - seandougall 8y ago
        Or a person who expresses their depression in an obvious way, like spending 7 hours a day in front of a screen, might be more likely to be noticed and helped toward a diagnosis.
      - lern_too_spel 8y ago
        The original title was "There’s Worrying New Research About Kids’ Screen Time and Their Mental Health." My point is that the article doesn't have anything worrying in it. Having a new diagnostic tool isn't something to worry about. If anything, it's the opposite.
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    To clarify my sibling comment, I never said, "nothing is new in this article" as you state. I said there is nothing worrying in the article because it does not show an increase in mental health problems among the population of children even though there has been a massive increase in screen time.
trevyn 8y ago
In other news, correlation is still not causation.
- dang 8y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jrochkind1 8y ago
seems to me causation could easily be the opposite direction than what they are implying. If kids who are depressed are more likely to spend more time on social media/the internet, limiting their "screen time" isn't going to make them less depressed.
- abledon 8y ago
  You underestimate the power of boredom as a motivating factor to go do something!
  - hrktb 8y ago
    Depending on the mental state of the kid, “doing something” might not be better in every case.
- mogadsheu 8y ago
  Getting them off the screen for a bit and out in the world might though. Their social media content will be better for it too.
- julienchastang 8y ago
  From the article: "But the correlation some studies have found between increased screen time and outcomes like depression do not prove one is to blame for the other, he says. It may be that kids who are anxious or depressed are just more likely to spend a lot of time using screens."
gersh 8y ago
It'd be helpful if kids actually got a greater chance to see things like where their food came from or the factories where the things they use get made. Our modern economy cuts off and hides much of the world and gives them a filtered, fake sense of reality. When you consider the kids are stuck in a fake reality, it seems obvious it should cause mental issues.
- paulcole 8y ago
  What farm and/or factories that you visited had the biggest influence on your life?
  - ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
    I've visited dozens of farms and factories, and they without-a-doubt inspired me to become a geek in the first place. I absolutely loved seeing how things worked as a kid, pulling things apart, and growing up with a technical dad who took us to farms and factory tours and stuff. Seeing automation at factories is what got me into robotics and science fiction. Seeing the awesome machines at farms (massive tractors, trashers, large scale crop watering, etc) blew my mind, and got me into mechanics and vehicle tech. I now hack on cars as my primary hobby (both mechanically, and electronically).
julienchastang 8y ago
Parent here. The problem is the battle you are up against when trying to limit screen time. When it is the iPad vs. anything else constructive or worthwhile, the iPad is almost always going to win. The best minds of our generation have figured out how to addict us to screens and have succeeded. Moreover, as a parent, it is often a difficult and incessant struggle to monitor and control content (e.g., age inappropriate YouTube videos). And the large tech companies don’t seem interested in solving these problems. Just the opposite.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  It seems to me that a big part of the problem is parents’ screen time. Kids I see (disclaimer: mostly in the <5 years old range) desperately want to play with other people, but often are left bored while the adults / older kids around are stuck staring at their smartphones. Fertile ground to develop their own screen addictions. Instead of monitoring and controlling kids’ content, how about working with them on some physical projects, reading aloud, going for a hike, or even doing chores together?
  - hrktb 8y ago
    I wonder how much time in average we got playing with our parents. I was in primary schoold in the 80s and I remember seeing my father 10 min before going to bed, my mother was mostly dealing with stuff (administrative tasks, house keeping, shopping, cooking, checking homeworks) and outside of Scrabble I don’t remember playing anything with her. We’d watch tv news or vapid tv drama together at best, rest of time I’d do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone nor illegal. Compared to that it seems to me parents nowadays are a lot more feeling guilty of not spending enough time with their kids, even as they spend a ton more in my opinion.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      I imagine this varies a bit from person to person. My impression is that the best way to learn anything is with at least a significant amount of time spent deliberately practicing under expert supervision/tutoring. You want to be working at just the right difficulty, neither mindlessly repeating stuff that is too easy nor stuck on a project with too large a scope or too difficult prerequisites. Lots of “our time” (i.e. yours and mine) growing up in the 80s was surely wasted. I know I could have learned a whole lot more working 1:1 with an expert tutor/mentor instead of in an above average school class of 30 kids. I know some kids who had very high-touch mentorship and turned into real prodigies. (Of course, some others are pushed by controlling parents and feel resentful.) Even when it comes to extracurricular activities (like building stuff out of Legos, solving logic puzzles, cooking, playing sports, or whatever), I could have learned a whole lot more than I did if I wasn’t left mostly to my own devices, but had someone occasionally suggest challenging projects or show me some new ideas at my current level or fix up my misconceptions. And my parents surely spent far more time with me than average, especially in the first few years. I learned a great many things just fiddling around for hours and hours by myself, but most of that learning was grossly inefficient.
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
"screen time" is so general though. What were they doing on the screens? Sure, I know plenty of parents who stick their kids on YouTube with no monitoring, who end up watching Jake Paul for hours. But I also know plenty of parents whose kids spend their screen time drawing in paint apps, playing with redstone creations in Minecraft, and generally doing stuff that I (as a parent of 2 who aren't quite that age yet) would LOVE my kids to be doing. I'm sure the former is more common than the latter, but I wish articles like this weren't so "screen time is BAD" and would differentiate and encourage parents to instead push their kids towards educational-but-entertaining screentime. If I hadn't spent my entire childhood on screens learning to code in BASIC and playing in Paint, I wouldn't have had my career, which has now let me support my family and give them a comfortable life (whereas I grew up in poverty).
- windexh8er 8y ago
  Your comment is valid, but screens today are generally for a consumption model vs an interactive one you and I grew up with. I get the whole painting, drawing, etc - but mastery of those are still very much founded in the physical realm of many mediums. The other thing this article fails to touch on is the damage that can be done to younger eyes. Screens can literally burn retinas. Apple, for example, made quiet reference to the improvements in their new iPhone displays that they are easier on eyes (https://www.cultofmac.com/581646/iphone-xs-max-display-is-scientifically-healthier-for-your-eyes/ https://www.cultofmac.com/581646/iphone-xs-max-display-is-sc...). I've also seen the MPE (maximum permissable exposure) metric reference more and more lately. Finally, I'm sure you spent as much time in front of the screen writing code when you were growing up, just as I did. But it meant going to sit down in front of a desktop. You weren't laying with it in bed, on Facebook or sending Snaps 24/7. The difference of access today is 180 from when I was using technology as a teenager. I don't think technology is bad when it has a purpose, but I would say the majority of youth are not using technology in a manner that's constructive to their future long term.

39 points by leksak 8y ago

Why is this worrying? Some kids have mental health problems. This doesn't show that more kids have mental health problems now.

flashgordon 8y ago
Actually this article starts with that right? ie 7 hours is worse than 1 hour (implying more is worse). >>> Young people who spend seven hours or more a day on screens are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety than those who use screens for an hour a day, finds a new study published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports. Are you suggesting 1 hour is harmless and 7 hours is extremely rare (assuming that is already proven) and hence nothing is new in this article?
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  No, I'm saying that there is no causation here. Kids who spend a lot of time in front of screens could be doing so because they have mental health issues or because of another reason entirely (e.g., lack of parenting) that also causes more mental health issues. If the same number of kids have mental health issues as before there were so many screens, there is nothing to worry about. I'll start to worry if more kids have mental health problems, and then it makes sense to figure out what is causing that increase.
  - darkerside 8y ago
    Wouldn't this still be useful information as a diagnostic tool? If someone is on a screen for 7 hours a day, it's twice as likely they're depressed. That seems worth disseminating.
    - seandougall 8y ago
      Or a person who expresses their depression in an obvious way, like spending 7 hours a day in front of a screen, might be more likely to be noticed and helped toward a diagnosis.
    - lern_too_spel 8y ago
      The original title was "There’s Worrying New Research About Kids’ Screen Time and Their Mental Health." My point is that the article doesn't have anything worrying in it. Having a new diagnostic tool isn't something to worry about. If anything, it's the opposite.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  To clarify my sibling comment, I never said, "nothing is new in this article" as you state. I said there is nothing worrying in the article because it does not show an increase in mental health problems among the population of children even though there has been a massive increase in screen time.

trevyn 8y ago

In other news, correlation is still not causation.

dang 8y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jrochkind1 8y ago

seems to me causation could easily be the opposite direction than what they are implying. If kids who are depressed are more likely to spend more time on social media/the internet, limiting their "screen time" isn't going to make them less depressed.

abledon 8y ago
You underestimate the power of boredom as a motivating factor to go do something!
- hrktb 8y ago
  Depending on the mental state of the kid, “doing something” might not be better in every case.
mogadsheu 8y ago
Getting them off the screen for a bit and out in the world might though. Their social media content will be better for it too.
julienchastang 8y ago
From the article: "But the correlation some studies have found between increased screen time and outcomes like depression do not prove one is to blame for the other, he says. It may be that kids who are anxious or depressed are just more likely to spend a lot of time using screens."

gersh 8y ago

It'd be helpful if kids actually got a greater chance to see things like where their food came from or the factories where the things they use get made. Our modern economy cuts off and hides much of the world and gives them a filtered, fake sense of reality. When you consider the kids are stuck in a fake reality, it seems obvious it should cause mental issues.

paulcole 8y ago
What farm and/or factories that you visited had the biggest influence on your life?
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  I've visited dozens of farms and factories, and they without-a-doubt inspired me to become a geek in the first place. I absolutely loved seeing how things worked as a kid, pulling things apart, and growing up with a technical dad who took us to farms and factory tours and stuff. Seeing automation at factories is what got me into robotics and science fiction. Seeing the awesome machines at farms (massive tractors, trashers, large scale crop watering, etc) blew my mind, and got me into mechanics and vehicle tech. I now hack on cars as my primary hobby (both mechanically, and electronically).

julienchastang 8y ago

Parent here. The problem is the battle you are up against when trying to limit screen time. When it is the iPad vs. anything else constructive or worthwhile, the iPad is almost always going to win. The best minds of our generation have figured out how to addict us to screens and have succeeded. Moreover, as a parent, it is often a difficult and incessant struggle to monitor and control content (e.g., age inappropriate YouTube videos). And the large tech companies don’t seem interested in solving these problems. Just the opposite.

jacobolus 8y ago
It seems to me that a big part of the problem is parents’ screen time. Kids I see (disclaimer: mostly in the <5 years old range) desperately want to play with other people, but often are left bored while the adults / older kids around are stuck staring at their smartphones. Fertile ground to develop their own screen addictions. Instead of monitoring and controlling kids’ content, how about working with them on some physical projects, reading aloud, going for a hike, or even doing chores together?
- hrktb 8y ago
  I wonder how much time in average we got playing with our parents. I was in primary schoold in the 80s and I remember seeing my father 10 min before going to bed, my mother was mostly dealing with stuff (administrative tasks, house keeping, shopping, cooking, checking homeworks) and outside of Scrabble I don’t remember playing anything with her. We’d watch tv news or vapid tv drama together at best, rest of time I’d do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone nor illegal. Compared to that it seems to me parents nowadays are a lot more feeling guilty of not spending enough time with their kids, even as they spend a ton more in my opinion.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    I imagine this varies a bit from person to person. My impression is that the best way to learn anything is with at least a significant amount of time spent deliberately practicing under expert supervision/tutoring. You want to be working at just the right difficulty, neither mindlessly repeating stuff that is too easy nor stuck on a project with too large a scope or too difficult prerequisites. Lots of “our time” (i.e. yours and mine) growing up in the 80s was surely wasted. I know I could have learned a whole lot more working 1:1 with an expert tutor/mentor instead of in an above average school class of 30 kids. I know some kids who had very high-touch mentorship and turned into real prodigies. (Of course, some others are pushed by controlling parents and feel resentful.) Even when it comes to extracurricular activities (like building stuff out of Legos, solving logic puzzles, cooking, playing sports, or whatever), I could have learned a whole lot more than I did if I wasn’t left mostly to my own devices, but had someone occasionally suggest challenging projects or show me some new ideas at my current level or fix up my misconceptions. And my parents surely spent far more time with me than average, especially in the first few years. I learned a great many things just fiddling around for hours and hours by myself, but most of that learning was grossly inefficient.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago

"screen time" is so general though. What were they doing on the screens? Sure, I know plenty of parents who stick their kids on YouTube with no monitoring, who end up watching Jake Paul for hours. But I also know plenty of parents whose kids spend their screen time drawing in paint apps, playing with redstone creations in Minecraft, and generally doing stuff that I (as a parent of 2 who aren't quite that age yet) would LOVE my kids to be doing. I'm sure the former is more common than the latter, but I wish articles like this weren't so "screen time is BAD" and would differentiate and encourage parents to instead push their kids towards educational-but-entertaining screentime. If I hadn't spent my entire childhood on screens learning to code in BASIC and playing in Paint, I wouldn't have had my career, which has now let me support my family and give them a comfortable life (whereas I grew up in poverty).

windexh8er 8y ago
Your comment is valid, but screens today are generally for a consumption model vs an interactive one you and I grew up with. I get the whole painting, drawing, etc - but mastery of those are still very much founded in the physical realm of many mediums. The other thing this article fails to touch on is the damage that can be done to younger eyes. Screens can literally burn retinas. Apple, for example, made quiet reference to the improvements in their new iPhone displays that they are easier on eyes (https://www.cultofmac.com/581646/iphone-xs-max-display-is-scientifically-healthier-for-your-eyes/ https://www.cultofmac.com/581646/iphone-xs-max-display-is-sc...). I've also seen the MPE (maximum permissable exposure) metric reference more and more lately. Finally, I'm sure you spent as much time in front of the screen writing code when you were growing up, just as I did. But it meant going to sit down in front of a desktop. You weren't laying with it in bed, on Facebook or sending Snaps 24/7. The difference of access today is 180 from when I was using technology as a teenager. I don't think technology is bad when it has a purpose, but I would say the majority of youth are not using technology in a manner that's constructive to their future long term.