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Flawed data led to a connection between time spent on devices and mental health
- carlmr 5y ago>That the link between digital tech use and psychological distress is inconclusive would have come as a big surprise to me five years ago. I think it's not so surprising since everybody "feels" this is true. Making people look where they can confirm their bias. I'm not saying it's not a thing, but I think this is an issue with a lot of studies that look at something where people either do it and don't want to feel good or bad about it or have some beliefs about it being good or bad, e.g chocolate/wine/eggs are good/bad for you.
- Avamander 5y agoThe thing that actually is surprising is how many researchers don't even mention why they've excluded the possibility of a reverse correlation in their studies.
- nerdbaggy 5y agoLike the worse your mental health is the more you are on your phone?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- taneq 5y agoOr the more you enjoy the idea of shooting people in the face, the more time you're likely to spend playing video games involving shooting people in the face?
- Avamander 5y agoYep, things like that. I would at least appreciate adding a disclaimer, that this behaviour might be a symptom of some other issues for example at school.
- em500 5y agoI think you meant to write "reverse causation"? Correlation is by definition symmetric and directionless. If the researchers make no causation claims, they don't need to be concerned about the direction of causation. I haven't followed the field, but it's hard for me to imagine published research in serious academic journals where causation claims are made without at least some discussion about the direction of causation and hidden confounders.
- netizen-936824 5y agoIt is likely that the poster was referring to a negative correlation. While incorrect terminology was used, correlations do have direction. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/173276/is-it-correct-to-refer-to-a-negative-correlation-as-an-inverse-correlation https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/173276/is-it-corre... https://study.com/academy/lesson/negative-correlation-in-psychology-examples-definition-interpretation.html https://study.com/academy/lesson/negative-correlation-in-psy...
- hervature 5y agoNegative correlation also known as anticorrelation does not mean there is a "direction". Simply, it is a scalar number and not a vector. Don't add to the confusion of terminology by using a colloquial definition of "direction" to mean it can be negative or positive. We could have defined correlation to be in [0,1] and your sense of direction would be very confusing.
- netizen-936824 5y agoThank you for the clarification, you are absolutely correct that its positive or negative rather than having a direction.
- Avamander 5y agoProbably, not my first language. > If the researchers make no causation claims But sentences like "kids using their phones more than x hours a day are on average sadder" very much imply one.
- moss2 5y agoThe true corruptor of youth is that satanic D&D "role-playing "game""
- taneq 5y agoYou've clearly confused cause and effect here, I think it's obvious that the youth have corrupted D&D. :P
- smitty1e 5y agoI'll just go ahead and pocket that template. Thanks!
- hoseja 5y agoHave you seen the modern editions? They certainly have.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoI think most players would disagree
- irjustin 5y agoIt's the same thinking that links violent video games to violent behavior. The causality fits very well into our world view. It also gives a very "simple fix". Limit video games, limit screen time, limit X. When the real problem is significantly harder. Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism. If there's a real, reproducible, verifiable link, I'm all game for it, but when the problem is so wide spread and the answer is so simple, it really needs to be reproduced across multiple studies. Because rarely is the problem + solution truly that simple.
- bschne 5y ago> When the real problem is significantly harder. Social, governmental, institutional and systemic racism. While I don't question that systemic racism is real, I don't quite see the link here. Isn't the kind of violence video games get blamed for more commonly committed by non-minority people who have mental health issues and/or were "social outcasts" rather than racially motivated? I mainly remember the topic as coming up in connection with school shootings and the likes, not potentially racial hate crimes. 100% agree on the looking for simple (and comfortable to admit!) fixes though. It is so much easier to say "we made a mistake letting kids play these games" than it is to face the truth that some people are either completely left behind by society or descend into incomprehensible madness for no comprehensible reason.
- nonameiguess 5y agoI believe what they mean is the majority of violent crimes committed by youth in the United States is committed by kids in historically redlined, segregated neighborhoods where the school system is non-existent, public services and infrastructure is falling apart if there at all, all the fathers have been arrested, the police and citizenry are openly antagonist to each other, so drug trade and criminal gangs are the best shot they have at participating in any kind of a community at all. Solving that will go a lot further than worrying about the comparatively tiny number of suburban white kids shooting up their schools. Note that "systemic racism" here doesn't need to mean any individual involved in this is still racist. It can just mean the lasting after-effects of institutional racism from decades ago that we never bothered trying to actively undo and just hoped everything would get better when we told the institutions they could no longer legally be racist.
- the-dude 5y agoFat makes you fat.
- Ygg2 5y agoNot necessarily. Eat only fat and you'll enter ketosis, where most of your fat will be converted into sugars.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xondono 5y agoThat’s the point of GP. It’s not true, but it sounds reasonable.
- Ygg2 5y agoBut why comment at all, if they are agreeing?
- binchou 5y agothe italics are working as scare quotes here
- mewpmewp2 5y agoTo add to the discussion?
- AussieWog93 5y agoTowards the end of the 20th century, as the obesity epidemic was starting to become a real concern, the general layman's (and possibly medical?) understanding in Western countries was that to lose weight you should consume less dietary fats. This lead to a lot of low-fat diets and products that advertised themselves as "99% fat free", "fat reduced" etc. - many of which contained extra sugar. Of course, now we know this belief was not only wrong, but harmful. At the time, though it "felt" true. I am almost certain this cultural phenomenon is what GP was referencing.
- binchou 5y agoAt least one explanation for use of social media etc. is that people do it because they enjoy it. Maybe there's just a certain level of enjoyment that flips a switch that tells us to stop? Could there be a set of "things people feel bad about enjoying because they're simply too stimulating and fulfilling that we can't help but conclude that they're bad? Think chocolate (sin!), masturbation (sin!), sleeping late (lazy!), staying up late etc.
- nojito 5y agoHe’s attacking/defining the problem incorrectly. The link is between sedentary lifestyle and mental well-being. Not device use and well being. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-0715-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-0715-z
- AussieWog93 5y agoJust to be contrarian (on HN, what a surprise!), social media and similar tech is deliberately designed to maximise the time the user spends on it engaging in sedentary activities.
- smitty1e 5y ago> In an effort to protect young people from the harms of digital tech Any skepticism of these experts is clearly rooted in hatred of children. Less snarkily, I'd like to see more parenting credentials for those purporting to advise me on how to raise mine, as these Really Smart People don't seem to have society on an optimal course.
- tharne 5y ago> Less snarkily, I'd like to see more parenting credentials for those purporting to advise me on how to raise mine, as these Really Smart People don't seem to have society on an optimal course. Regardless of what one thinks of Brexit, I think Nigel Farage very accurately described technocratic class as people who've never had a "proper job". This could be expanded to "people with no real life experience". Like the parent commenter, I'm increasingly skeptical of advice given by people who have more schooling than meaningful life experience -- especially when they lack experience in the exact area they're an "expert". I'll gladly take parenting advice from a plumber with four kids over that given by a childless Ivy Leaguer with a PhD, loft apartment, and a French bulldog.
- playpause 5y agoI think these are very different hypotheses: 1. A person's mental health is likely to improve if they reduce their social media usage. 2. A person's mental health is likely to improve if they and all/most of their friends reduce their social media usage. Intuitively, I can see why the first one might be false, even if the second one turns out to be true. So much of modern social life is deeply involved with social media, including a lot of the conversation at IRL social events. Unilaterally cutting yourself off from all that doesn't seem like an obvious boon to mental health.
- planet-and-halo 5y agoThis was my exact experience of the problem. I cut back dramatically on device usage and news, to the point where I suddenly felt very disoriented and disconnected socially. It was a big improvement in many ways, but that was a real problem and I'm still adjusting to find the right level.
- PebblesRox 5y agoI did Facebook Fridays for a while (before gradually losing interest in Facebook). It was a helpful structure for me: as much Facebook as I wanted on Friday, none the rest of the week. (I use the Messenger app for FB messages so didn't put any limits there. There's even a separate Messenger website!) I'd end up naturally spending only 20 minutes or so on Fridays; enough to check notifications and realize nothing really interesting or important was actually on there. I found Facebook Fridays to be more sustainable than going totally cold turkey. Now I just go on Facebook every once in a while if I have a specific purpose. Hmm, maybe I need to try Twitter Tuesdays or HN Thursdays...
- jokoon 5y agoReminds me of similar stories about video games in the 90 and 2000s. It's pretty simple: walking outside in parks, where there are trees and green and fresh air, is good for everybody. Staying inside 4 walls is always unhealthy, sitting for too long, or not being exposed to enough sunlight. But using a smartphone and social media is compatible with all those things. The only things that bothers me in social media: * Narcissistic tendencies * Bullying and doxxing * Political bubbles * Abusive online advertising and influencing, and privacy problems caused by internet giants. Other than that, social media is not so bad.
- playpause 5y agoThis reminds me of Monty Python: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
- amarant 5y agoBrought peace!
- reidjs 5y agoI think social media is great if you mainly use it for two things: 1. as a publishing and sharing platform for your art, adventures, and life events 2. to keep in touch with your friends.
- jstx1 5y agoThis is one of the problems I have with Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism, those dopamine fasting articles that were circulating a couple of years ago and other similar movements to reduce time spent online or on a device - there's very little evidence to support them.
- dmje 5y agoI know we love evidence, and rightly so. But I do think there is space here for intuition. Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one? I know for sure that I’m happier, my wife is happier, my two teen kids are happier when we’re in the real world more of the time.
- hmwhy 5y agoI see your point and I agree that there is often room for intuition for most real-world problems, but I'm not sure that you have a valid argument there: not everyone clicking does them mindlessly, and some people see a beautiful world through pixels. At the end of the day, I guess the two are not mutually exclusive in the current context.
- ImaCake 5y agoThere is space for intuition, but the argument the author makes is that intuition is making a mistake here (as it often does). Namely that we think increased phone use is correlated with (or even causal for) negative mental health, but the data does not support this yet. The author thinks we don't have the data to support or debunk this because of poor measurements, and I agree with this. Maybe better, more nuanced measurement will prove a link. But it probably won't be as simple as more phone time == more mental health problems. My intuition is often wrong, but it is undoubtably useful for me as an individual. But the intuition of crowds is bad. It is no substitute for randomised controlled trials, mendelian randomisation, or even cohort and observational studies. For public health policy I prefer to use evidence over intuition.
- oxymoran 5y agoThe intuition is not 100% accurate but it points you in the right direction for further inquiry. So in this case, maybe it’s not that the amount of screen time in general is causing the mental health issues but it’s constantly being tethered to social media on the phone.
- m3kw9 5y agoHow about time spent on devices + on social media or reading a lot of trigger inducing news
- vorpalhex 5y agoYou probably don't have ptsd, and if you do have ptsd that's been diagnosed by a trained professional then it's likely you already have an exposure plan. Or put another way, you treat being "triggered" by being exposed to the triggering mechanism.
- lnxg33k1 5y agoI don't want to defend social networks, myself have left them few years ago to find more happiness outside, after having found out that there was a reason I lost connection with some people from my past. But i think we should also look at happiness of kids starting from their families, we live in a corporate era of bonus coming from mass layoff, speculation, crisis, crashes, instability, and so on, which i guess affect families and the happiness of the youngest of those families, i think maybe politicians should also stop blaming everyone else except them, especially those who have been sitting at congress for centuries
- ccn0p 5y agoThe devices in our hand aren't inherently good or bad. There's plenty of good, and there's plenty of bad. The problem is knowing the difference in the context in which it's being used. And the incentives of companies developing these technologies aren't always aligned with a concept of good or bad (ie engagement).
- gambler 5y ago>Imagine that everything known about the COVID-19 pandemic was based on people giving their best guesses about whether they have the virus, instead of highly reliable medical tests. Now imagine that people who actually have the virus are more likely to misdiagnose themselves. The consequences of relying on this unreliable measure would be far-reaching. Why do we need to imagine something that actually takes place? Phase 3 trials of vaccines relied on self-reporting of symptoms by participants. E.g: https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol_Nov2020.pdf https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_P... See section 8.13. COVID-19 Surveillance (All Participants). A lot of other medical research relies on self-reporting of symptoms as well.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoClearly it matters what you are doing. I, fortunately, have amazingly healthy mental health but also spend a lot of time on devices for my job. What I do on the device is clearly different than a high schooler suffering from FOMO. We use this insight with our children. E.g. it’s not “no devices” it’s “no consumption right now, you can only use your devices for creation/discovery, consumption time is limited to 1 hour at these times”.
- designium 5y agoBut it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be a second order relationship. The article shows that time spent on mobile devices and mental health are not link as cause and effect, but it doesn’t disprove that they are not related. Also, time spent may not be related so some types of mental health issues like depression, but we have many other mental health issues like anxiety, loneliness, etc.
- ummonk 5y agoThis study was conducted during the pandemic, when people with low smartphone screen times would experience even more social isolation than those who had high smartphone screen times. Of course when every other avenue of socialization is limited, online access becomes better than nothing. It's rather convenient that the article doesn't mention the study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032721003323?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...) was performed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- rchaud 5y agoThis is really a topic where people can figure out for themselves if exposure is bad for their MH or not.