13 ms·

Would love to see the raw data, but from their own plots you can see that 2017, 2018 and 2019 show a trend that would make the 2020 and 2021 data consistent wit

Would love to see the raw data, but from their own plots you can see that 2017, 2018 and 2019 show a trend that would make the 2020 and 2021 data consistent with the trend. As they show data comparing 2020 and 2021 to the previous years, they could have shown a matrix to compare year over year across the data. I will wait for someone to look at the raw data and peer review the paper before jumping to conclusions. I'm not discounting that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on child development, I would be surprised if it didn't, but I expected a bit more rigorous data analysis from this paper.

giantg2 5y ago
I wonder what could be driving that trend.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  The collapse of rational thinking abilities.
  - gizmo385 5y ago
    As evidenced by?
    - kurthr 5y ago
      The rise and fall of rationality based words in English language (rose until 1980s and has plummeted since): https://www.pnas.org/content/118/51/e2107848118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/51/e2107848118
      - IsThisYou 5y ago
        Thanks for the link, that's really interesting.
      - Nasrudith 5y ago
        That seems methodologically quite questionable for the conclusions drawn. Like many blind semantic analysis attempts which consider language of a crash report for bug testing toxic due to the instances of "does not work", and "kill" and "fail". Meanwhile "I hope you enjoy eating your family then." is positive. Falsely presenting subjective viewpoints as objective would appear more rational. It isn't the trappings which make it rational or even distance from emotions. One can rationally make "non-optimal" decisions from subjective personal costs.
    - conception 5y ago
      The large scale antivax movement for one.
      - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
        Funny enough I expect Venn diagram of antivaxers and people who don't let their kid use screens to have a significant overlap. Sometimes raw distrust is justified.
        smt88 5y ago
        This probably used to be true, but (in the US) the demographics and politics of anti-vaxxers changed significantly after 2020.
      - astrange 5y ago
        Antivaxxers tend to use scientific/rational language though, as opposed to new age vibes or what they heard from their priests. They’re using a modernist mindset, they just happen to be wrong.
        JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > using a modernist mindset Would be curious to see data on this. I most frequently see an emotional appeal against authority, vague anxieties and fears and/or slippery slope arguments.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Use of rational language does not mean that the conclusion is reasonable, nor free of fallacy. For example, people saying the covid shot interferes with long term immunity is rational and modern, just not based in fact (or misapplying fact).
        astrange 5y ago
        There are mechanisms that could cause that (“original antigenic sin”) and it does happen with dengue fever. Of course, it’s not true here, but it was reasonable to think it might be in 2020. And covid vaccines being spike-only may be less effective against variants than whole-virus vaccines or actual infections. But flu shots manage to be ineffective a year later with whole viruses in them, so maybe that wouldn’t help.
    - 1270018080 5y ago
      Whatever their answer ends up being will probably kill a few braincells.
- vldchk 5y ago
  I would bet on the growth of notepads and smartphone usage by children 0-2 age. There are evidences that electronics and smart screens are destructive for the cognitive development of infants, while they are super easy to adopt by lazy parents. Click on some YTube show and baby won’t bother you for the next hour or two.
  - ryantgtg 5y ago
    Lazy parents? Don’t be hasty. A coworker of mine had every intention of not having any screentime for their toddler. But lockdown meant two parents working from home + no daycare. The solutions were either one of them quits their job or they buy an iPad. Economy necessity dictated the latter. With my toddler, we retained zero screentime simply because my wife is freelance and can get away with ~10 hours of actual work per week.
    - saurik 5y ago
      > But lockdown... The entire point of this sub-thread was to analyze the trend pre-lockdown. (FWIW, I'm then not wanting to comment on whether this is lazy behavior or not, but just that this defense is out of place.)
    - watwut 5y ago
      I had same intention. Even practically largely managed. And then, when I shown toddler first fairy tale, toddler started to have way more varied and imaginative games. Turns out, it does not destroys them at all. It can actually add quite a lot. The harm can happen if you overdo it a lot. But some watching or playing is not destroying them at all.
  - cdubzzz 5y ago
    > There are evidences that electronics and smart screens are destructive for the cognitive development of infants, while they are super easy to adopt by lazy parents. I know this is a poor form but fuck you. We work our asses off to give our kids what is generally accepted as a “good” upbringing and it’s hard. Hard during any normal period of time and even harder when dealing the pressures of the pandemic’s affect on work, day care, extracurricular activities, etc. Happy to read whatever evidence you have on this topic. I’m keenly interested and sure as shit not “lazy” for allowing our children time to play age appropriate games on a tablet.
- riku_iki 5y ago
  ipad games from the very early age
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Would that affect lower socioeconomic status more? Could go either way. I would guess it's an observer/awareness/diagnosis effect. (Lower SE getting progressively more access to child cognitive monitoring; consistent with more attention during covid)
- 323 5y ago
  Parents busy with their phones for example.
sirspacey 5y ago
Edit: was intended as response to a reply to this. Appreciate the caution. We took a different approach. Unlimited screen time. Our daughter’s rate of learning is incredible. She willingly explores IRL play. No battles when we ask her to put down her iPad. Roblox and Minecraft are our shared playtime. I was homeschooled with no TV. My experience of her development is similar to what I experienced with my siblings. A healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when new tech is the explanation for diminishing returns in our existing systems. Children are in aggressively structured, impoverished educational systems nationwide - bankrupt in both their pedagogy and their budgets. Teachers & administrators have raised the warning that as many as 80% of children have not engaged at all with their schooling in the past two years. Maybe iPads aren’t the problem. Maybe they are one reason cognitive decline in children isn’t dramatically worse.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  > Maybe they are one reason cognitive decline in children isn’t dramatically worse. What's your household income?
  - isoskeles 5y ago
    Enough to buy their kids tablets like it's nothing.
- loceng 5y ago
  The most notable difference between TV and computers of various sizes is it's interactive vs. passive, so the "reducing screen time" needs more nuance to the discussion - likewise Roblox etc together as a family sounds lovely vs. isolated dopamine hits from Instagram potentially allowing your peers/strangers dictate how you should feel about yourself (wrongly in either direction).
  - Cerium 5y ago
    This reminds me of all the screen time I had as a kid with my parents, taking turns on single player games (a life or a race). A lot of time spent thinking about how the next turn would go, who would be better at this level (my mom was great at some Zelda temples and I was better at others). Way more thinking happened than any other TV activity.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
This post is so typical of all scientific posts to HN. Person posts negatively to the research and they never look at p valued or sample sizes. Also, they disregard any other possible research . Then a few to a hundred posts refuting the parent with anecdotal evidence of both positive and negative outcomes especially when science doesn’t work in anecdotal evidence which is the point of science and it basically shows that they didn’t read the story either. The big problem is that science isn’t one sided. That papers are cherry picked from preprints or even Confrence and journals where one out of ten papers in a Confrence or a journal publication refute the article regardless.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  And someone always posts a message like yours without actually reading the parent post. In the parent they suggest a greater trend spanning 2017 onward which isn't being mentioned. Large or small p value isn't the issue here
  - isoskeles 5y ago
    And someone always posts a reply like yours without etc. etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
uniqueuid 5y ago
Looking at the paper, the statistical story is a bit complicated. In figure 2, the authors argue that there is a trend. But the graph seems to show the direct measurements of dependent variables with confidence intervals, and they are all non-significant. This means that there is no reason to talk about a trend, especially if the difference between significant and non-significant is not significant :) [edit]: Would really have loved if they showed marginal effects here, removing the influence of control variables. But the models themselves do something else: Table 3 suggests that covid was used as a binary variable to test for. So they are comparing pre-covid to covid-time and see a significant result there. Methodologically, it doesn't seem like a bad design, but the sample size is really a bit small to have sufficient power. Apart from that, the effect size of covid (31) seems really high, but developmental psychology is not my field so I can't say anything about that.
- jpeloquin 5y ago
  > In figure 2, the authors argue that there is a trend. But the graph seems to show the direct measurements of dependent variables with confidence intervals, and they are all non-significant. From the Figure 2 caption, I'm pretty sure it's showing standard deviations (of the sample) not 95% confidence intervals (of the mean). Two samples may have overlapping ± 1 s.d. intervals despite having significant different means.
  - uniqueuid 5y ago
    Thanks for catching this, that's even more straight-forward (and arguably less informative, but the best solution would be to have both plots of raw data and marginal effects of course).

giantg2 5y ago

I wonder what could be driving that trend.

whalesalad 5y ago
The collapse of rational thinking abilities.
- gizmo385 5y ago
  As evidenced by?
  - kurthr 5y ago
    The rise and fall of rationality based words in English language (rose until 1980s and has plummeted since): https://www.pnas.org/content/118/51/e2107848118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/51/e2107848118
    - IsThisYou 5y ago
      Thanks for the link, that's really interesting.
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      That seems methodologically quite questionable for the conclusions drawn. Like many blind semantic analysis attempts which consider language of a crash report for bug testing toxic due to the instances of "does not work", and "kill" and "fail". Meanwhile "I hope you enjoy eating your family then." is positive. Falsely presenting subjective viewpoints as objective would appear more rational. It isn't the trappings which make it rational or even distance from emotions. One can rationally make "non-optimal" decisions from subjective personal costs.
  - conception 5y ago
    The large scale antivax movement for one.
    - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
      Funny enough I expect Venn diagram of antivaxers and people who don't let their kid use screens to have a significant overlap. Sometimes raw distrust is justified.
      - smt88 5y ago
        This probably used to be true, but (in the US) the demographics and politics of anti-vaxxers changed significantly after 2020.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Antivaxxers tend to use scientific/rational language though, as opposed to new age vibes or what they heard from their priests. They’re using a modernist mindset, they just happen to be wrong.
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > using a modernist mindset Would be curious to see data on this. I most frequently see an emotional appeal against authority, vague anxieties and fears and/or slippery slope arguments.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Use of rational language does not mean that the conclusion is reasonable, nor free of fallacy. For example, people saying the covid shot interferes with long term immunity is rational and modern, just not based in fact (or misapplying fact).
        astrange 5y ago
        There are mechanisms that could cause that (“original antigenic sin”) and it does happen with dengue fever. Of course, it’s not true here, but it was reasonable to think it might be in 2020. And covid vaccines being spike-only may be less effective against variants than whole-virus vaccines or actual infections. But flu shots manage to be ineffective a year later with whole viruses in them, so maybe that wouldn’t help.
  - 1270018080 5y ago
    Whatever their answer ends up being will probably kill a few braincells.
vldchk 5y ago
I would bet on the growth of notepads and smartphone usage by children 0-2 age. There are evidences that electronics and smart screens are destructive for the cognitive development of infants, while they are super easy to adopt by lazy parents. Click on some YTube show and baby won’t bother you for the next hour or two.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  Lazy parents? Don’t be hasty. A coworker of mine had every intention of not having any screentime for their toddler. But lockdown meant two parents working from home + no daycare. The solutions were either one of them quits their job or they buy an iPad. Economy necessity dictated the latter. With my toddler, we retained zero screentime simply because my wife is freelance and can get away with ~10 hours of actual work per week.
  - saurik 5y ago
    > But lockdown... The entire point of this sub-thread was to analyze the trend pre-lockdown. (FWIW, I'm then not wanting to comment on whether this is lazy behavior or not, but just that this defense is out of place.)
  - watwut 5y ago
    I had same intention. Even practically largely managed. And then, when I shown toddler first fairy tale, toddler started to have way more varied and imaginative games. Turns out, it does not destroys them at all. It can actually add quite a lot. The harm can happen if you overdo it a lot. But some watching or playing is not destroying them at all.
- cdubzzz 5y ago
  > There are evidences that electronics and smart screens are destructive for the cognitive development of infants, while they are super easy to adopt by lazy parents. I know this is a poor form but fuck you. We work our asses off to give our kids what is generally accepted as a “good” upbringing and it’s hard. Hard during any normal period of time and even harder when dealing the pressures of the pandemic’s affect on work, day care, extracurricular activities, etc. Happy to read whatever evidence you have on this topic. I’m keenly interested and sure as shit not “lazy” for allowing our children time to play age appropriate games on a tablet.
riku_iki 5y ago
ipad games from the very early age
- dnautics 5y ago
  Would that affect lower socioeconomic status more? Could go either way. I would guess it's an observer/awareness/diagnosis effect. (Lower SE getting progressively more access to child cognitive monitoring; consistent with more attention during covid)
323 5y ago
Parents busy with their phones for example.

sirspacey 5y ago

Edit: was intended as response to a reply to this. Appreciate the caution. We took a different approach. Unlimited screen time. Our daughter’s rate of learning is incredible. She willingly explores IRL play. No battles when we ask her to put down her iPad. Roblox and Minecraft are our shared playtime. I was homeschooled with no TV. My experience of her development is similar to what I experienced with my siblings. A healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when new tech is the explanation for diminishing returns in our existing systems. Children are in aggressively structured, impoverished educational systems nationwide - bankrupt in both their pedagogy and their budgets. Teachers & administrators have raised the warning that as many as 80% of children have not engaged at all with their schooling in the past two years. Maybe iPads aren’t the problem. Maybe they are one reason cognitive decline in children isn’t dramatically worse.

endisneigh 5y ago
> Maybe they are one reason cognitive decline in children isn’t dramatically worse. What's your household income?
- isoskeles 5y ago
  Enough to buy their kids tablets like it's nothing.
loceng 5y ago
The most notable difference between TV and computers of various sizes is it's interactive vs. passive, so the "reducing screen time" needs more nuance to the discussion - likewise Roblox etc together as a family sounds lovely vs. isolated dopamine hits from Instagram potentially allowing your peers/strangers dictate how you should feel about yourself (wrongly in either direction).
- Cerium 5y ago
  This reminds me of all the screen time I had as a kid with my parents, taking turns on single player games (a life or a race). A lot of time spent thinking about how the next turn would go, who would be better at this level (my mom was great at some Zelda temples and I was better at others). Way more thinking happened than any other TV activity.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

This post is so typical of all scientific posts to HN. Person posts negatively to the research and they never look at p valued or sample sizes. Also, they disregard any other possible research . Then a few to a hundred posts refuting the parent with anecdotal evidence of both positive and negative outcomes especially when science doesn’t work in anecdotal evidence which is the point of science and it basically shows that they didn’t read the story either. The big problem is that science isn’t one sided. That papers are cherry picked from preprints or even Confrence and journals where one out of ten papers in a Confrence or a journal publication refute the article regardless.

ipaddr 5y ago
And someone always posts a message like yours without actually reading the parent post. In the parent they suggest a greater trend spanning 2017 onward which isn't being mentioned. Large or small p value isn't the issue here
- isoskeles 5y ago
  And someone always posts a reply like yours without etc. etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

uniqueuid 5y ago

Looking at the paper, the statistical story is a bit complicated. In figure 2, the authors argue that there is a trend. But the graph seems to show the direct measurements of dependent variables with confidence intervals, and they are all non-significant. This means that there is no reason to talk about a trend, especially if the difference between significant and non-significant is not significant :) [edit]: Would really have loved if they showed marginal effects here, removing the influence of control variables. But the models themselves do something else: Table 3 suggests that covid was used as a binary variable to test for. So they are comparing pre-covid to covid-time and see a significant result there. Methodologically, it doesn't seem like a bad design, but the sample size is really a bit small to have sufficient power. Apart from that, the effect size of covid (31) seems really high, but developmental psychology is not my field so I can't say anything about that.

jpeloquin 5y ago
> In figure 2, the authors argue that there is a trend. But the graph seems to show the direct measurements of dependent variables with confidence intervals, and they are all non-significant. From the Figure 2 caption, I'm pretty sure it's showing standard deviations (of the sample) not 95% confidence intervals (of the mean). Two samples may have overlapping ± 1 s.d. intervals despite having significant different means.
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  Thanks for catching this, that's even more straight-forward (and arguably less informative, but the best solution would be to have both plots of raw data and marginal effects of course).