Neither this article nor the research paper support the claim from the headline. A correlation was found, no causation afaict.
Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
41–50 of 144 posts
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#42I love how a lot of commenters are redefining “screen time” to suit their opinions or otherwise rationalise their screen time, rather than taking the study as is. I mean, sure, perhaps different types of screen time have different impact and this requires further study, but using anecdotes and opinions isn’t that.
Isn’t it pretty obvious not all screen time is the same? If it was then you could do these studies with people staring at simple glowing white rectangles and get identical results.
To me it is not obvious. What causation do you think is at play here? A lot of commenters seem to think it is some kind of emotional mechanism, mentioning things like social media and such. But it might just be a physical mechanism, like being too sedentary, or eye fatigue.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#43Is this "just" another observational study? (I.e. subject to all manner of confounding factors that affect the multitude of similar studies that already exist.)
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#44I love how a lot of commenters are redefining “screen time” to suit their opinions or otherwise rationalise their screen time, rather than taking the study as is. I mean, sure, perhaps different types of screen time have different impact and this requires further study, but using anecdotes and opinions isn’t that.
Isn’t it pretty obvious not all screen time is the same? If it was then you could do these studies with people staring at simple glowing white rectangles and get identical results.
If you somehow managed to convince a group of people to stare at a glowing white rectangle for 10 hours day, I would be pretty surprised if you couldn't notice any mental health effects.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#45"lessening screentime may reduce the symptoms of depression"
Can anybody explain how they could possibly distinguish these two scenarios:
- A) Depressed people watch more TV/screen.
- B) Watching more TV makes people depressed.
I would expect both to be true to varying degree (maybe A even more so than B), yet they seem to expect B to be the dominant causation.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t it pretty obvious not all screen time is the same? If it was then you could do these studies with people staring at simple glowing white rectangles and get identical results.
Yeah, screen time "doomscrolling", screen time "playing online board game with friends", screen time "reading a book" and screen time "watching a movie" are pretty different screen times.
But they're all... screens. And you're spending your time looking at them, regardless of what's on them and how you interact with it.
I do agree that they are different. But they're still screens.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t it pretty obvious not all screen time is the same? If it was then you could do these studies with people staring at simple glowing white rectangles and get identical results.
If you somehow managed to convince a group of people to stare at a glowing white rectangle for 10 hours day, I would be pretty surprised if you couldn't notice any mental health effects.
True, but I argue that those mental health effects would be different than other kinds of screen time :)
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t it pretty obvious not all screen time is the same? If it was then you could do these studies with people staring at simple glowing white rectangles and get identical results.
To me it is not obvious. What causation do you think is at play here? A lot of commenters seem to think it is some kind of emotional mechanism, mentioning things like social media and such. But it might just be a physical mechanism, like being too sedentary, or eye fatigue.
How about something like e-ink? That's a screen, but in terms of optical properties I believe it should resemble paper.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#49I love how a lot of commenters are redefining “screen time” to suit their opinions or otherwise rationalise their screen time, rather than taking the study as is. I mean, sure, perhaps different types of screen time have different impact and this requires further study, but using anecdotes and opinions isn’t that.
In my humble opinion passive consumption of media is entirely different from engaging in a creative process. Perhaps it's just projection on my part but surfing the web for hours reading Reddit, Hacker News and YouTube is entirely different than banging out some new chapters for your NaNoWriMo novel, updating a blog or making a github commit.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you somehow managed to convince a group of people to stare at a glowing white rectangle for 10 hours day, I would be pretty surprised if you couldn't notice any mental health effects.
True, but I argue that those mental health effects would be different than other kinds of screen time :)
Probably, but the effects of different types of screen time would likely be more similar to each other than going for a walk in the woods.