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Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

westernsydney.edu.au

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Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#61

Post by ppod »

A couple of interesting things about the journey from the press release to the story: the press release says "associated with", but the summary says "impacts on", and the headline says "critical for preventing"! Also, they pick "screen time and sleep" from among five factors, the others were less tobacco smoking, more physical exercise and more (yes) alcohol.

I don't have a problem with causal claims from these kinds of methods in principle, if the regression is well done with good controls. But I'm not at all convinced that they can isolate self-reported sedentary screen time reliably from self-reported physical activity.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s129...

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#62

Post by mattlutze »

technofiend wrote: post #49
dkersten wrote: post #32

I 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.

The researchers attempted to control for this:

"Sedentary screen time Sedentary screen time is calculated in hours per week, adding together the participants’ answers to the questions ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend watching TV?’ (FC: 1070) and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’ (FC: 1080)."

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#63

Post by robotresearcher »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #20

It's not entirely clear to me from reading the points in this article and skimming the paper that they are able to control the direction of causality for this. That is the question as to whether or not "healthy" activity prevents depression or if depression causes us to reduce our healthy activity (and increase our unhealthy ones). The pandemic has been a great experiment in this and has me starting to think that man…

From the article:

"A higher frequency of alcohol consumption was surprisingly associated with reduced frequency of depressed mood in people with depression. This may potentially be due to the self-medicating use of alcohol by those with depression to manage their mood."

So they explicitly consider your point for alcohol consumption. But they don't seem to consider it for sleep, screen time, or exercise.

To complicate things, I find alcohol negatively impacts sleep and exercise, so the hypothesed self-medication with booze could score multiple hits.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#64

Post by mattlutze »

dkersten wrote: post #32

I 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.

The researchers appear to have tried to look at Sedentary Screen Time, but had to correlate passive TV watching and non-work computer use as those were the questions from the data bank they sampled.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#65

Post by sradman »

rand_r wrote: post #56
sradman wrote: post #15

The paper Multiple lifestyle factors and depressed mood: a cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the UK Biobank (N = 84,860) [1]. The study compares questionnaire results of healthy controls (HC) to people with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD): > Cross-sectional analysis of 84,860 participants showed that in both MDD and HCs, physical activity, healthy diet, and optimal sleep duration were associat…

Good point. We should ban correlational studies like these. Science is littered with these types of after-the-fact surveys that explain nothing and provide no real information. The lack of a mechanistic understanding of cause and effect in systems produces hot air, as we've seen in Psychology and other soft fields.

I was not trying to diminish the study; correlation with N=84K participants is useful.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#66

Post by sneak »

laurent92 wrote: post #37
sneak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people perhaps underestimate the value of an iPad that's not signed in to anything , and is just loaded chock full of epubs (and perhaps offline maps). You don't even need to turn on the Wi-Fi. Computers can be simple tools for reading and study, if you want them to be, and make deliberate choices to that end. The last few months I've spent a lot of time consciously re-engineering my screen time into…

> Getting off social media Can anyone who lives alone at home, get rid of social media? I have lost contact with my parents, I’m single, I do have 20-50 friends in my city but not enough to feel loved during lockdown anyway. I know social media and movies are a poor man’s affection, but I removed that, I’d be madman #10000th. I’d also argue most studies don’t check whether it’s not the lack of affection/social fabric…

You can have direct internet contact with your friends without social media. Send emails, have chat conversations, make video calls, the lot of it. It’s real, and not filtered and sorted to benefit advertisers.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#67

Post by sneak »

aaaxyz wrote: post #34
sneak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people perhaps underestimate the value of an iPad that's not signed in to anything , and is just loaded chock full of epubs (and perhaps offline maps). You don't even need to turn on the Wi-Fi. Computers can be simple tools for reading and study, if you want them to be, and make deliberate choices to that end. The last few months I've spent a lot of time consciously re-engineering my screen time into…

If you're spending a lot of time reading, I'd suggest getting something work an e-ink display. It's much easier on the eyes

I significantly prefer backlighting for reading. To me, an iPad is way better than a printed book. For some reason, light-emitting is easier for my eyes.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#68

Post by prewett »

throwaway3178 wrote: post #22
sradman wrote: post #15

The paper Multiple lifestyle factors and depressed mood: a cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the UK Biobank (N = 84,860) [1]. The study compares questionnaire results of healthy controls (HC) to people with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD): > Cross-sectional analysis of 84,860 participants showed that in both MDD and HCs, physical activity, healthy diet, and optimal sleep duration were associat…

I've been suicidally depressed my whole life. I currently self medicate with reddit, youtube, etc. If I let my mind wander for just a minute the thoughts come flooding in. I also find it very difficult to go to sleep because it involves turning off my distractions and being alone with my own mind. I think the title should be changed. I felt this way long before tech entered my life; as a child I used books for this p…

I strongly recommend finding a good counselor or something along those lines for the flooding-thoughts. Self-medicating will help you survive, but it will not enable you to thrive. I've been doing what is effectively group counseling for the past couple of years and I've slowly learned to identify what the pain is that is driving my behaviors (it sounds like you might already be there), and from there, identifying the needs that are getting unmet. In my case, it's a desire for what St. Augustine describes as "home", a place where you are welcomed, or more broadly speaking, "community" (as opposed to a collection of friends which is what I have). I still have no idea how to get that, but I am making concrete changes to my life to at least randomly walk that direction.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#69

Post by technofiend »

mattlutze wrote: post #62
technofiend wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The researchers attempted to control for this: "Sedentary screen time Sedentary screen time is calculated in hours per week, adding together the participants’ answers to the questions ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend watching TV?’ (FC: 1070) and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’ (FC: 1080)." https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.c…

>and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’

Sure, that's at least an attempt. However would you characterize spending time on a personal project work? That's why I called out my specific examples of side jobs and hobby projects.

I'm not rejecting the findings In particular, maintaining optimal sleep and lessening screen time (which is often an issue in youth), while having adequate physical activity and good dietary quality, may reduce the symptoms of depression,” of lessening screen time in favor of more constructive activity like exercise. I'm suggesting there's probably room here for a deeper dive into the kind and quality of screen time, because even bucketing it into just work vs everything else is arguably too broad. I believe some kinds of screen time are constructive.

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