Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

westernsydney.edu.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 144 posts

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

#71

Post by brudgers »

Depression is not a lifestyle choice. Our eating, exercise, sleep, etc. are habits developed over a lifetime. Chronic health issues, sexual abuse, traumatic death of a loved one, and bad luck are what to avoid. And of course some formulations of brain chemistry.

Casting depression as a lifestyle issue is a step backward. Mental health is already stigmatized far too much. Depression is not a moral failing of will power. It’s a response to adversity. A way profound unhappiness manifests.

Kale, a peloton, and deleting Facebook won’t change the past.

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

#74

Post by lumberjack »

waterhouse wrote: post #48
lumberjack wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never tried e-ink for prolonged times, but I always found the contrast to be a bit lacking, which is something that contributes to eye fatigue. Last I used such devices was over 5 years ago though, so maybe technology has improved now.

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

#75

Post by dash2 »

technofiend wrote: post #69
mattlutze wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

That's interesting, but have you got evidence for your belief? Are you sure the wish is not father to the thought here?

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

#76

Post by technofiend »

dash2 wrote: post #75
technofiend wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 i…

That's interesting, but have you got evidence for your belief? Are you sure the wish is not father to the thought here?

Well clearly not, any more than I have evidence to the contrary. I did my best to qualify my statements that it's just one person's opinion. Sorry if that's not obvious.

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

#78

Post by tahira0509 »

dash2 wrote: post #75
technofiend wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 i…

That's interesting, but have you got evidence for your belief? Are you sure the wish is not father to the thought here?

Interesting

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

#79

Post by ravitation »

bananabiscuit wrote: post #36
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.

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.

It certainly seems very likely that what you're doing with said screen matters quite a bit, but this is also an extremely complex thing to try to study. Not only can the net result (i.e. a hypothetical positive or negative result) of a given activity change based on the individual instance of that activity, but it can also change based on the person doing that activity (whose mindset could also change depending on the instance, which could effect the net result of a given instance of a given activity).

The point is, while it might be "pretty obvious that not all screen time is the same," it would also not be that surprising if screen time was still negatively related to the average number of common screen activities over a certain amount of time (which is what you would expect from a study like this).

I'll of course hedge my statement, by saying that the Hacker News community is likely not a representative sample when it comes to common screen activities relative to the general population.

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

#80

Post by jjk166 »

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…

That seems like a terrible control. Plenty of people do non-constructive things on computers at work (I'm doing so right now) and lots of people are productive at home.
Post reply on HN