I think it depends what you're doing on the screen. Unfortunately, people no longer seem to distinguish between activities such as 'endlessly scrolling through Twitter' and 'making music in Ableton'. It's all just 'screen time', and it's bad for your mental health.
Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
131–140 of 144 posts
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#132I think it depends what you're doing on the screen. Unfortunately, people no longer seem to distinguish between activities such as 'endlessly scrolling through Twitter' and 'making music in Ableton'. It's all just 'screen time', and it's bad for your mental health.
It says [0] the question excluded computer hours at work. Which seems bizarre in itself and to address the title, but does go quite some way to your point. (Most people's recreational computer time, I dare say, is 'mindless Twitter scrolling' and the like.)
And as a more general point, it's looking at 'history of major depressive disorder (MDD)' or not, not merely feeling a bit glum. I don't think the takeaway is supposed to be a tabloid-style 'avoid screen or become suicide risk', it's more like lifestyle choices you can make to maybe mitigate an issue you already present with. (IANA GP/psychologist/anything relevant, though.)
[0]: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#133I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here. When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. When I'm feeling great, I'm generally motivated to go outside / do DIY / read / have a lot less screen time. I initially spent lots of effort trying to reduce my screen time (parental controls, etc) before realising that it was proba…
This is my exact problem with all these studies. I thought "people who don't care about themselves eat unhealthily" was a bit of a no-brainer. I started a clinical psychology course on EdX recently and the first exercise was Common Advice. They went on the say the only useful common advice to give to a depressed person is to tell them to go for a run, as that was the only correlation supported by evidence. A RUN! Tha…
This was a longitudinal study which compared lifestyle factors at baseline with depression at follow-up, so the causation was confirmed.
That is not to say that depression doesn't cause more screen time, or worse sleep.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#134I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here. When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. When I'm feeling great, I'm generally motivated to go outside / do DIY / read / have a lot less screen time. I initially spent lots of effort trying to reduce my screen time (parental controls, etc) before realising that it was proba…
> I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here
Your framing assumes that there has to be a clear, unidirectional arrow of causation.
In reality, behaviors and moods are in tight reciprocity, affecting each other simultaneously. For likes of depression (or addiction) that reciprocity can narrow and narrow to the point of only moping around and doing whatever maintains the depression.
Which means avoiding depression maintaining behaviors is one of the multiple things to do in order to prevent it, or prevent a relapse, conversely it will indeed be incredibly hard to treat it with only reducing screen time.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#135I 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 problem is with these studies which (probably due to lack of funding) measure such a gross metric in an age where there is such a variety of activities that take place over a screen.
Screen time was initially a deliberate positive spin in response to the studies demonstrating the negative effects of social media use on mental health, and somehow gained mainstream traction.
Commenters should be able to fine grain their definition of "screen time" because we have previous studies that do clearly indicate what type of "screen time* has the most detrimental effects.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#136I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here. When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. When I'm feeling great, I'm generally motivated to go outside / do DIY / read / have a lot less screen time. I initially spent lots of effort trying to reduce my screen time (parental controls, etc) before realising that it was proba…
This is my exact problem with all these studies. I thought "people who don't care about themselves eat unhealthily" was a bit of a no-brainer. I started a clinical psychology course on EdX recently and the first exercise was Common Advice. They went on the say the only useful common advice to give to a depressed person is to tell them to go for a run, as that was the only correlation supported by evidence. A RUN! Tha…
By that logic there is nothing useful you could say to a depressed person, as they won't get out of bed anyway.
I am willing to believe that there are people who won't feel better by going for a run or will be unable to do so, but I think there are probably also people who feel better by simply doing it, even if they don't feel like it.
Especially with depression there also seems to be an ideological battle, were some people absolutely want to believe that it is caused by chemical imbalances and medication is the only thing that can possibly work. (Again, I am willing to believe that such cases exist, but I also think there are people who would rightfully have been classified as depressed who came out of it without medication).
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#137Earlier 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.
Reading a book on a screen is basically the same as reading a physical book. There is no reason one would cause depression while the other wouldn't, unless it is due to the physical screen which is a problem that can be fixed. I've never seen a study saying that reading books causes depression, so it shouldn't.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, so just because this study doesn’t bother to differentiate between different things people can do with screens, you are saying it’s all the same?
Insufficient information to make a reasonable conclusion, I'm guessing. It could very be related to what's on the screen, but it might not. Insufficient data. Screens are very new in relation to the development of human physiology, so I don't think we can assume that screens themselves are not a cause.
Screen time at work is not correlated with depression though. The explicitly choose to remove that factor, since many jobs with tons of screen time like software engineer have very happy people.
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#139I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here. When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. When I'm feeling great, I'm generally motivated to go outside / do DIY / read / have a lot less screen time. I initially spent lots of effort trying to reduce my screen time (parental controls, etc) before realising that it was proba…
> When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. Switch "on my phone" with "drinking alcohol" and that's literally how all alcoholics think.
Stopping drinking doesn't make your other problems go away though
Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my exact problem with all these studies. I thought "people who don't care about themselves eat unhealthily" was a bit of a no-brainer. I started a clinical psychology course on EdX recently and the first exercise was Common Advice. They went on the say the only useful common advice to give to a depressed person is to tell them to go for a run, as that was the only correlation supported by evidence. A RUN! Tha…
Well it's not totally crazy. I suffer from mild chronic depression and I have noticed that doing my morning exercise routine makes it much more likely that my mood will be decent throughout the day than if I wake up and decide I just don't feel like exercising that day. I have also experimented on myself to see whether 30 minutes of exercise improved my mood in the middle of the day. Not totally surprisingly, it _usu…
For running/jogging, a good trick for when you really don't feel like it is to put running clothes on, go outside, and then just start walking. If you still don't feel like running, you can just go for a walk instead, but many people will actually want to run after a bit--the bottleneck is getting out the door.
It's the same for other kinds of exercise. If you're dreading lifting weights, start by just doing some sets of really light reps. If you still feel bad, you can just stop after that, but you'll probably often find at that point that you actually feel like doing more.
Weirdly, I seem to often have my best runs/workouts with this approach, when I started out feeling like crap. Motivation is a strange thing.