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What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

longevity.stanford.edu

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Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#151

Post by Dalewyn »

bartread wrote: post #61
MrJagil wrote: post #11

“One of the biggest issues with picking up the phone right away in the morning is that when you have an object close to your face, it’s registered as a threat,” says Loeffler. “You wouldn’t want to wake up and look a bear in the face every morning. On a physiological level, it’s the same thing.” This is interesting to me. It does make some evolutionary sense but at the same time, i wake up every morning and look at m…

> This is interesting to me. It does make some evolutionary sense but at the same time, i wake up every morning and look at my girlfriends face, hopefully that does not subconsciously trigger the same response. Yeah, exactly. If my adult brain can distinguish between my wife's face and a bear, or my pillow and bear, why can't it distinguish between my phone and a bear? Plus, the phone is an object I hold in my hand.…

I've come across many people in life and I can't remember a single married couple saying anything positive about their circumstances.

I wonder if this theory, as bullshit as it probably is, is on to something?

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#152

Post by xattt »

latexr wrote: post #83
frereubu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like hocus pocus to me, along the lines of the claim that phone alert tones activate the "love centre" of the brain. Just so happens that the "love centre" is also the "vomiting centre" along with a load of other stuff. I'd treat this hand-wavy claim with the same kind of skepticism - your counter-example is an excellent one. I agree that looking at a phone first thing in the morning is a bad idea, but fo…

Agreed that justification sounds like rubbish. Especially when one of their stated alternatives is to read a book. Unless you’re reading a digital book through a projector, that too is an object close to the face.

A while ago, there was a new wives’ tale going around how the red notification dot on replicate a slot machine so people would get addicted (1).

This was completely ignorant of Apple’s history of first using the numbered dot over the Apple Mail stamp icon that looked like a postmark.

I’m really skeptical of all these experts.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/magazine/red-dots-badge-p...

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#153

Post by karma_fountain »

squigz wrote: post #99
kmarc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about yellow(ish) backlight? I switched to Kobo bc of that

IIRC, most of the evidence regarding screens before bed being detrimental were focused on the "blue light" thing, so a warmer light is probably better. (I think the science behind blue light being bad for us is still up for debate, but it's hard for me to ignore the amount of anecdata I've heard, including my own experience using flux and the like)

Blue light has been shown to affect alertness in the evening in 13 young men here https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

Would be interested in studies refuting this.

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#154

Post by sojournerc »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #38
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all the activities mentioned stimulate the little dopamine rushes; Duolingo and workout loggers both gamify progress, where getting the points or progression in those apps is more important than what they're intended to quantify. Doomscrolling will get you the dopamine rush of the various emotional ups and downs it provides. I mean I'm guilty as well, I often browse reddit mindlessly, often r/all which opens…

> workout loggers both gamify progress I agree but I just find it too useful to be able to see what my workout is going to be and what I did last time, as well as my progress on different exercises. The alternative would be printing out my workout app before each workout, filling it in with pen and paper and then inputting it back into the app later. I'd love an alternative.

My Suunto sport watch logs the workout and automatically syncs to the phone. You could get your work tracked and avoid screen time that way.

It sounds like you're using the phone for a workout plan though... Nothing is perfect

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#155

Post by sir_eliah »

jamager wrote: post #112
devjab wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there are a lot of issues with the way Duolingo motives people through unhealthy incentives, but research does show that it works. Though it will need to be used in conjunction with other methods of learning to be truly helpful. But then, why would you learn a language if you’re not going to actively use it? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379288394_The_Effec...

No, research doesn't show that it works. That research you link has been conducted by Xiangying Jiang and Bozena Pajak (first and last authors). If you want to contact them about how totally objective and unbiased they are, here are their emails: xiangying@duolingo.com bozena@duolingo.com

Touché!

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#156

Post by ergonaught »

> excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours

Why would "work hours" have anything to do with this?

They can't make it through a second paragraph before demonstrating that the thinking that contributed to this is garbage. Why would I read more?

Spoiler: I didn't.

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#157

Post by VieEnCode »

MrJagil wrote: post #11

“One of the biggest issues with picking up the phone right away in the morning is that when you have an object close to your face, it’s registered as a threat,” says Loeffler. “You wouldn’t want to wake up and look a bear in the face every morning. On a physiological level, it’s the same thing.” This is interesting to me. It does make some evolutionary sense but at the same time, i wake up every morning and look at m…

Surely the same thing could be said about picking up a book or a newspaper first thing in the morning?

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#158

Post by PikaXGod »

Torkel wrote: post #75
frereubu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like hocus pocus to me, along the lines of the claim that phone alert tones activate the "love centre" of the brain. Just so happens that the "love centre" is also the "vomiting centre" along with a load of other stuff. I'd treat this hand-wavy claim with the same kind of skepticism - your counter-example is an excellent one. I agree that looking at a phone first thing in the morning is a bad idea, but fo…

+1 My BS-meter also went off on this.

Mine too

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#159

Post by makeitdouble »

imaginationra wrote: post #121

Adult here that NEVER used any kind of mobile phone/tablet- never even had a flip/dumb phone. I do programming amongst other creative computer based things- the thing I've noticed between me and the normal phone/tablet human- is the ability to focus. I can focus for hours, weeks, months, years on tasks etc. Everyone around me feels like focus wimps- they focus for 15 minutes or an hour and are proud of themselves and…

> I can focus for hours, weeks, months, years on tasks etc.

What do you mean by focusing on tasks for years ?

For instance does a parent get to say they focused on raising their kid for 10+ years ? Or can a accountant say they focused on keeping books straight for decades ?

Aside from that I feel what's lost in this argument is whether a specific task merited focus in the first place.

Let's say someone is watching a movie but decides after 10 min to look at TikTok instead, to then go cook some popcorn and ends up doing the laundry. Should we blame them for doing chores instead of staying focused on the meh movie in the first place ? And does getting easily distracted even matter if they're otherwise decent adults who do what's required from them to do ?

Re: What excessive screen time does to the adult brain

#160

Post by insane_dreamer »

the effects of excessive "screen time" (primarily meant to mean scrolling through social media, playing games on a mobile device (phone/tablet), not sitting at a computer doing work), may be harder to established in adults, but it's been pretty well established in teens by measuring the correlation between screen time and test scores, primarily stemming from high schoolers lack of ability to focus (short attention spans).
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